NFL: Efe Obada announces retirement and launches foundation in London

At 22, Obada and his now wife had moved out of the city and he was working as a warehouse security guard.

From there, he says there was more chance of him “winning the lottery three times and getting hit by lightning four times” than making it to the NFL.

He bumped into an old friend who was playing American football for the London Warriors and invited Obada to come along.

After just five games at amateur level, one of the Warriors’ coaches – future Super Bowl winner Aden Durde – helped secure a try-out with the Dallas Cowboys and Obada joined their practice squad in 2015.

He spent time with two other teams and “poured all his anger” into making it. When the defensive end earned his NFL debut with the Carolina Panthers in 2018, he had an instant impact – claiming a sack, an interception and forcing a fumble.

“That really put me on the map,” he says. “There was a lot of pent-up frustration from all the rejections that led to that moment.

“Then playing for the Panthers in London in 2019 was a dream come true, to play in front of my friends and family on home soil, to show everybody what I’d been working towards.”

Obada went on to play for the Buffalo Bills and Washington Commanders, racking up 80 games and 15 quarterback sacks, tackling the likes of Super Bowl winners Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Matt Stafford and Jalen Hurts.

“I didn’t get [Patrick] Mahomes or Lamar [Jackson], they were two that I really wanted to, but that list is alright,” he jokes.

Obada never reached a Super Bowl and has wondered might have been in the 2021 season, when his Buffalo team lost an epic play-off game against Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs in overtime.

Obada was also on Washington’s practice squad when they went within one win of the big game in 2025.