Photo by: Drew Mathis
Coming to America Helps Mesidor Become One of The Nation’s Top Young Defensive Tackles
August 12, 2021 01:35 PM | Football, Blog
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – A growth spurt between his sophomore and junior years of high school helped determined Akheem Mesidor's destiny.
The Ottawa, Ontario, resident by way of Clearwater Academy in Clearwater, Florida, was a 200-pound linebacker/safety/defensive end before finding a home much closer to the football.
Today, he's one of college football's top up-and-coming defensive tackles.
In just 250 defensive snaps last year as a true freshman for West Virginia, Mesidor was in on 32 total tackles with 6 ½ tackles for loss and five sacks. One of those five sacks came from the linebacker position against Kansas State.
He earned ESPN True Freshman All-America honors and was an All-Big 12 Second Team choice by the coaches.
This year, Mesidor is making yet another move, this time going from defensive end to Darius Stills' old position at nose to play alongside Darius' younger brother Dante. The Stills-Mesidor tandem could potentially give West Virginia one of the more dynamic interior duos in college football this season.
"I've said this when we got here, explosion and power mean more to me than straight-up size," defensive coordinator Jordan Lesley said of his decision to move Mesidor inside. "Those are two players that can do that at a high level. It's good for them to be able to play both positions and cross train them because it makes them more versatile for whatever their next move is."
As for this move, Mesidor said he was all for it.
"It was expected that Darius was leaving after last year. Coach told me he thinks I'm the best fit for nose at this moment so he asked me if I wanted to play inside and I accepted the challenge," Mesidor explained. "I told him, 'I'm ready for any challenge. Put me on the field wherever you want and I'll execute.'"
You don't normally associate Canadians with high-level football, but that's beginning to change as more Canadian-born players begin to play the sport.
Last year, J.C. Abbott of 3DownNation.com began naming an NCAA All-Canadian team, and he had enough players to make two full squads. This past season, he pared it to one team because COVID-19 canceled the fall season for lower level college football, but some of the names on his offensive squad are pretty familiar such as Alabama wide receiver John Metchie III, Oklahoma State running back Chuba Hubbard and Tennessee senior wide receiver Josh Palmer.
Abbott's defensive squad included Oklahoma State's Amen Ogbongbemiga and West Virginia's Alonzo Addae and Mesidor.
Akheem said an older brother played football and that's how he got introduced to the game while growing up in Ottawa.
"My mom put me into the game to see how I would like it," he said. "At first, I wasn't a big fan of it because I was on the offensive side of the ball, but then the coach moved me to the defensive side of the ball, and I started hitting people, and it felt a lot better."
Yep, much better to hit than to be hit, for sure.
Mesidor improved so rapidly that he recalls being approached by a coach when he was in the fifth grade about the possibility of playing football in the U.S. That ultimately led to him ending up at Clearwater Academy in Clearwater, Florida.
"Going to Florida wasn't that big of a transition because I went to school in Canada about six hours from home, so I got used to being away from home," Mesidor explained. "The only difference between Canadian football and American football is the speed of the game."
WVU entered the picture when coach Neal Brown visited him at Clearwater Academy and then flew directly to Canada immediately afterward to visit with his mother. Mesidor said that really impressed him.
"It definitely mattered a lot," he admitted. "It showed that they were very interested in me and they were interested in my mom and my family as well. It showed that they cared and that's what I love about them."
Other than meeting Brown and his staff, Mesidor's knowledge of West Virginia was limited to watching them play games on television and sometimes using the Mountaineers as his team while playing video games.
He had no idea West Virginia University was a multi-cultural campus with nearly 30,000 students from all parts of the world, and he was even more surprised when he discovered the campus was full of Canadians.
"I thought it was a campus with mainly a bunch of West Virginians and maybe a few people around from the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia), but I didn't know it was as multi-cultural as it is or that there are that many Canadians here," he said. "My academic advisor is from Canada, and I had no idea. That surprised me."
Mesidor admits he was also surprised with the success he enjoyed last season.
"Coming into college, I expected to be a practice player, or have a small-time role on special teams, but once I got here I realized I can compete with college o-linemen and once I got into a game, I started making a few plays and it just felt normal," he said.That was on the outside where he had the room and the space to make plays. Now, he's got a new challenge of replacing a consensus All-American – West Virginia's first since 2006 – and going up against players much bigger than him, sometimes two at a time.
Mesidor is a little bit taller than Darius Stills and perhaps a shade quicker coming off the ball, but Stills was so powerful and had such great lateral movement. That means West Virginia will have to tweak some things a little bit to adapt to Mesidor's talents, which Lesley says is no big deal in his system.
"He's a step faster but not as powerful," Lesley pointed out. "Their strength is probably comparable and some other similarities, but a lot of things are different."
"Darius is very quick," Mesidor added. "He has really good twitch and he's a little bit shorter than me so he already has automatic leverage, but I'm trying to mirror my game off of him a little bit."
Mesidor, who is 15 pounds heavier than he was last year, now weighing 275, is hopeful of developing the same type of chemistry with Stills that Dante had with his older brother. There were instances during their WVU careers when a wink or a nod was all they needed to communicate to each other what they were doing.
Mesidor admits he's not quite there yet with Stills, who is considered one of the top defensive line prospects in next year's NFL Draft. But he says its coming.
"We didn't have that great chemistry during the spring because we just lined up and played, but I'm expecting to get better playing side-by-side with him and soon we should be able to look at each other and know what we want to do," Mesidor concluded.
That's good news for West Virginia football fans who watched the Stills brothers lead college football's fourth-stingiest defense in terms of total yards allowed last season.
Today is an off day for the team, but the Mountaineers are scheduled to have a light workout on Friday ahead of Saturday morning's officiate scrimmage inside the stadium.
Tickets for the 2021 season remain on sale and can be purchased by calling the Mountaineer Ticket Office toll-free at 1-800 WVU GAME or by logging on to WVUGAME.com.
Players Mentioned
2026 Mountaineer Invitational Preview
Thursday, April 09
Nate Gabriel | April 8
Thursday, April 09
Coach Rich Rodriguez | April 8
Thursday, April 09
Coach Rod West | April 8
Thursday, April 09
