The story of Moritz Boehringer

Liam Blackburn lifts the lid on new Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Moritz Boehringer, the NFL’s unlikeliest draft pick.

Five years ago, in the German city of Aalen, a 17-year-old Moritz Boehringer stumbled upon YouTube clips of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. Much of what was occurring in the highlights was alien to the teenager – the formations, the concept of down-and-distance, the terminology – but it was Peterson, with his brutal, punishing style, who shone through and lit a fire in Boehringer.

“It was the way he ran with the ball,” he explains to Gridrion. “I really had no idea what this game was. I was really fascinated with how he ran over guys and that just got my attention.” And persuaded him to pick up a pigskin himself. There was just one team in Aalen; they only had seven players and no quarterback, which made practice tricky. “The first few games were really bad; I had no idea what I was doing,” Boehringer noted.

This was not a passing fad, though; Boehringer’s interest was genuine. After a couple of years he joined German Football League club Schwabisch Hall Unicorns and in 2015, playing as a wide-out, won the rookie of the year honour having accrued 1,232 yards and 13 touchdowns from 59 receptions. It was, as Boehringer admitted, supposed to be a developmental year. “I was surprised how good I was,” he adds.

Boehringer and the Unicorns would be beaten 41-31 in the 2015 German Bowl by the New Yorker Lions, who won a third straight GFL title. Starring that day (and scoring a touchdown) for the Lions was Anthony Dable, the French wide receiver who was picked up by the New York Giants this offseason. It would not be the last time Boehringer and Dable’s paths would cross.

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Sometime earlier in the new year, Boehringer was back on the internet. This time he was browsing Facebook when he received a message from English-born ex-NFL linebacker Aden Durde, the man who coached new Kansas City Chiefs defensive lineman Efe Obada with the London Warriors. Durde was intrigued by the 6ft 4ins, 227lb prospect that had emerged in Germany and the two exchanged numbers. In February, Boehringer was making his fifth trip to the States.

Durde took him to his old coach Tony Villani, who runs the XPE Sports Academy in Florida and has worked with Obada, Dable and some of the game’s greats. Villani had just returned from the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis when Durde pleaded with him to run Boehringer through some drills.

“I got back here on a Wednesday and Aden was just like, ‘You’ve got to test this guy’,” Villani tells Gridiron. “I said, ‘Man, I’m tired, give me a couple of days’. ‘No, you have to test him now!’ He was two days removed from a cross-Atlantic flight and his test numbers were great for pre-testing numbers. He was very, very fast and explosive for his size. I thought if he can play football, you guys have got something here. He’s by far one of the best-tested athletes I’ve ever had at the start.”

Word began to spread about Boehringer’s potential among the NFL fraternity and whispers about a possible draft-secret grew louder until fever pitch was reached after his Florida Atlantic pro day in March. It was then, in front of watching talent evaluators, that Boehringer ran a sub-4.5 40-yard dash (on grass), produced a 39ins vertical and a broad jump of 10ft, 11ins. In each of those categories, along with the other tests he performed – the 20-yard short shuttle, three-cone drill and bench press – he would have ranked in the top five of receivers who attended the combine.

Soon his name was plastered all over social media, NFL Network pundits were learning how to pronounce ‘Boehringer’ and ‘Schwabisch’ and the softly-spoken German was learning to cope with the inevitable hype, with daily phone calls from journalists back home eager to hear his tale.  “I don’t really like the attention. I don’t like to be in the spotlight,” he stressed. “But maybe it helps to get football more popular in Europe, especially Germany, and helps some more guys to play football.”

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Unassuming wide-outs are a rare sort in today’s NFL, but Boehringer is a unique individual whose backstory and intangibles make him incomparable to almost every other receiver in the league.

“It’s very rare that there’s a receiver that big,” Villani notes. “I’ve worked with some great wide receivers – Cris Carter, Randy Moss, Hines Ward, Anquan Boldin – and there’s not a comparison for him right now in the NFL which is what has the NFL so excited.  I saw one thing that put him up against the first-round wide receiver two years ago, Mike Evans, but he’s faster and has more explosiveness than Mike Evans and they didn’t show Mike Evans’ change-of-direction scores. Mo’s change-of-direction scores were off the charts, like a short, little fast guy. That’s what makes him so different, there’s not a comparison for him which is crazy.”

Of course NFL teams also factored in the tape and Boehringer’s only competitive highlights come against GFL cornerbacks and safeties – a standard which the draft hopeful himself admits is comparable to Division III college in the U.S. So if comparisons with NFL receivers, both past and present, are futile, what about the suggestion he shares similarities with arguably his country’s greatest sporting export, Dirk Nowitzki? The unassuming 7ft power forward sits sixth on the NBA’s all-time points list after emerging from his own country’s ranks to lead the Dallas Mavericks to a title in 2011. Naturally, the reserved Boehringer shies away from drawing too many parallels. He would just be happy to motivate others in the way Peterson motivated him.

“Dirk Nowitzki? There’s still a long way to go,” Boehringer admitted. “I think the beginning of his career could be compared to mine. I just want to inspire people to start playing football in Germany.”