For the Chiefs’ rookie offensive lineman Hunter Nourzad, football is his first love

Kansas City’s new offensive lineman spoke to reporters on Saturday.

Do you remember the first time you saw her?

Maybe you pulled off I-435 and took a right on Stadium Drive. Suddenly, she was there: the beautiful red bowl with the iconic oval scoreboard.

Or maybe you were driving down I-70 on your way home from work when you saw her peeking out from behind Kauffman Stadium, with the dying light of a long day glittering on her white exterior.

Do you remember that feeling?

Photo by Kara Durrette/Getty Images

It’s something that the Kansas City Chiefs’ fifth-round draft pick — interior offensive lineman Hunter Nourzad — will never forget.

“It’s pretty surreal,” he said of his arrival at the Truman Sports Complex for the first time. “I mean, you kind of try to prepare yourself as best as possible during the process — but you really have no idea where you’re going to go.

“But once the bus rolled up the road and we saw the stadium and the facility, it was really… it was really breathtaking. It’s really an incredible experience that I feel truly blessed to be able to experience.

“It was just… unbelievable.”

Coming out of The Walker School, a prestigious private school in suburban Atlanta, Nourzad wasn’t highly recruited. So when he started college at Cornell, he didn’t know what he would do with his life.

“I didn’t really have a plan,” he admitted to reporters before the team’s first rookie minicamp session on Saturday. “To go to school, I guess — that was [the] big thing. Go to school, get an education — and then, like a lot of people my age — just see what I can pull off out in the real world.”

But during his junior year, things started to change. NFL scouts started showing up at practice.

“No one [had] really said this was a possibility for me,” he recalled. “But that was kind of the first moment when I thought, ‘You know, if I put enough work into this, I can make it come true.’”

So after completing his mechanical engineering degree at Cornell, Nourzad went to Penn State with two goals: to get a master’s degree in business administration — and get noticed by playing for the Big 10’s Nittany Lions during his final year of eligibility. He achieved both goals — but deliberately set no expectations about what could happen in the NFL Draft.

“I mean, there’s never really certainty in any of these things,” he explained. “I tried to avoid the Internet articles and all the ranking and stuff like that — just because I didn’t think it would be a positive effect on me whether it was a good ranking or a low ranking.

“And so I really didn’t know. I figured that I would be a Day 3 guy — and so I kind of went into it just with that mindset.”

Still, nothing is promised — even when you’re picked in the draft. Nourzad understands he has work to do. But he’s willing to do whatever the team needs him to do — and after the draft process, he’s ready to return to the routine.

“Football is the only thing I really love,” he said. “So being able to go back to that? Being completely focused on learning my playbook, getting to meet my teammates, you know? Getting out and doing drills — and getting better?

“It’s really relieving.”