A month ago, nobody was talking about offensive tackles in the top ten of this year’s NFL Draft. Not seriously, anyway. Then the scouts touched down in Mobile, Alabama, for the Senior Bowl. And within two days of practice, one name was echoing through every conversation: Max Iheanachor. And according to him, all of the credit goes to Kenny Dillingham and Co.

“Big shout out to Saga Tuitele, offensive line coach,” Iheanachor said while addressing the media on March 1. “He recruited me while he was at Fresno before getting the opportunity at ASU. I think him and just the kind of person he was and the standard he set in the O-line room from day one coming in. Just always being hard on us, I feel like it definitely helped. Everybody obviously becomes better because he wants to see us do better.

“Shout out to Coach Kenny Dillingham for allowing me to come to ASU. I mean to just chase a dream and just believe in myself,” Max said.

The backstory is the part that makes his story worth it. Iheanachor was born in Nigeria, and his family relocated to Los Angeles when he was 13 years old. He landed in Compton and enrolled at King/Drew Magnet High School of Medicine and Science. His school did not have a football team. So Max played basketball. 

He was big, athletic, and long-limbed. Basketball made sense. Football was, quite literally, not an option. It was his AAU basketball coach who eventually looked at him one afternoon, took in his frame of 6-foot-6, heavy-footed but surprisingly fluid, and planted the seed. 

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“My AAU coach told me I should try football,” Iheanachor recalled. “I’m big enough, and I guess I move pretty well, so he suggested it. I figure I wasn’t quite this big. He told me maybe I’d be a good tight end. You know, catching the ball. I thought I’d try it and embrace the journey.”

So in 2021, with no high school football film, no established position, and no real blueprint, Max Iheanachor enrolled at East Los Angeles College and started from scratch. Over two seasons there, he played both tackle positions and developed his frame. He turned enough heads that by the time he was ready to transfer, he was rated the 7th-best JUCO prospect overall in the 2023 class and one of the top offensive tackle prospects in the country. Multiple Power conference programs came calling. But the choice, ultimately, wasn’t really about the school. It was about the coach.

Saga Tuitele had recruited Iheanachor while coaching at Fresno State. When Tuitele made the jump to Arizona State under first-year head coach Kenny Dillingham, Max followed him to Tempe without much hesitation. 

“It was really the connection and relationship I had with him,” he said. And that relationship paid dividends almost immediately. In 2023, despite transitioning from the JUCO level to the Big 12, Iheanachor appeared in six games and started five. He allowed zero sacks across 324 snaps. He was raw and learning on the fly. But Dillingham trusted the process and gave him the reps.​

The real test came in the 2024 offseason. Iheanachor sat out spring drills recovering from a labrum injury. For most young linemen, an injury setback at that stage spells regression. Or they just lose their positions. Not here, though.

“He did a great job in rehab, did a great job in the weight room,” Tuitele said. “He looks bigger, stronger, faster. He’s playing more confidently, playing smarter. That’s a good lesson for those young guys. If you get injured, it’s no longer woe is me. You get injured, you have to get better. He took that mentality.” Dillingham never flinched. When fall camp opened, the job was still Max’s.​

What followed over the next two seasons was a quiet, grinding kind of excellence. Iheanachor logged more than 1,750 snaps at ASU. He gave up zero sacks over more than 500 pass-blocking snaps in 2025 alone. This was a 98.5% pressure efficiency mark. His efforts in 2025 earned him Second-Team All-Big 12 honors. Still, outside of the college football world, almost nobody was paying attention.

That changed in Mobile.

Max Iheanachor Opens Up on His Draft Stock Rise

At the Senior Bowl, Iheanachor drew a lot of reactions. He was one of the most improved players from Day 1 to Day 2 of practice. And by the time the actual game was played, evaluators were having conversations about him.

At the 2026 NFL Combine, Iheanachor checked in at a physical 330 pounds with 34.5-inch arms. His movement skills for his size drew particular attention from the scouts in Indianapolis. The Athletic noted that he “passes the eye test” in terms of proportionate thickness and athleticism. The Eagles met with him; he described it as “fun” and walked away with quiet confidence.

“I wouldn’t say I’m surprised,” he said about his talent. “When you work really hard at something and have standards, that work is going to pay off. I’m also around good people, and we hold each other accountable. We want to keep those standards.”

The man who never played football in high school, the Nigeria-born kid who moved to Compton at 13 with no gridiron dreams, and the JUCO prospect who followed a coach to the desert on pure trust: Max Iheanachor is now a legitimate first-round conversation in the 2026 NFL Draft. He may or may not crack the top ten. But the arc of the story is already something worth telling.