Toughness, tenacity set Hernandez apart

Ex-chaparral High standout generates interest from teams

Bill Froman saw something in offensive lineman Will Hernandez that others didn’t. In hindsight, Froman concedes it was largely because he was searching for anyone who might resemble a decent football player.

Froman didn’t have many of those in 2011 when he became coach at Chaparral High School. Hernandez at least had the look of someone who could be good. And that was before Hernandez showed his toughness by playing with a broken arm.

“He wasn’t big yet, but his frame was there and he was really athletic,” said Froman, now the coach at Coronado.

At that point, even Hernandez didn’t see his potential. He hadn’t even thought about playing college football, forget the pros, so getting good grades wasn’t a priority. Hernandez, who grew up loving soccer and knew little about football, even

considered leaving high school early to join his dad in construction work.

Froman helped convinced Hernandez to stick with football, that he might have a future in it.

So Hernandez worked hard in the classroom and on the field. Despite not being heavily recruited and winding up at Texas-el Paso, he is in position Thursday to be selected in the first round of the NFL draft.

He would be the second Las Vegan in three years to go in the first round. Notre Dame offensive tackle Ronnie Stanley, who went to Bishop Gorman, was drafted No. 6 overall by the Baltimore Ravens in 2016, the highest local draft pick.

Hernandez (6 feet 2 inches, 327 pounds) won’t go that high but could be picked in the latter part of the first round or slip into the second.

“At the end, it will fall where it needs to fall,” Hernandez said. “I need an opportunity to play, so wherever I go, I’ll go. I’ll be fine with it. I just want to go to a team that believes in me and wants me on their team, so I’m ready to get to work for whatever team that is.”

Hernandez could play guard or center in the NFL. He was a standout left guard at UTEP.

Hernandez redshirted his first season with the Miners, and though he was about 725 miles from Las Vegas, it felt like more than 7,000 miles. He wanted to return home to play for UNLV, and Froman went to then-rebels coach Bobby Hauck, who wasn’t interested.

“Just like the other 125 colleges that passed on him,” Hauck, now Montana’s coach, said in a text message. “We didn’t think his high school film was great, glad he developed into a player. Good for him.”

Hernandez wound up making the most of his time at UTEP, going on to start all 49 games of his Miners career. He earned second-team Associated Press All-america honors his final two seasons, the first UTEP player to ever pull that off.

UTEP had played some notable power-conference schools, such as Oklahoma last season and Texas in 2016, but Hernandez knew he still would have to prove himself at the Senior Bowl and NFL scouting combine. He stood out at both, putting up 37 repetitions in the 225-pound bench press at the combine, tops among offensive linemen.

“Ever since I got the opportunity to play college football, I told myself I wasn’t going to let it go to waste,” Hernandez said. “I was going to go all out, and I was going to do my best in everything I did. So I did that all four years of college, and something I always felt I needed was media attention, exposure, the opportunity to go with the big guys.”

Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @markanderson65 on Twitter.