Elijah Chatman proving ‘anything can happen’ in the NFL

“There was nobody left to catch him,” Chatman said. “I felt like I was the only person that could make the play. So, it just made me go that much harder.”

“That was a heck of an effort play,” coach Brian Daboll said. “That’s something you evaluate is people’s effort, how they run to the football. Same thing offensively, clean in the pocket, chasing the ball. So, effort is certainly something that you evaluate. That was a great effort play by him.”

“I thought he had an angle, but then when I looked at the play again and he literally walked him down from behind,” Nunez-Roches said. “I said, ‘Bro, you got it. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re gonna have a great time being in the league, I promise you.”

Chatman has been doing it for a while. He played both offense and defense at Evangel Christian Academy in Shreveport, La., where in 2018 he was named LSWA Class 5A All-State Defensive Player of the Year and first-team all-state.

In five seasons at SMU, Chatman played in 60 games, the second-highest total in program history/ He totaled 148 tackles (98 solo), 34 tackles for loss, 13.5 sacks, five fumble recoveries and one forced fumble. In 2023, Chatman was named first-team All-AAC after playing in 14 games with 11 starts and recorded 33 tackles (23 solo), nine stops for loss, and a career-high 4.5 sacks.

But the NFL is not heavily populated with defensive lineman who stand 5-11, so Chatman was not one of the 257 players selected in the NFL Draft.

“I wish that was six feet,” he said. “I’m 5-11 now. … I figured I was gonna have to go to free agent route. NFL coaches don’t look at a 5-11 undersized lineman and think, ‘Oh, I want this guy.’ I had hope that I would get drafted, but I did have a feeling that I would go undrafted. But in this league anything can happen, you know what I’m saying? I have to just stay focused on what I can control and keep my head down and let God do the rest.”

Though he was not a high-profile prospect, the Giants were well aware of Chatman prior to the draft.

“I can’t talk about Elijah without talking about our area scouts,” assistant general manager Brandon Brown said. “Again, them leaving no stone unturned. You’re talking about (area scout) Blaise Bell, (college scout) Justin Markus, (area scout) Scott Hamel. When you go to SMU you do the full discovery process on Elijah, where you figure out, ‘Okay, what makes him an outlier at his size?’ because you’re not going to find many 5-11 defensive tackles. Well, he was a captain. He was actually, for his size, he was a 1,600-yard rusher in high school as a running back slash fullback. He had a pseudo, call it fullback package on offense at SMU, and Scott, Justin, Blaise sending back notes on, seeing him run down on punt coverage and kickoff return. And in his background, he’s a decorated high school wrestler and powerlifter and he’s a son of a lumberjack. You put that all together, there are a lot of characteristics from an intangible standpoint, and then also the metrics, leaning on our analytics department.

“When you look at Elijah, you go through the spring process, and you have your workout warriors from pro-day. Well, Elijah was a 31-vert(ical) guy, a 4.8 40 (yard dash) guy, a 32 bench rep guy (225 pounds), a 9’4” broad jump guy. All those explosive metrics give him an opportunity for being an outlier, and even though he’s 5-11, he’s got almost 33-inch arms. So, there are redeeming traits where you take the intangibles of how he’s built, how he’s wired, and figure out what he can do best. The coaches are motivated, especially Dre (Patterson) and (his assistant) Bryan Cox, and that’s why I affectionately call Dre, Dr. Dre because there’s probably nobody that he thinks he can’t fix. We love that mindset. It was a group effort from scouting, analytics, and coaching. We’re glad Elijah is here.”

Nunez-Roches said Chatman is an uncommon physical specimen, and not because he is a short tackle.

“He’s the strongest guy in the weight room,” said the player everyone calls Nacho. “I think he almost did 225 almost 40 times. If you go look on the film when he put his hands on somebody, they’re deliberately and clearly going back.”

In two preseason games, Chatman has played on 73 snaps defensive and has five tackles (three solo), one stop for, and one quarterback hit.

The Giants today waived/injured another defensive lineman, Ryder Anderson, further paving the way for Chatman to secure a roster spot. A week from today, every NFL team must reduce their roster from 90 to a maximum of 53 players. That’s when the players must move out of the team hotel and find homes of their own.

Which is another reason Nunez-Roches revived their long-running conversation, because Chatman has not yet looked for a home in New Jersey.

“He didn’t start looking; that’s as humble as he is,” Nunez-Roches said. “He just kept taking it day by day and trusting the process and now he’s here and he’s getting first reps with the sub (defense) and it’s a beautiful thing to see.

“We were having the talk this morning before practice. We had a good talk about him transitioning from the hotel to becoming stationary here. As I had been telling him before, I said, ‘You need to be looking for a spot.’ He was like, ‘Why you are saying that?’ I was like, ‘If you keep doing what you are doing, you going to be here.'”

No one is going to question that now.