{"id":633406,"date":"2026-04-27T05:01:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633406\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T05:01:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T05:01:08","slug":"whats-next-for-nigerian-nfl-draft-pick-uar-bernard-how-eagles-plan-to-use-impressive-athlete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633406\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s next for Nigerian NFL Draft pick Uar Bernard? How Eagles plan to use impressive athlete"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s next for Nigerian NFL Draft pick Uar Bernard? How Eagles plan to use impressive athlete<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Philadelphia Eagles<\/a> are giving Uar Bernard a chance.<\/p>\n

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The supreme athlete from Nigeria is part of the NFL’s International Pathway Program, and the Eagles made him a seventh-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n

Bernard has never actually played football, only learning the game through the pre-draft process.<\/p>\n

But he’s so athletically impressive that Philly believes he can become a contributing NFL player.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a\u00a0dream come true for me\u00a0because I\u2019ve worked hard for this,\u201d Bernard said after being selected<\/a>. \u201cI\u2019ve not played football, but I\u2019ve gone through some drills that made me believe that I\u2019m going to get better every day. I thank God for everything. I thank God for life. I thank God for the opportunities given to me to be drafted by the Eagles.\u201d<\/p>\n

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MORE:\u00a0Diego Pavia, Shedeur Sanders and an NFL QB problem that goes back to Tim Tebow<\/a><\/p>\n

What’s next for Uar Bernard?<\/p>\n

The reality is that it could be a long journey for Bernard, but it starts at rookie minicamp.<\/p>\n

That’ll be his first chance to get real coaching from the Eagles’ staff, and he’ll have to grow even in simple areas of the game that lifelong football players have known for a long time.<\/p>\n

The Eagles will be patient if they have to be, and Bernard will surely stick around through training camp and the preseason.<\/p>\n

From there, it’s very possible he ends up on the practice squad, but as long as he keeps working, he’ll eventually get a chance to break through.<\/p>\n

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The Eagles did find offensive lineman Jordan Mailata<\/a> through the International Pathway Program, and they’re hoping they nailed another one.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to take the chance on the kid,\u201d Eagles GM Howie Roseman said after the draft. \u201cObviously, we\u2019ve had great success with that program. We spent a lot of time with him. Coach [Clint] Hurtt went down there and spent the day with him, worked him out. You know, just for us, it was a passion project. Obviously, he\u2019s got a lot of tools in his body. Understand it\u2019s going to take time. It\u2019s going to take a lot of time here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Eagles plan to be patient. The reward with Bernard may be worth the wait.<\/p>\n

More NFL Draft news:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s next for Nigerian NFL Draft pick Uar Bernard? How Eagles plan to use impressive athlete originally appeared…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[17076,64,63,306830,120821,306829,18598,593,10028,1260,306831,1244,85,23821,217690,306828],"class_list":["post-633406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-2026-nfl-draft","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bernard","tag-diego-pavia","tag-international-pathway-program","tag-jordan-mailata","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft","tag-philadelphia-eagles","tag-played-football","tag-shedeur-sanders","tag-sports","tag-the-eagles","tag-tim-tebow","tag-uar-bernard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}