Cleveland Browns defensive end Ogbo Okoronkwo turns a teenager's secret into a NFL career

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. — The money was the thing that set off Augusta Okoronkwo's motherly intuition.

Her 16-year-old son Ogbonnia was asking for it regularly. He would tell her it was for things like "Gatorade or socks or a mouthpiece," but never that all of that was part of a bigger secret he was keeping from his parents.

Behind their back, Augusta and Benson Okoronkwo's son had taken up the same thing so many other teenage boys in Houston had done. Ogbonnia — better known as "Ogbo" — Okoronkwo had been bitten by the love of football.

"I never ever showed or expressed any want to play any type of sport besides skateboarding," Ogbo, the Browns' defensive end, told the Beacon Journal during the team's training camp trip to The Greenbrier. "So it was more like an, 'all right,' maybe she thought I was just trying to get extra money from her, but she was just like, well, if you say this is what you need it for, it was more of a thing like that. Just being a mom."

The Okoronkwo's were living in a place where football is, as Ogbo admits, "a religion." It was a place where football players, even in high school, were looked upon as something beyond mere mortals.

So it wouldn't seem like playing the sport of choice in town would be a reason for a teenager to hide that fact from his parents. Except that, in many ways, football was a relatively foreign concept for the Ogbo's Nigerian-born parents.

"My parents aren't from America, so they really harped on academics," Ogbo said. "They didn't really feel a need for me to be doing anything if it wasn't academics or working towards getting an academic scholarship so they wouldn't have to pay for my tuition, of course. So I knew when I started playing football, they wouldn't support it."

Okoronkwo's father, Benson, had immigrated to the United States to pursue a pharmacy degree at Texas Southern University. Augusta, meanwhile, worked as a nurse.

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While Okoronkwo eventually told his mom what he was doing during his junior season at Alief Taylor High School, it wasn't until after that year that he let his father in on the secret. However, seeing was believing for Benson Okoronkwo, and that didn't happen until he was convinced by his wife to go to nearby Katy, Texas, where their son's high school team was playing against the No. 2-ranked team in the country.

"My dad had no clue," Ogbo recalled. "But my dad came, he saw me play. I had a really good game. There were like all these schools here to see me. I balled out, because I knew they were there. I had this crazy game and ... that's how they found out I played football."

Turns out, the choice to pick up football was a productive one for Ogbo Okoronkwo. The scholarship offers, which he initially hid from his parents as part of his secret football life, came pouring in.

Okoronkwo went to the University of Oklahoma, where he earned co-Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year and All-American honors. The Los Angeles Rams made him a fifth-round pick, No. 160 overall, in the 2018 NFL Draft.

What once was a teenager's secret passion has turned into a life-altering journey.

"Football just sort of cleaned up my whole life in all aspects," Okoronkwo said. "Even away from football, what I took away from football is like, OK, just being accountable, being where you say you're going to be, people depending on you to be where you say you're going to be. All those things just go hand-in-hand with life."

Okoronkwo has worked his way into a productive pass-rush specialist as he enters his fifth NFL season, and first with the Browns. After three years and 33 games played with the Rams, including a Super Bowl championship in his final year there, he played for his hometown Houston Texans last year, recording a career-high five sacks and nine tackles for loss in 17 games.

That led him to sign with the Browns on the first day of free agency in March. Okoronkwo joined free-agent signees Dalvin Tomlinson and Maurice Hurst Jr., along with trade acquisition Za'Darius Smith, as big offseason pick-ups to help reshape a defensive line that was shaky at best a season ago.

"His strength is crazy," Tomlinson said of Okoronkwo. "You wouldn't expect Ogbo to be that strong. The way he sets edges, it's crazy. He's just so fluid when he pass rushes and stuff. I said before, it's just every time I see him rush, it doesn't seem real, like somebody playing Madden or something with him out there every time he puts his hand in the dirt.”

Chris Easterling can be reached at ceasterling@thebeaconjournal.com. Read more about the Browns at www.beaconjournal.com/sports/browns. Follow him on Twitter at @ceasterlingABJ

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Browns' Ogbonnia Okoronkwo turns a teenager's secret into NFL career