01-03-2025
Emeka Egbuka going big-time at NFL combine--while cherishing his Steilacoom, Eastern roots
Emeka Egbuka had just had interviews with multiple teams. As one of the biggest and best inside, slot receivers at this NFL combine, he gets a lot of those.
He was answering more questions in the car wash that is the parade of media interviews at the league's annual scouting showcase. He gets a lot of those, too.
He was nearly 2,300 miles from home. He's been all the way to Ohio State, to the national championship, to the cusp of his boyhood dream.
Yet all he really wanted to talk about Friday was where he came from. And the two local coaches who made him who and what he is.
'Greg Herd? That's one of my closest friends!' Egbuka said Friday of his wide receivers coach at Steilacoom High School.
His smile lit up the Indiana Convention Center more than any NFL or Buckeyes subject did.
'Coach Herd,' Egbuka said, 'one of the best coaches I've ever had the pleasure to work with.'
Before Egbuka became The News Tribune's 2019 All-Area football player of the year, the Washington state Gatorade player of the year and a state Class 2A runner-up at Steilacoom — before Yakima's Cooper Kupp won the Walter Payton Award at Eastern Washington as the nation's most outstanding offensive player in the Football Championship Subdivision, then the Super Bowl MVP wide receiver for the Los Angeles Rams — Tacoma's Greg Herd was The Man at Steilacoom and Eastern.
Herd starred as a quarterback for the Sentinels, plus set school track records in the 100 meters in the Steilacoom Class of 2009. He then switched positions, to wide receiver, at Eastern Washington. There Herd won a national championship and became one of the top pass catchers in EWU history.
Now 34 and the head football coach and athletic director at Auburn-Riverside High School, Herd got his first school coaching job as the offensive coordinator and wide receivers coach at his alma mater. That was in 2018.
That was Egbuka's sophomore year for the Sentinels.
'For those of you who don't know, he's my high school coach,' Egbuka proudly told the crowd of reporters from across the country who were lined up deep to ask him questions Friday at the NFL combine. 'He went to Steilacoom. Then he went to Eastern Washington. Played in the NFL for a number of years (signed as a rookie free agent first by Dallas, then, briefly, in 2013 by his hometown Seahawks and Chicago Bears).
'He kind of passed me all the knowledge that he had at the wide receiver position when I was a young kid. I was in eighth grade when I first met him.
'He's still doing his thing, coaching in the state of Washington. I'm excited to see how his future pans out.'
That's Egbuka, to those who know him — or even those who meet him for the first time.
Quick to credit and praise others for his success.
Always proud of Steilacoom, and Eastern.
Like many top prospects here, the 6-foot-1, 205-pound Egbuka said he will not be running the nationally televised 40-yard dash this weekend or doing other physical testing on the field inside Lucas Oil Stadium. Instead, he will do those drills at Ohio State's pro day workout March 26.
As sure as Indiana is the Hoosier State, prospects at every NFL combine get asked the same, incessant question from media members every year.
'Did you have an interview with (team-fill-in-the-blank)?'
Friday, Egbuka dutifully answered that he'd talked to the Steelers, Raiders and Texans, among others.
One team no one had to ask if he'd talked to: Dallas.
He has been talking to Cowboys wide receivers coach Junior Adams, the Washington Huskies' wide receivers coach then offensive coordinator from 2019-21, for almost as long as he has Herd.
'Junior Adams, their wide receivers coach, I've known him for a long time,' Egbuka said. 'He actually coached my wide receivers coach in high school, when he (Herd) was at Eastern Washington (from 2009-13). So, we've had a long relationship ever since I was in high school.
'He's awesome. I love talking to him. And we stayed connected all four years I was in college.'
The best formal interview Egbuka's had this week in Indianapolis was with the Raiders. Las Vegas' new coach is Pete Carroll, the coach of the Seahawks' Super Bowl teams Egbuka grew up watching. Carroll recently hired Egbuka's offensive coordinator and play caller at Ohio State last season, Chip Kelly, to be the Raiders' OC.
Kelly called the plays on which Egbuka had 81 receptions for 1,011 yards and 10 touchdowns for the Buckeyes last season. One of the biggest was Kelly sending Egbuka on a deep go route and quarterback Will Howard trusting him to beat his Notre Dame defender for the huge pass play late in the national championship. Egbuka's exquisite route and catch clinched the Buckeyes' title-game win in January.
'It was amazing,' Egbuka said of the Raiders' 15-minute interview with him.
'I'm a Seahawks fan and Pete Carroll was there. An I'm like, 'Oh snap, there's Pete Carroll!'
'I was looking for Coach Kelly. He wasn't there (initially). He came in late and we shared a moment there. I was excited to see him and chop it up a little bit.'
Egbuka later told CBS Sports of Kelly and the Raiders: 'I'd love to play for him again.'
Egbuka is trying to join the seemingly endless parade of Buckeye wide receivers who have become first-round picks.
It's a legacy that predates Hall of Famer Cris Carter at OSU in the 1980s. The last three years of Buckeyes' first-round picks at the position include Marvin Harrison Jr., the Seahawks' Jaxson Smith-Njigba (in 2023), Garrett Wilson, and Chris Olave.
That legacy, and launch pad to NFL millions, is what drew Egbuka to Ohio State.
'Quick background on room I stepped into: There was Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson, Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Julian Fleming, Jameson Williams, Kamryn Babb, Marvin Harrison Jr. That's probably one of the craziest rosters I've ever heard in my life,' Egbuka said of the Buckeyes' wide-receiver group for touted position coach Brian Hartline his freshman year at OSU.
'Some of you can picture what that room was like. That was one of the reasons I decided to go to Ohio State. I didn't want to go to a place where I wasn't going to be challenged by my peers.'
So that's why Ebuka left Steilacoom. That's why he left the West Coast away from his friends and mentors Herd and Adams.
Tha't how he's gottent within a month of making all the morning weight lifting, the endless receiving drills, the practices, flights and games worth it.
'I wanted to go somewhere I could grow at an exponential rate,.' he said. 'Because they were growing, as well.'
