DE takes odd path to football, Steelers
about American football. Other than watching a few games on TV over the years, he had no idea what football was all about until his parents moved to Georgia when he was 16.
“I didn’t know anything about the NFL,” Kallon said. “I just know what I saw on TV, guys running around in helmets and hitting each other.”
The coaches at Gwinnett High School discovered the 6-foot-5, 245-pound new kid and asked him to come out for the football team. In Georgia, high schools have spring practices. And, by the end of the spring workouts, mere weeks after taking up the game, college coaches were flocking to Gwinnett to offer him scholarships.
“I was playing defensive end,” Kallon said. “I basically just played — see ball, get ball. Off my spring game, I got 12 scholarship offers from SEC and ACC schools. They just kept coming in.”
From a clueless immigrant to four-star recruit in a matter of months, Kallon settled on Georgia Tech, not so much for its football tradition as much as its academic reputation. His parents insisted that if he was going to pursue this new sport in college he had to take it up at the most prestigious institution that was offering to pay for his education.
But at Georgia Tech, Kallon’s fairy-tale recruiting story soon turned to harsh reality. He struggled to retain football concepts and comprehending terminology. What his teammates had learned in middle school and high school he was learning in college, simple things most coaches take for granted with their incoming recruits.
Kallon redshirted and played sparingly as a freshman, sophomore and junior, never registering more than 15 tackles in any season. It wasn’t until last fall that he finally began to show some promise. And, even then, it came in spurts. He started six times and finished his senior season with two sacks.
“You won’t have a guy who works harder than he does,” Georgia Tech defensive line coach Mike Pelton told the Atlanta JournalConstitution.
The Steelers are hoping his work ethic, combined with his size and elite athletic traits — he ran a 4.8 in the 40-yard dash at Georgia Tech’s pro day — makes him worthy of a spot in their organization. They have a history of developing athletes who are new to American football.
Their starting left tackle spent his formative years in Spain and Belgium and played rugby before taking up football in high school in Belgium. Alejandro Villanueva, the son of Spanish parents, was born on a naval station in Mississippi but spent most of his youth in Europe. He was recruited to West Point and served three tours as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan before getting a tryout as a defensive lineman with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2014.
The Eagles cut him, but the Steelers picked him up and placed him on their practice squad for the 2014 season. After Kelvin Beachum was injured midway through the 2015 season, Vilanueva became the starter and has been entrenched there ever since.
Kallon could begin his career in similar fashion. An NFL practice squad is likely where he’ll land later this summer if he plays well enough in training camp.
Kallon has added 50 pounds to his frame since high school. He is now 6-5, 295 pounds and looks the part of an NFL player. His dream is to continue learning the game at the NFL level.
“I feel like I understand the game, but I’m still in the learning stages,” he said. “I understand everything I’ve accomplished thus far, but there is so much more I have to learn and am going to learn. I’m excited about that and ready to work.”
Just six years ago his crude understanding of the game — “guys running around in helmets and hitting each other” — has grown into an appreciation for the game and how it’s played.
“It’s bigger than that,” Kallon said. “It’s a big team sport. Everything matters. The smallest details make the biggest impacts. There’s more than just running around and hitting people. It’s paying attention to what you have to do, helping your teammates, and your team, get the edge.”
• NOTE — The Steelers signed former Pitt linebacker Matt Galambos after he participated in rookie minicamp on a tryout basis.