Jermaine Eluemunor is a self-confessed simple man, striving to inspire by way of a not-so-simple journey. From London to New York, he is a big man with a big heart and a big message. The Giants offensive tackle dresses up, hosts pretend tea parties and plays the role of punching bag as a proud girl-dad to his young daughters of a week day, and manhandles the greatest athletes on the planet of a weekend.
He enjoys the serenity of fishing and escapism of anime off the field, and flourishes in the art of violence on it. Eluemunor has bridged a transatlantic chasm, swatted away early rejection and overcome 'rock bottom' amid the fiercest of challenges to his mental health to emerge as one of Britain's most gifted footballing exports and, so too, one of the NFL's premier players in his position. Life wasn't always going to be this way.
He now hopes his story can prescribe immunity to the notion of impossible. "I grew up in Chalk Farm, North West London, right next to Camden Town," Eluemunor tells Sky Sports. "I grew up in a flat on Ferdinand Street, quite small actually, I was just thinking about how small those places were.
I went back to see it and I don't even think I fit through the front door now." It was around this time in 2007 when Eluemunor first discovered football, a session of channel-flicking on TV seeing him stumble across the first-ever NFL regular-season game to be played in London as the Giants faced the Miami Dolphins at Wembley Stadium. Almost two decades on, he is starting for the team where it all began, for whom his impact was rewarded with a $39m contract extension this past offseason and a role as captain this past weekend. "It was just spur of the moment luck, honestly," he says.
"I think that God intended for me to find that game because he knew that was part of my purpose in life to play this game at the highest level and try to achieve what I'm attempting to achieve." Eluemunor, now 31, moved to New Jersey with his father at the age of 14 in search of greater opportunities, before first playing American football at Morris Knolls High School. His dwarfing stature made an immediate impression, while also prompting some early book-cover-judgement from one coach who made the assumption of a ready-made monster. "I had never touched a weight in my entire life," he says.
"I remember them putting 225 up on the bar and I lifted it up and it fell right on my chest because I wasn't strong at all. Now I can bench over 500 pounds. It was a crazy first day for me, and then just walking around, I'm the English kid." Despite spending half of his life stateside, he will seemingly forever remain the 'British guy' of NFL locker rooms.
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