Chaparral High grad has come a long way to reach NFL Draft
Two-time collegiate All-american could be a rare first-round pick as a guard
Block the players rushing down the field from the opposite side.
The coach’s instructions to Will Hernandez on his role on the kickoff return team in his first football practice as a freshman at Chaparral High sounded easy enough — except they weren’t. Not to a 13-year-old who had never played football and had barely ever watched it on television.
Hernandez panicked.
“At that point, the only thing I knew about football was you’re supposed to tackle the guy with the ball,” he explained. “I went backwards and tackled my own returner.”
The next several seconds felt like an eternity to Hernandez, who remained confused as he noticed he had crashed the practice to a halt.
Teammates were beside themselves laughing. Some of the coaches too. The rest of the coaching staff, Hernandez remembered, were speechless with their jaws dropped.
None of them realized it was merely the first of many times Hernandez would make himself the center of attention on the football field from a typically inconspicuous position.
He consoled himself after the embarrassment, vowed to improve and has never stopped fulfilling that goal nine years later. After earning All-american recognition as a guard the past two seasons at the University of Texas-el Paso, Hernandez is expected to be picked in the first two rounds of the 2018 NFL Draft, which begins Thursday evening in Arlington, Texas.
Some projections place Hernandez as a first-round pick, despite only 10 guards having ever been picked that early since 2000.
“It kind of hit me recently while in