JT Tuimoloau: From Tacoma to Edgewood, onto buses, to Ohio State — and into his NFL dream
JT Tuimoloau is about to realize his NFL dream.
All because his grandma, grandpa, mom and dad made sure he didn’t sleep more.
Sometimes, it really does take a village.
The national-champion defensive tackle for Ohio State is expected to be among the first group of edge-rushing defensive linemen drafted this year. He was born in Tacoma. The son of Ponce de Leon Faletoi and Alofa Tuimoloau grew up in Edgewood, north Pierce County. He went to high school at state power Eastside Catholic.
No, that’s not his neighborhood school. Eastside Catholic is in Sammamish, about 25 miles east of Seattle in King County. The high school is 38 miles north of Edgewood, which borders Milton and Fife.
Tuimoloau’s family wanted to maximize his chance at a college athletic scholarship at Eastside Catholic. To do that, he had to get up at 4:55 each school-day morning for four years. That was so he could catch a pre-dawn, Sound Transit bus to Federal Way. Then he transferred onto a bus to Issaquah. In Issaquah, he transferred to a King County Metro bus that passed Eastside Catholic in Sammamish.
That trek usually took more than 2 hours and 45 minutes.
He did that every school day. For four years.
How did a teenage boy manage to pull that off?
“You know, shout out to my grandparents and parents,” Tuimoloau told The News Tribune Wednesday. “For when I didn’t wake up to my alarm they woke me up
The big (6 feet 5, 269 pounds) defensive end’s grin shined across the huge room in the Indiana Convention Center.
So, yes, Mom, Dad, Junior and Aomalo all were huge in getting Tuimoloau to this doorstep of the NFL.
JT Tuimoloau’s NFL outlook
The way-early rising and schlepps doing homework on the bus carrying school and sports gear are about to pay off.
At Eastside Catholic, Tuimoloau was a four-year basketball player (career scoring average, 11 points per game) and two-time state champion in football. In 2020, 247sports.com rated him as the nation’s number-one overall recruit.
He was the last of Ohio State’s 2021 recruits to sign, recruited heavily by OSU esteemed defensive line coach Larry Johnson and wide receivers coach Brian Hartline. He chose the Buckeyes over USC, Oregon, Washington, Notre Dame, Michigan, Alabama, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, UCLA and just about any other program with goalposts.
He ended his standout college career by ripping through the College Football Playoffs. He had 6 1/2 sacks in four playoff games, as his Buckeyes beat Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame to win the national championship in January.
He worked out for teams at the combine Friday. Scouts here in Indianapolis are keenly interested his measurements. They covet his length, strength and speed, plus his uncanny ability to anticipate and shed blocks of offensive linemen. Many see Tuimoloau as a likely second-round pick in April’s draft.
(That means, yes, he will likely be available when the Seahawks pick 18th in round one in this draft. Coach Mike Macdonald said Wednesday the two things he can never have enough of on defense are linemen and edge rushers, to pressure opposing quarterbacks into mistakes).
Did Tuimoloau consider the possibility of this — interviewing with and working out for teams at the NFL combine, about to be an early-round draft pick into the league — while he was on those long bus rides to Eastside Catholic?
“It was always a dream of mine,” he said, from behind a podium given at the combine to the prospects the league thinks are going to get drafted highly.
“I thought I had a little more time,” he said.
He’s all of 21 years old.
“It was like, what, six years ago? Yeah, now I’m here,” he said. “I felt all the prayers slowly unfolding. All the dreams are slowly unfolding. I’m just continuing to trust in the Lord and lean on my own understanding, and just continuing to lean on Him. For everything I do.”
JT Tuimoloau’s pass-rush game
Tuimoloau is one of the hoard of top NFL prospects from Ohio State who are at this combine.
The player interviews with the media here this week in Indianapolis had so many reporters from Columbus asking so many Buckeyes questions it felt like post-practice availabilities at OSU’s Woody Hayes Athletic Center in the middle of college football season.
Tuimoloau says he tries to style his game after former Ohio State greats, and after two former Michigan — That School Up North, as he and all Buckeyes call it; they never utter “Michigan” — standouts.
That includes former Super Bowl-champion edge rusher Frank Clark. Tuimoloau grew up watching Clark play in title games for the Seahawks, then the Kansas City Chiefs.
“Frank Clark, (former Ohio State now Los Angeles Chargers defensive end) Joey Bosa and (Green Bay Packers end) Rashan Gary are the three that I really model my game after,” Tuimoloau said. “Big ends, but they just move. You wouldn’t think that they’re all 260, 265-plus.
“Just seeing how they rush, how they use power to set up a lot of their stuff, and how they stayed on the rush lane, were a couple that I wanted to take from their game and add it to me.”
He also knows Clark, Bosa and Gary have a combined 24 seasons and 325 career games in the NFL.
He intends to be in the league a while, too. He wants to learn more of the maintenance and training tricks those three veteran defensive ends know, to survive and thrive into this league’s big-money second, third and fourth contracts.
He began researching and implementing such measures while he was at Ohio State.
He didn’t ride almost three hours on a bus each way to and from Eastside Catholic not to.
Tuimoloau credits Johnson, his position coach at Ohio State many regard as college football’s best defensive line guru, for molding his pass-rush game.
“He’s one of the best. He’s one of the greats,” Tuimoloau said.
“One of the GOATs of college football.”
He says Johnson showed him film and shared training tips from the many the top NFL edge-rushing linemen who preceded Tuimoloau at Ohio State. The 49ers’ Nick Bosa, Joey’s brother. Chase Young. Sam Hubbard. Seahawks edge rusher Dre’Mont Jones.
“He would tell me, ‘You’ll try to find who you are as a rusher,’ Tuimoloau said of Johnson. “As a rusher, you know, all of them had certain attributes, but they also found who they were.
“So he just gave me a confidence that I’m not far off.
“But, just find who you are, and (then) continue to be yourself.”
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This story was originally published February 27, 2025 at 11:10 AM.
