The NFL Academy: Agent of Expansion, Part I
DAZN Exclusive.
The National Football League is synonymous with its game and country. Or simply, football and the United States. This April, 257 men were selected in the NFL Draft. They hail from programs like Ohio State and Alabama, and, in the coming months will compete in the world’s most elite football league. While this is the best known player development story among NFL fans, it is far from the most impactful.
In an era of swelling television ratings for its sport, perhaps the NFL’s best effort is coming far from home and away from the cameras. Immersed in the NFL’s global expansion is a high school team more diverse than any mini-camp to be held this Summer or practice squad to be formed this Fall. The NFL Academy is the said team, and its influence is not measured in yards after the catch. This multifaceted program is drawing the attention of teenagers around the world and galvanizing an American football fan base known to few; for now.
Loughborough is located in the East Midlands of Leicestershire, England. East of Birmingham for the Peaky Blinders crowd. There lies Loughborough College and University, the gracious partner and host of the NFL Academy Europe-Africa. To understand this program is to understand the mission of the academy’s leadership. Lamonte Winston has been its head since 2023. He has spent more than three decades in player development and coaching, including tenures with the Kansas City Chiefs and the then, Oakland Raiders. When asked about the science of player development in football, Winston said “it's about the people underneath the jerseys.” There is no better description for the Academy’s purpose, as a player development program’s goal is to train young men to “transition to the game of life,” in Winston’s words.
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The NFL Academy (Europe-Africa) includes 70 students from 19 different countries, all cared for pastorically by Loughborough College; college is code for high school in the UK for American readers. This includes accommodations and education in a college-prep, boarding school environment.
The NFL values “how the game goes on,” said Winston, referencing the influence of the league off the field. This value echoes across the Atlantic from the NFL league office in New York. When asked about the academy’s role in the NFL’s global development efforts, Patrick Long, Director of International Development for the NFL, highlighted the aim of this initiative as “being an academy true in name.”
Wednesdays in Loughborough are focused on leadership. The academy hosts workshops for its students to explore career paths around the game. Vocations for former football players include coaching, strength & conditioning, and sports marketing. Head coach Steve Hagen is very clear on how things operate during the week- “You lift, you go to school, then you practice, then you go do your homework- and you do it all again the next day.” All of this comes in an effort to develop the character of young men and open educational doors to those from “all walks of life,” said Long. The NFL Academy offers a first class education in tandem with a top-of-the-line football training program geared to place athletes in the NCAA on football scholarships.
The caliber of athlete in the modern NFL is something to behold. DK Metcalf, a wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers, weighs 230 pounds and ran his 40-yard-dash at the NFL combine in 4.33 seconds. The scouting gurus of the NFL would consider that elite size and speed in one collection. The Metcalf “measurables” - football lingo - have driven the NFL to create programs like the NFL Academy and International Player Pathway (IPP) both to source American football talent globally, and expand interest in the game in different corners of our world.
Osi Umenyiora, a two-time Super Bowl Champion with the New York Giants and now International Ambassador for the NFL, looks back at the 2015 World Cup of Rugby when reflecting on their inception. Umemyiora recalls thinking “I wonder what would make me watch this,” considering the appetite of casual rugby fans at the time. He landed on the idea of seeing a recognizable player- someone he could surely relate to as an athlete, but more so as the raw talent he was as an impressionable, “zero-star” football prospect out of high school.
In 2015, at NFL UK in London, a key directive was to grow the game. Umenyiora shared his rugby-inspired deliberations with colleague Aden Durde to advance the cause. Durde was the head of football development at NFL UK and is now the defensive coordinator of the Seattle Seahawks. He was the NFL’s first international full-time coach, and shared Umenyiora's sentiment over a decade ago. While describing the genesis of these programs, Durde said, “If you have people that were like you from your area, and they had done it, you actually saw a real pathway that you could do it, instead of (seeing) someone that was so far removed from the life you were living.”
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Seeing may or may not be believing, but setting an example with figures akin to untried athletes everywhere is inspirational. Kris Durham, a four-year NFL veteran at wide receiver and now Head of Football for the NFL Academy said “There’s a lot of talent. Guys the right size and guys with the right mindset, that's why we are on this side of the world” while discussing international prospects. Durham resides in Paris with ties throughout Europe from his time with the IPP and coordinates NFL Academy games in the region. The NFL Academy is a synthesis of football intelligence, charged with the stewardship of a team carrying a recognizable, and marketable, target on its back- the NFL shield.
American Football in Loughborough is not for the faint of heart. The University- no conversion needed in the States- provides the athletic facilities. The accommodations include a world-class strength and conditioning gym and a NFL Academy branded practice field. An intangible benefit for the academy’s players is proximity to world class athletes. Loughborough University greets aspiring Olympians with a 50 meter pool and altitude-controlled lodging.
Coach Hagen strives to recreate the best high school football programs in the United States. “America is where you play football,” said Hagen, “We are trying to put a team together that can compete, so we can show American (NCAA) coaches our guys (players) can process information and compete at a high level.” Lamonte Winston describes the technique of teaching the game to teens with the frame for football but no experience as “fast-tracking”- a process that starts in reverse. “You have to slow it down at first and then ramp them up,” said Winston. He added, “Our coaches have to know them and have to spend time with them,” speaking to personal relationships and understanding players’ backgrounds.
Hagen runs five practices a week, and diving into the playbook with a crop of fresh talent from Finland to Nigeria is not an option. Picture a football team receiving play calls from the sideline, signaling substitutions and communicating with each other, making sure they are in the correct formation. Now, consider the task of threading those strategies through a team with players from 19 different countries. Picking up American football is “like learning a whole different language,” according to Efe Obada, the NFL Academy Ambassador for the Europe-Africa Campus. Obada has played 10 seasons in the NFL (2025 would be his 11th) and did not play college football. Any American football fan can attest this arc to the NFL is unheard of.
Hagen relies on football “sign-language” and the values of his program to help his one-of-a-kind roster adopt the game conceptually. Under the Academy logo in the Loughborough facility reads, “Responsibility To Team.” Aden Durde described American football as “the ultimate team sport” and said “you have to rely on the next person to do their job.”
No performance epitomizes this pillar of the academy than a matchup with Erasmus Hall out of Brooklyn, New York at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2023. The academy’s defensive staff was unable to attend the game due to a delay with their work visas and were forced to watch the game on a delayed stream. They communicated calls to the staff on the sideline which were then relayed to the academy’s middle linebacker for execution. Winston recalls drawing on his old coaching days to help out and described the 35-0 victory as “one of the most memorable moments of my (football) career.”
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Winston will move on from his role as head of the academy this Spring. In his two-year term, the academy implemented a US Tour over the Summer to expose its players to American coaches, but also as a lead into games against top American high school programs in the Fall. Makes sense from a player development guru known for raising the bar. Efe Obada credited Winston’s holistic approach saying “he's not just focused on the athletics side” and added “he wants to make sure they have an easy transition.” Obada was referring to the game of life, as Winston did to start.
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