Even if you’re a diehard football fan, you probably have never heard of Duke Manyweather. But if you’re an offensive lineman in the NFL, college or even high school, you probably know all about the former Division II guard from Humboldt State in California.
About 20 percent of the offensive linemen invited to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis this year trained with the same guy, Duane Samuel Manyweather II, aka Big Duke. One of his protégés, Louisville’s 6-7, 364-pound tackle Mekhi Becton, measured in with a ridiculously low 17 percent body fat and an even more ridiculous 5.10 40.
So proud of this group!!! https://t.co/zZCm84WMx3 pic.twitter.com/AvrCsAivgH
— Duke Manyweather (@BigDuke50) March 2, 2020
In the past three-plus years since going out on his own, the 34-year-old Manyweather, a combination line coach/functional movement specialist/powerlifter has emerged as the hottest name in football’s private coaching world. He has more than 26,000 Twitter followers, and a huge chunk of them are offensive linemen of all ages. Most of the players Manyweather works with are either NFL linemen or guys getting ready for the draft, but because of his work at Nike’s The Opening, he has developed bonds with Tennessee’s Trey Smith, Stanford’s Walker Little, Texas Tech’s Jack Anderson, Mississippi State’s Scott Lashley and Alabama’s Evan Neal, among others at the college level. Some college line coaches also use him as a resource because of the position-specific content Manyweather shares online.
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“He has done a great job in staying on the front edge, if you will, of techniques, fundamentals and training processes, both on the field and in the weight room,” says Texas co-offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Herb Hand, who initially got connected with Manyweather about six years ago through Twitter. “I think he’s modeled his program somewhat like LeCharles Bentley. He’s built a nice program in Dallas with the OL Masterminds deal. It’s a unique concept that has increased his access to NFL players’ thought processes about surviving and thriving in that league.”
Manyweather says his business is based on word of mouth.
“Everything I do reverts back to the film,” he said. “I’m gonna watch every snap a guy plays. I’m gonna give them specific examples and tell them where it showed up multiple times and they’re like, ‘Oh shit, if you can see that, who else can see that?’
“So they’re listening automatically, because what ends up happening is, especially these pro guys, they become master compensators. They’re able to hide a lot of their dysfunction and things that they think may not be vulnerabilities, but in reality, they are. So when a guy like myself is able to watch the film and see it kind of happened or see them compensate and I can predict it particularly happening, they’re willing to listen because they don’t want to be exposed in that way. They understand if they’re exposed in that way, that could not only lead to injury, but, potentially, lead to them losing their job.”
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— Duke Manyweather (@BigDuke50) January 17, 2020
Manyweather, who got the nickname Duke in the ninth grade from one of his high school coaches in Southern California, wasn’t the prototype O-lineman growing up. He was about 5-11 and didn’t have much length, but he was powerful and weighed close to 300 pounds.
“He was just a football geek because he loves football so much. He loves everything about it,” said Geoff Schwartz, a former NFL lineman who is a year younger than Manyweather and played with him on the Pacific Palisades High team. “I remember in high school, he took me under his wing because I think he realized the potential I had.
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“Duke played a little bit through the whistle. He was this kind of grimy, just like, all about it, weightlifter — all you think about as an offensive lineman. That’s what Duke was in high school. He wore the big neck roll.”
Manyweather was an all-league player and two-time team captain but says he only ended up starting about five games in college. Schwartz got a scholarship to Oregon and would occasionally drive down to California during college to hang out with his old teammate. Initially, Schwartz said, it was because Manyweather was trying to set him up with a female athlete at Humboldt who was a friend. Mostly, the two O-line junkies would sit around and study film, have some epic grill-outs and then go out at night.
“I’m in a unique situation, because I’ve always had this vision in my mind of what offensive line development should be like,” Manyweather says. “I think it really stems from I was always an undersized offensive lineman; didn’t have a lot of length. I’m six foot tall. I wasn’t the best athlete, but I was strong. I was explosive, and my technique was always good. Those are always the things I knew I could control in terms of the mental aspect too. I always knew what I was doing. Always knew how I was going to do it. I always knew that I had to be in perfect position. Always knew that I had to be able to use my strength and my leverage to be able to have an advantage.
“I was a kid that lived in a weight room, that lived in film study, and that wants to know the why. And so that’s kind of been my coaching philosophy. I was fortunate enough where I got into coaching right away. I had a brief stint in Arena League and then got cut (from the Arkansas Twisters.)”
Geoff Schwartz and Manyweather in a grainy high school football action photo.
Manyweather took a job as a strength and conditioning assistant at Humboldt and in the afternoons would drive 15 minutes over to College of the Redwoods, where he was the offensive line coach and run game coordinator. Then he was hired at his alma mater as the Lumberjacks’ defensive line coach in 2010.
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“Going on the defensive side, I got to see a different perspective of the line of scrimmage,” he says. “I was able to have some success as a D-line coach based upon attacking what I knew gave off at the line of problems.”
A couple of years later, Manyweather went to work for former NFL offensive lineman LeCharles Bentley in his business helping develop players. Manyweather says he and Bentley parted ways at the end of 2014, and didn’t train again until the summer of 2016, when he helped Schwartz and his brother, Kansas City Chiefs star Mitchell Schwartz. The next year, he says, is when things for his business took off.
“After some guys saw some of the videos (of Manyweather working with linemen), they were like, ‘Oh man, we didn’t know you were training people again,’ ” he said. Former Jacksonville Jaguars tackle Jeremy Parnell, who lived in Dallas like Manyweather, wanted him to train him. Then Broncos guard Ronald Leary called. Then Chargers guard D.J. Fluker. Then Raiders tackle Donald Penn.
Trent Brown, a former seventh-round pick who signed a $37 million guaranteed deal with the Raiders last year and went on to make the Pro Bowl, learned about Manyweather from social media about three years ago.
“I saw that him and Donald Penn were doing work, and I really liked what he was doing,” Brown said. “I started implementing some of his stuff in my pre-game routine — stuff like his medball exercises with kick-sliding and post-sets. It challenged you to keep the proper posture and not be a waist bender and at the same time, keep moving your feet.”
Brown kept watching the guys Manyweather worked with getting better, and he began working with him too, renting a corporate housing place so he could train in the Dallas area three hours a day Monday through Friday. Brown also loves the feedback Manyweather provides him in season.
“He watches every single one of us, and he can tell when we’re hurt,” Brown said. “He has such an eye for O-line. We had the Chargers game in Oakland and he goes, ‘Are you alright? I see you’re limping a bit.’ Nobody knew what was going on with me. I swear by him. I had a calf strain. He came back to see me play against Houston and he drove from Dallas to Houston and put me on this machine the day before the game, and I felt like I was able to play better.”
It starts with your FOUNDATION 🦶& then you build your HOUSE 🏠
🗣 @BigDuke50 https://t.co/dqxuo5uAvx pic.twitter.com/IAJ1Yyg9gL
— Final 5 (@Final5Linemen) February 17, 2020
“Duke is knowledgable as anybody in the country as far as technique and fundamentals and correctives,” says Notre Dame great Aaron Taylor, a six-year NFL veteran and the founder of the Joe Moore Award. “What I think really sets him apart is his experience as competitive powerlifter has really given him an intimate understanding of functional power and strength, especially as it relates to O-line play in terms of contact power; balance, sustainability and recoverability once the play is going on. The other big thing with him is his humility. He is the consummate O-lineman.
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“The dude is about other dudes, and he’s about getting the guys to be the best version of themselves. There’s no ego in it for him. And as someone who has a lot of competition in that business out there, that’s a rarity. I’ve seen him do that in action. We’ve had lots of talks about that when it’s been hard for him to not fight back on other people and take to social media to defend himself. I’ve talked to him a lot about a tall man not needing to tell other people he’s tall — even though he’s short as shit, but just doing what he does. He’s as good a dude as they make.”
The value of Manyweather and other position-specific private coaches has increased because of how the NFL game is coached and because of their flexibility in serving the needs of each player.
“The times have changed now,” Geoff Schwartz said. “There’s much less practice time, so it’s really hard to get a lot of technique work in. That’s where Duke is really valuable because you get to spend a lot of time with him working on your game because (in the NFL in-season) a lot of it is spent now on the scheme stuff and watching film and less time on technique.
“Duke’s also not just saying you have to do this technique or else. And there’s also certain ways that he would do that. He would like you to punch or certain ways that you have to teach a stance. He’ll say, ‘Look, if this guy does it better this way, they do it that way,’ or if you do it this way, I’ll make sure your body’s ready to do that way. And so that makes him work with all these different O-line coaches who teach different things because Duke is like, okay, I’ll teach what you want me to teach, what your guy needs to do. Other trainers just teach what they teach. And that’s it. He wants to see his athletes do better. I beg him to promote himself more.”
During the offseason, Manyweather and his business partner will slot groups of three to four guys and run them from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. They coordinate them based on their goals, imbalances and deficiencies. One group may be Leary, Chance Warmack, Hugh Thornton and Will Richardson, all veteran guards. The next group may be Lael Collins, Mekhi Becton, Cam Robinson and Saddiq Charles, all guys with similar needs.
“We foster not only a competitive environment, but one that they can learn from at the same time as well,” Manyweather said.
Geoff Schwartz was reminded of another big benefit of Manyweather’s work other years ago in a late-season game he had against the Colts. Schwartz had been playing pretty well, but then Cory Redding beat him on a push-pull move. He texted Manyweather, “I can’t believe I got beat on it.’
“Duke sent back his scouting report to me where he highlighted like number five, Cory Redding push-pull. Watch out for this,” Schwartz said. “He just he’s on it, man.”
Some NFL linemen who don’t specifically train with Manyweather still rely on him as a consultant. Manyweather provides them his advanced scouting notes based on his own film study.
The point is simple, Manyweather said. “I just want to help guys get better.”
(Top photo courtesy Duke Manyweather)
