In order for Ziggy Ansah to play for the Seahawks, a series of improbable, almost impossible events had to happen.
That may sound like hyperbole. It isn’t.
Just go back to 2008 and the photo at the top of this story. Yes, that really is Ansah standing next to Ken Frei, a Mormon missionary, in Ghana. Ansah had never played football back then, but he and Frei played lots of basketball at the elementary school where Ansah worked. That’s how they met: One of Frei’s friends had also served his mission in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and told Frei to look up Ansah if he wanted a friend to hoop with.
Advertisement
The photo, however, was a goodbye of sorts. After two years, Frei was heading home to Utah, leaving Ansah behind. He didn’t know when they would see each other again.
Ansah surprised him six months later: He had applied to BYU and received an academic scholarship. He just didn’t have anywhere to live. Frei invited Ansah to move in with his roommates, and naturally, there were a few hiccups and adjustments. Like Ansah trying to cook a steak in the microwave or dealing with the lack of diversity in Provo, Utah.
One sunny afternoon during Ansah’s freshman year, Frei, a huge sports fan, took Ansah to a football game, the first of Ansah’s life. “I didn’t know what was going on,” Ansah told Sports Illustrated. “I was cheering when everyone else was cheering, but I didn’t know why.”
Ansah and Frei threw a football in the parking lot after the game and Frei remembers telling Ansah he would make a good tight end or receiver. Ansah said had no interest in the violence.
“I’m a delicate flower,” he told Frei.
As a freshman, he tried to walk on BYU’s basketball team but didn’t make the cut. The next year he tried out again, and again he was cut. He joined the track team after that, and one of his coaches thought Ansah would make a good decathlete until he realized a man Ansah’s size might not exactly soar in pole vault. Ansah tried running but was so big that he bumped the guy next to him out of his lane.
Finally, the coach took Ansah’s hand — in retelling the story for news outlets, the track coach said he literally grabbed Ansah’s hand — and walked him over to the football office.
Paul Tidwell’s office was always full of dreamers and longshots. Tidwell, the man in charge of BYU’s walk-on program, needed to fill out the roster with 40-45 walk-ons, all either too slow or too small for a scholarship.
Advertisement
So imagine his thoughts when 6-foot-6 Ziggy Ansah walked into his office and asked about joining the football team. Ansah was thin, but anyone with half an imagination could see that his frame could handle more mass.
Of course, Ansah knew nothing about football. Not the terminology or positions, not how to put on his pads or his helmet, and he was a long way from football shape.
Tidwell took Ansah to head coach Bronco Mendenhall, who recalled his first meeting with Ansah in an interview with the Deseret News. “I don’t know you, I don’t trust you and I don’t know if you can even make it through a workout,” Mendenhall recalled saying.
Ansah suffered through brutal workouts in spring ball, to the point that some coaches said he thought of quitting.
“Just total misery,” Tidwell said.
In the fall, Tidwell would come up to Ansah and ask, “Hey, Ziggy, having fun yet?” And Ansah would look at the ground and say, “No, coach.”
Fast forward to 2012. That is Ansah in the photo surrounded by a bunch of second-graders whose teacher also happens to be Ken Frei’s wife. Frei went to Ansah’s apartment that day to drive him to the school. When Ansah walked around without a shirt, Frei noticed for the first time that a ripped dude had replaced his skinny friend from Ghana.
Who are you? he thought.
As a sophomore and junior, Ansah had played on special teams with simple directions. “We would say, ‘Ziggy, the guy who has the ball, you run and you go tackle him,’” Tidwell said. “He was so fast and so agile, and he would just destroy people.”
Early in the 2012 season, Ansah had to play against Boise State because of injuries along the defensive line. He had his first sack, and first tackle for loss and finished the game with eight tackles, almost as many as he had in his first two seasons combined. Steve Kaufusi, BYU’s defensive line coach, was blown away when he watched the film. “I remember thinking, ‘Man, if we threw a chicken in a little compound with a gate and shut it, Ziggy would run that chicken down,’” Kaufusi said.
Advertisement
NFL teams noticed, too. The year before, he was a part-time defensive end who had never recorded a sack or a tackle for a loss. Now he had scouts and executives at every game. When Tidwell asked if he was having fun, Ansah had a different answer.
The Lions drafted him fifth overall in 2013. Two years later, Frei flew to St. Louis to see Ansah and the Lions play the Rams. Ansah made the Pro Bowl that season, and before the game, he stood next to Frei and smiled on the field, a long, long way from that photo in Ghana.
(Photos courtesy of Ken Frei)