As the NFL holds its annual draft this weekend, the American football league’s first full-time English-born coach, newly appointed Seattle Seahawks defensive coordinator Aden Durde, spoke about his unique career and his love of West Ham United...
Just four Americans have managed in the Premier League, but just one Englishman has coached full-time in the NFL – West Ham United supporter Aden Durde.
Born in London in 1979, the young Durde was taken by his older brother to the Boleyn Ground, where he cheered on the likes of Tony Cottee and Frank McAvennie as a boy.
But while football was the young Durde’s hobby, American football was his obsession, as he grew up dreaming not of emulating West Ham’s prolific strikers, but NFL stars Derrick Thomas (pictured, below), Richard Dent and Mike Singletary.
The early 1990s saw the launch of the World League of American Football, later relaunched as NFL Europe, a professional developmental league to provide young players with opportunities to showcase their talents and earn a move to the United States and the NFL.
Durde, who was playing as a linebacker – a defensive player – in amateur American football for the London Olympians, saw his chance to impress. At the age of 24, he was selected by NFL Europe’s Scottish Claymores and later played for the German Hamburg Sea Devils team.
Such was the Englishman’s promise that he was allocated to the NFL’s Carolina Panthers as part of the league’s International Development Practice Squad programme, and spent time on the Kansas City Chiefs’ practice squad.
By 2008, however, it was clear he would never make it as a full-time NFL player and Durde returned to London, where he started an organisation to give second chances to young people. However, the American football bug never went away and he returned to the sport as a coach with the London Warriors in 2011.
Again, his promise and work ethic were recognised and Durde was given an internship with the Dallas Cowboys through the NFL Fellowship Program. He performed so well that the Atlanta Falcons hired him as their defensive quality control coach, making him the first ever full-time British coach in NFL history.
After earning a promotion with the Falcons, Durde returned to the Dallas Cowboys as defensive line coach in 2021, and enhanced his reputation by helping the team reach the NFL playoffs in each of his three seasons in Texas. In February this year, he was hired by the Seattle Seahawks as defensive coordinator to head coach Mike Macdonald, again making history.
At the same time, married father-of-two Durde has also spent the past nine years working with the NFL to provide players from outside North America with a route to the NFL. What Durde and fellow Londoner and two-time Super Bowl winner Osi Umenyiora created as NFL Undiscovered has since developed into the successful International Player Pathway Program, which most recently made headlines for helping Wales rugby union star Louis Rees-Zammit earn a contract with the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
While Durde’s career has taken him and his family to the United States, he has kept an eye on the team he watched growing up and he took advantage of a recent trip home to London to visit to Rush Green training ground, where he spent time with manager David Moyes, his staff and players…
Aden, how does someone from Enfield end up coaching in the NFL?
“It was on TV and I loved it! I found out how to play in England and I played for a team in Hayes in west London, then for one in Finsbury Park, then south to Southwark Park, but teams would fold because they didn’t have enough players or coaches. I stuck at it, played in NFL Europe, then went to the NFL and finished playing when I was 28 or 29.”
What was it that caught your attention?
“It was the physicality and speed of the game that I loved, watching it on Channel 4 as a boy. I related to people’s stories, too, and they resonated with me. I just liked watching the highlights of the games. The Chicago Bears were the team I followed and there were defensive players I loved – Derrick Thomas who played for the Chiefs was my favourite, his teammate Neil Smith, Richard Dent from the Bears, Mike Singletary from the New York Giants, then later Ray Lewis from the Baltimore Ravens and Navarro Bowman from the San Francisco 49ers. I loved linebackers!”
So how did go from watching the game on TV to playing it professionally?
“I just started doing it and learning it! We didn’t have YouTube back then, so I just kind of watched the highlights on TV and tried to emulate the players. Does that make sense? At first I played as a tight end, a full-back and some running back, everywhere! As I got older, they told me if I wanted to play in the NFL, I needed to become a linebacker, and I only played that position for two months before I went to NFL Europe.”
NFL Europe may not have lasted, but future Super Bowl winners like Kurt Warner and Adam Vinatieri played in it?
“It was a good development league and did what it needed to do. People needed a place to play and get game experience and it was a great place for me to develop as I didn’t go to college in the US. There were only two or three professional leagues in the world at the time with only 50-odd teams – the NFL, NFL Europe and the CFL in Canada – so the opportunities to play were much thinner than in football. I was goal-driven at the time and was striving for the next thing, so maybe I didn’t enjoy playing as much as I should have done.”
After playing, you took some time out before returning to the NFL?
“Yeah, after playing, at 29 I just wanted to go home to London and to my family. I started a business outside the sport helping kids get back into work and education and did that for two-and-a-half years. While I was doing that, I went to coach my old team London Warriors and that’s when I fell in love with coaching.”
You only did that for four years before you got an opportunity with the Dallas Cowboys?
“I was still around football and the NFL and I realized I wanted to coach. I knew there was a programme for minority coaches named after the long-time coach Bill Walsh and I did some research. I then took a team of kids from the Warriors to America to work out for colleges and it was in Dallas. My old PR guy from Hamburg worked for the Cowboys and we met for breakfast and he asked me what I wanted to do. I said coaching, he got me an interview and I got a job. That’s how fate works!”
You’ve since helped people in similar positions to yours make it to the NFL?
“I came back from Dallas and the NFL offered me a job to start a community programme to the UK. At the same time, I was coaching a kid from the Warriors who I believed could play in the NFL, so I coached him in the mornings, then ran a flag football programme in the afternoons. The player, Efe Obada, signed for the Cowboys and ten years later he is still playing in the NFL with Washington. After he signed, the NFL allowed me to turn this into a programme and gave me funding to train more guys and take them to Miami. One was signed by the Giants and another, a German called Moritz Böhringer, was drafted by the Minnesota Vikings, then we had Australian Jordan Mailata who got drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles and has since won the Super Bowl. That programme is now called the International Player Pathway.”
Talking of pathways, you returned to the US yourself in 2016. What a career you’ve had since then!
“I was offered an internship by the Falcons and I did that for two years, one working with the offense and the second with the defense, and then the head coach Dan Quinn offered me a job. I started as a defensive assistant and was outside linebackers coach, then coached the defensive line in Dallas after DQ moved there. After three years, I am now in Seattle as defensive coordinator. It’s been cool, but I’m so glad I’ve done every step because working at every step has helped me learn something and prepared me for the next level.”
You are the first British-born full-time NFL coach, but are you now just accepted as an NFL coach, regardless of where you are from?
“I think I’m just working with and for people, a bit like anyone who works with or for David Moyes, Mark Noble or Kevin Nolan at West Ham. If people can help you or you can help them in sport to achieve the team’s goals, you just want to be around them and them to be around you. I break it down like that and it helps me process things.”
Football now has specialist coaches for set pieces, goalkeeping and other facets of the game, but American football is broken down into so many different parts, so how does it work?
“You coordinate your staff and they help you achieve. You have a vision and then you set the plan to achieve your targets and then it’s about putting people in the best positions on the field to do their jobs. That’s what the players are there for. It’s a 24/7 job and I’m thinking about it all the time, but I love it!”
Just finally, while American football is your job, association football was your first sport, so tell us about your history as a Hammer!
“My big brother Dave loved it and our Mum would have him take me to games. I used to go to the Boleyn Ground and I’d sit down the front on the advertising boards to watch the game, while he went up the back with the big boys! My memories are of watching players like Frank McAvennie and Julian Dicks, and now I enjoy watching players like Michail Antonio and I was so proud to see my team win a trophy last year, because it’s so hard to win something. When I started travelling to play American football, my brother would then take my sons Kane and Dylan, so they’re Hammers too! There is a big interest in soccer in the NFL locker rooms now, with the guys gaming a lot and playing FIFA, so I’m hoping to get them following West Ham and we watch the games together!”
