Welcome into Lounge presented by Draft Kings. I'm Ryan Mink here with Garrett Downing and we are thrilled to sit down with Ravens defensive tackle CJ Okoye.

CJ thanks for joining us and you know I want to kind of introduce you to fans. Let them know about your story a little bit and uh so you're originally

from nigeria yes and uh kind of grew up playing basketball yeah more than football and and

from there you know what i'm just going to let you take it away tell tell fans kind of how you found

football um it's it's kind of a funny story.

So let me go back a little bit.

It was like 2021.

It was 2020 first when they told me about football, but I didn't pull mine to it because

it looked like, you know,

something from the movies like you're playing basketball

and somebody's like telling you like,

you're gonna make it to like NFL and yeah, I didn't believe that,

you know, so I was like, no, I'm not gonna try it out.

And so 21, I have friends, people that I knew that came to the league.

And I was like, okay, I think, I think it works out.

So 21, I think 22, thereabout, when I was playing basketball, I remember I just finished this tournament and um a friend

invited me to just come for a tryout like it's just a trial just come try out so um I came

under um a former basketball player he was drafted by the chicc I think Cleveland Ej Wajer. He called me in and he said, just come try out. So I came. And you were a pretty good basketball player. Yes. Also, like, just for listeners out there. I was decent. This wasn't like a pickup game. Like, you were pretty good. Yes, I was, I was decent.

Thank you.

You're humble, decent, he says decent. Yeah. Well, it was like a national, not a national team. What was the level? It was a club level. Club level. Yeah, Nigerian club level. So, I mean, it's nothing like the NBA, but it's like our own NBA, you know. So after playing that that and um i came i didn't know the drills i didn't know nothing i did horrible at drills you know but when he came time for like one-on-one because i played o-line then you know um i kind of like know what to do because they like told me a simple job, like don't let this guy touch this guy.

So this guy is the quarterback.

This guy is the defensive line.

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