Tevin Coleman

High School and Childhood

Tevin Ford Coleman was born on April 16, 1993 in Oak Forest, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. He stands 6’1 and weighs two hundred ten pounds, and he is the great great grandson of Liberia’s thirteenth president.

Coleman was no stranger to sports growing up, as he was the wide receiver and cornerback for the Oak Forest Bengals High School football team, as well as winning awards for the 100m dash and long jump on the track team. He was one of the best long jumpers and sprinters in Illinois. He won awards, including being named the 2011 Southtown Star Player of the Year. He knew that one day he would make it to the NFL.

Coleman was ranked number thirty two for running backs nationwide in 2012 by Rivals.com.

College

In 2012, Coleman chose Indiana to play out his college career. In his first year, he started two out of twelve of the games he played. Of these games, he rushed two hundred twenty five yards and a touchdown. He went onto as a sophomore to start the first nine games only to be stopped by a sprained ankle. But in this short season, he scored twelve touchdowns. The first highlight of Coleman’s junior year is on November 15, 2014 against Rutgers, where he rushed three hundred seven yards, the longest in a day in his college’s history. Later that same season, he was a finalist for the Doak Walker Award. He ended the season not only by becoming the eighteenth player in NCAA Division 1 history to get a minimum of two thousand yards rushing in a single season, but also breaking another school record of the highest yards rushed in a season. He received two first place votes for the Heisman Trophy, but he came in seventh place.

NFL Draft

Instead of playing his senior year with Indiana, he chose to go into the 2015 NFL Draft. During the NFL combine, he was noted for his fearlessness, defensiveness against opposing linebackers, and top speed while running vertical but still having the ability to change direction. He was compared to NFL player Darren McFadden.

2015 NFL Season

In the 2015 NFL Draft, Coleman was acquired by the Falcons during the third round, and he signed a four year contract with a salary of $804,843 yearly. He played his first game as a rookie in the NFL on September 14, 2015. He ran eighty yards and earned his season high twenty carries. He scored his first touchdown a week later against the New York Giants. The first one hundred yard game of his NFL career was against the Minnesota Vikings on November 29, 2015.

2016 NFL Season

The 2016 NFL season saw him with his second career high yards ran as well as a touchdown in the same game against the Denver Broncos. In a game against the San Diego Chargers on October 23, 2016, Coleman ran sixty four yards and scored a touchdown. Unfortunately in the same game, he suffered a hamstring injury that sidelined him during weeks eight and nine against the Green Bay Packers and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

In just his second season with the Falcons and in the NFL, Coleman will join the Falcons as they play the New England Patriots in his first super bowl on February 5, 2017 as a backup to Devonta Freeman. Despite the many highlights of his college football career, he has never even played at a college bowl game.

Personal Life

Coleman was born ten weeks premature, and he could fit into his mother’s hands. The doctors gave him only a twenty per cent chance of survival. He inherited the sickle cell trait from one of his parents. Throughout his life, his mother told him how blessed they are to have him, and this nurturing has instilled a strong work ethic that can easily be witnessed on the field.

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