The rain hammers the brick. The water lashes out but is pushed back, flowing down the long, squat building on the west side of Detroit. The red glow of the CVS sign is difficult to see through the storm. These deluges were favorites of Michael Onwenu and his sister, Jessica, not for what they are but for what comes next. After the clouds roll on they will leave a flooded alley behind the store. The puddle isn’t the kind you throw on rain boots and splash in. No, this puddle requires better gear, the kind of gear that lifts you off the pavement and lets you slosh through with speed. If you’re picturing the giddiness of the two youngest Onwenu siblings upon seeing rain fall and then the kids as they grab their bikes and attack the puddles, if you’re hearing the sleesh of pair after pair of tires cutting the stillness of the body of water that extends the full width of the alley behind the strip mall then the lede worked as intended, but it’s the exception to the self-described rule of Michael’s childhood.

Activity usually required parental prompting. “As a kid I was just a lazy person of bigger size,” he says. “I was just watching cartoons, playing games, but my dad had put me in sports.” Left to his own devices, Michael would watch Cartoon Network shows; “Ben 10” was a particular favorite. If his two older siblings, Joshua and Stephanie, were watching the lone TV in the house hooked up to cable, then he and Jessica would watch “Yu-Gi-Oh” on WB20 or shows on PBS Kids like “WordGirl” or “Cyberchase.”

Football doesn’t leave much time for watching TV these days, but when he does get a chance Michael likes to watch crime dramas like “Law and Order” or “Person of Interest,” shows that invite critical thinking. Most of what little free time he has is spent playing video games, which has unanimously been cited as a hobby of players previously profiled in this space. Last October the offensive line decided they would collectively buy Red Dead Redemption 2. “That’s one of the games I bought when it first came out full price like I’m ‘bout to play this and it was like time consuming where it’s like Alright, I’ll stick to what I know.” What he knows is waiting, with hype stonewalled by his practicality and preference for a lower-key experience. “It’s crazy because I play the games so much but I don’t even really buy new games until they get old. 2K came out but I probably won’t get it for another two or three months just because…”Onwenu pauses. “I don’t know. Same with music. I just like for stuff to die down so I can digest it fully.”

There likely won’t be a need to pass around that copy of 2K to too many teammates given the timeframe of acquisition, but even if he did it would be to a small, tight-knit group. Onwenu was closest with Cesar Ruiz, Juwann Bushell-Beatty, and Greg Robinson. This season the group is down Bushell-Beatty, who graduated. It doesn’t surprise Onwenu’s siblings that it is difficult to breach his inner circle. When the prospect of profiling Onwenu was raised in June there was instant skepticism from some football staffers; the prospect of him sitting for an extended period to essentially shine a spotlight on his personal life was thought to be something of a reach. “He’s a shy person and not shyness in a bad way, but he’s private and a keeps-to-himself type of person and personality,” Stephanie says. “He still is the same reserved [guy] who stays to himself or he stays to the same five or however many people he came in with,” Jessica adds. “He sticks to those same people. He’s a down-to-earth individual. He’s still the same.”

Onwenu is also exceedingly practical. He is minoring in entrepreneurship and would like to own his own business someday. One of his dreams is to open a shop—resale, not retail, he specifies—that specializes in shoes for people with larger feet. Onwenu, who wears a size 15, says he isn’t into fashion per se but does like to “look good,” and he and his brother were frustrated with how much trouble went into searching for shoes they wanted that would also fit them. That Onwenu has thought ahead and decided a resell shop is his best option makes sense when considering depth and acquisition of inventory, but Joshua notes that it fits Michael’s personality because his penchant for letting hype die down extends even to shoes. When I ask where he might want to open his business, he explains to me that he would need to have an online store with a stable following before considering operating a storefront.

[After THE JUMP: the strength of the Onwenu family, Michael's motivation, and the rapid ascent of a football player who picked up the sport in eighth grade]

He quickly segues into another idea. Onwenu says he might want to start a trucking company. His logic is flawless: “When I think about life or I think about ventures it’s like what is stuff that’s always going to be sustainable or you can’t do without.” It doesn’t seem that Onwenu has shared the idea of this venture with many—his siblings are surprised to hear it when I ask about trucking—but the principle behind the business raises no eyebrows. “Being practical, that does sound just like Michael,” Jessica says. “Doing something long-term, if it’s something physical and useable, that’s the type of person that Michael is.”

​

[Patrick Barron]

Has he changed at all? Of course he has. Core traits are our foundation, but everyone redecorates. His family and friends have seen him grow more self-assured as his college experience has progressed. “He was a shy little boy, always scared to talk, always in the background pretty much,” Stephanie says. “He’s kind of the same. He still has that same personality but I think he’s more open and more comfortable with himself and more able to speak what he feels now.” His brother sees it too. “He’s more independent,” Joshua says. “He’s more talkative. He speaks his mind. He speaks with intelligence. Before he was in his shell and like Okay, what do I want to do? Now he knows his way. It’s been surprising. It’s kind of good that he’s been at Michigan and he’s accomplished all of these things teaching him to be more mature and become more of a man in life and to know life is going to be hard but if you just work hard and do what you’ve got to do you’ll get by.”  

He is undergoing a slight personality shift familiar to many introverts who found their voice as they progressed from teenager to twentysomething, but where does football come into play in Onwenu’s life? How does a kid who begrudgingly participated in sports get recruited to play football at the University of Michigan, much less become a third-team All-Big Ten honoree as a junior who has followed that with multiple Pro Football Focus accolades partway through his senior year? The sport became a part of Onwenu’s journey more recently than you might suspect, but the first artifact of it is found a continent and a lifetime away.

*****

Onwenu’s parents, Stephen and Rosaline, were born in Nigeria, and both emigrated decades ago. Though they did not know each other, Stephen and Rosaline had siblings in Detroit and decided to make the city home when they got to America. Liana Aghajanian wrote a piece for Racked that detailed a formative experience in Rosaline’s life:

Onwenu began exploring her talent for head-wrapping as a child back home in Nigeria. When she arrived in the US three decades ago, she wrapped her head and went to her first church service in Detroit. The women in her congregation were so enamored with the piece that she ended up selling the gele on her head for $30.

Rosaline became well known for her geles almost instantaneously, and she eventually started inviting people over to wrap in the basement of her home. Though she steadily gained clients, found love with Stephen, and started a family, life was complicated by more than just the logistics of managing a burgeoning business and life with four children. “Before us they had some struggles coming as Africans into America,” Stephanie says. “Back then the injustice, which is still happening now but was pretty much worse back then, and going through that, trying to make a life for themselves and just trying to navigate in this new place. Understanding, language barriers and cultural barriers that they had to go through and just going through all that stuff but still being able to make it, being able to own a business, being able to get college degrees and own a home and just go through that whole cycle and then having us, learning how to figure out the best schools for us, how to do financials. All this stuff you have to do as an adult, I think those were huge things that they had to learn.”

​

[Bill Rapai]

Michael’s father wanted the kids to be active and participate in group activities, so he signed them up for any and every sport. All four of the siblings started with baseball or softball. Michael played two years of baseball and spent time at third base, short stop, and in the outfield. The positions were many, but the interest was little. He also played two years of basketball, but that didn’t stick either. Joshua was finishing a standout football career at Mumford High School, one that saw him recruited to play defensive tackle at the University of Toledo, when Michael decided he would give football a shot. At this point Michael was in eighth grade and 14 years old, and his middle school did not have a football team. He qualified to participate in the Detroit Police Athletic League’s youth football program—at the maximum age allowed.

“My brother did play football, so I would go to his games and what not when he was in high school. I did that and I found it interesting, so that’s probably why I pursued it more so,” Onwenu says. There’s consensus among family members; his brother uses almost the same words to describe Michael’s decision to pursue the sport. “When football came I think it was more so him coming to my games in high school and seeing me play and like, Okay, this game is kinda fun,” Joshua says. “This game looks like it can be fun. I can actually play something where I can be violent but in a good way and put it to good use.”

Onwenu’s stature—he estimates he was about six feet tall and 280 pounds in eighth grade—and preternatural athleticism quickly caught the attention of onlookers, sometimes to his chagrin. Onwenu’s mother wanted him to transfer to a new school prior to sixth grade. It was a different middle school than all of his siblings had gone to, but she thought the new school would better serve him academically. Onwenu had some trepidation about stepping into unfamiliar territory, and his reservations were given credence quickly. “My first day there I got there and they were like ‘Are you sure you’re in the right grade? You’re in the right class?’” he says. “I was just like I don’t even want to deal with this. I’m about to get this the whole year. So that’s pretty much how it was throughout elementary.” Onwenu liked the sense of belonging that football provided. “Not that I didn’t like football before, it was just like I said, I was just a chill guy,” he says. “Didn’t really want to do much but when you got into high school it’s like pretty much you want to do something, get you some friends and get you some teammates.” 

​

[Fuller]

Discussing his size, Onwenu seems somewhat bewildered that people make such a big deal out of it. This feeling resurfaced early in his freshman year at Michigan as he met with assembled media for the first time and was asked about his diet. He shared that he likes to snack on grapes, and this quickly worked its way into seemingly everyone’s headline. “It was in camp or coming out of camp and it was like, that’s pretty much what I eat 24/7 or while I was in meetings,” Onwenu says nonchalantly. “That just stuck with me. Just coming out of it, I don’t know, that was crazy. It was like marketing. Spread like wildfire.” (For the record, grapes are still a favorite snack, but not all varieties. Onwenu prefers the crunchy ones. “You get that pop,” he says.)

An interesting alternate history emerges as Onwenu discusses his earliest days playing football and what could have been. He was working out with some players who attended Martin Luther King High School in the summer between eighth and ninth grade and simply assumed he would go to King. But as Onwenu looked further into high schools, he eventually decided that he would attend Cass Technical High School. He is glad he did; head coach Thomas Wilcher and then-assistant Jermain Crowell are well known in the coaching community and helped open doors for their players.

Onwenu is telling me about his recruiting experience in the upper level of Schembechler Hall, but the process really took off for him with an offer from the Wolverines’ arch rival. Coaches from Ohio State contacted Wilcher and asked him to vouch for a player who was going to be the next big thing. Onwenu didn’t play much his freshman year—with only one year of football experience, he says watching how upperclassmen handled themselves was critical—but his potential was obvious. Wilcher told the OSU coaches the next big thing was Onwenu, and they offered him as a sophomore.

Potential translated to on-field results quickly. So quickly, in fact, that it took some of his siblings by surprise. “I feel like Detroit is like a small city. It’s a big city, but if you’re a product of Detroit Public Schools, everybody knows somebody in some way, shape, or form,” Jessica says. “So when people would see my last name, they’d be like, ‘You know Big Mike?’ I’m like, ‘Big Mike? You talking about my little brother? Y’all call him Big Mike? Are you serious?’ So I was just like, Okay, yeah, let me go to the games and see what the hype is. Let me try to understand and see what everybody else is seeing.”

Wilcher and Crowell took their players on unofficial visits and to as many “big man” camps as they could. They travelled locally to Michigan and Michigan State as well as places like Kentucky and as far as Miami. Onwenu started to pick up offers as they attended camps, but he says he also learned what he needed to work on if he wanted to pursue football in college. “After that,” Onwenu says, “the recruiting process kind of just spread like wildfire. Didn’t really visit a lot of places but the more places that got word of me, I had a teammate there or whatnot, and I would get interest or mail from them.”

​

[Patrick Barron]

The interest doesn’t seem to have been reciprocated all that often. Onwenu goes so far as to call attending Michigan inevitable, but other schools made a strong push for him. His sister Stephanie attended Michigan State at the time of his recruitment, and their coaching staff was hoping they could leverage that to their advantage. Stephanie went with Michael on one of his visits to Michigan State, and the coaching staff told her that, as a fellow Spartan, she had to help get him to go to MSU. She explained to them that it wasn’t her decision to make, as Michael had to figure out what fit him best. Most schools at least teased the idea of Onwenu playing both sides of the ball, but State wanted him solely at defensive tackle. How he felt about that fit isn’t clear, which aligns with the way he treated most of the process. He didn’t even tell his siblings, arguably the people in the world he’s closest with, where he was going to go to college until he announced it publicly. “I kind of figured that’s how it was going to be with that situation,” Stephanie says. “That’s just how Michael is.”

Joshua has some ideas about why Michael picked Michigan despite the perceived inevitability. To him, it was the authenticity of the coaching staff. “It wasn’t like everybody else saying the same script. You could read the same script: Oh, how you doin’, we’re going to make sure he’s good, we’re gonna make sure--nah, it was like deep down. When he gets here he’s my son. When he gets here I’m looking after him to make sure he’s good. That first time he met Harbaugh, the talk we had with Harbaugh and Drevno it was like, okay, yeah, that’s my uncle sitting on the couch.”

That family feeling was important to Onwenu. So was the University’s location close to home but far enough to allow him to live independently, though not disconnected from family; after all, he is a self-professed momma’s boy. “She’s calling me, texting me why I’m not calling her,” he says. “We was in camp this past year [and] she’d say I miss you, you haven’t talked to me, yadda yadda yadda. Because we’re in camp, we’re here from 8 AM to 10 PM; it’s like I don’t even have the time to.”

It is easy to imagine the numbers inside the little red bubbles next to his texts and phone calls growing and growing in Onwenu’s first few months on campus. He recounts some of his first memories on campus and how nerve-wracking it all was, from figuring out where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do to how he had to decipher the unwritten rules of the team, particularly the new definition of “on time.” He clearly picked up on things quickly, as his head coach minced no words when discussing him just a couple of weeks into Onwenu’s first fall camp. “Michael Onwenu is somebody I’m—you know, he’s one of my favorites,” Jim Harbaugh told the media in mid-August 2016. “Doing a heck of a good job.” So good, in fact, the staff decided they would try him on both the offensive and defensive line and see where he had the highest ceiling. “He came over and studied the playbook, studied what he was supposed to do, stayed after, and did some really good things,” then-defensive line coach Greg Mattison said at the end of 2016’s fall camp. “Then they needed him on offense. He went over to offense and if you ask Ryan Glasgow, he said, ‘Yeah, he’s one of the toughest guys I go against.’ I’ve been very pleased with him. He’s going to be a very good football player, I think.”

It didn’t take long to erase any doubt. Onwenu played on both the offensive and defensive lines twice in 2016, then got into two more games on the offensive line. He also contributed on special teams, bringing his total number of games played to nine. By 2017 he was focused solely on playing guard and was a starter for the first two-thirds of the year, earning the team’s Offensive Lineman of the Game award after Purdue. His head coach already considered him one of the team’s top three linemen after the first game of the season. “Very happy with Mike Onwenu. You go into it and you think, Okay, Mason Cole’s our best offensive lineman and then Ben Bredeson’s right there, it’s close,” Harbaugh said after Michigan’s win over Florida. “But Mike Onwenu or Ben Bredeson, who’s better, you know? They’re both ascending and Mike’s ascended real fast.” 

An injury derailed the last third of his season, though he recovered enough to dress and participate sparingly as an extra lineman/jumbo tight end. By the bowl game against South Carolina Onwenu was back in the starting lineup for his lone foray as a left guard. The other starter on the left side of the line in the Outback Bowl was current Arizona Cardinal Mason Cole, who was able to see up close how far Onwenu had come since things started to click for him at the end of his freshman season. “For me watching him, he’s just a mauler. He’s not going to do anything crazy in my mind, but you’re going to try to get through him and he’s just like hitting a brick wall,” Cole says. “And he’s going to come at you and there’s not going to be any way of stopping his momentum. It’s just going to kind of go right through you. Like I said, he’s just such a big dude and so well leveraged. He’s just a big, moving brick wall.”

​

[Marc-Gregor Campredon]

Onwenu continued to ascend in 2018. He started all 13 games at right guard, twice won the team’s Offensive Lineman of the Week award, and was named third-team All-Big Ten by the coaches; none of that is surprising considering Pro Football Focus tabbed Onwenu with a 1.0% pressure rate allowed, which tied for third best among returning FBS interior linemen. Despite the success, Onwenu’s most detailed memory when asked about the season isn’t a story about burying a defensive lineman in the turf or paving the way for a score in the ground game. “When I look back at last year the thing that stuck out the most or thing that I...I’m not gonna say regret, but me jumping offsides against Ohio State,” he says. “I remember exactly what happened. We was going on two, said the play, then I think the guy shifted or I was just like Alright, I’m blocking him with the tackle. Then he shifted over and I’m like Alright, I’m blocking him with the center then forgot about everything that went on before the snap count and got off the ball and I’m like Damn. I was just thinking about that for a long time, like Damn, I had to jump offsides that one game.”

Offensive line coach Ed Warinner asked Onwenu to lose 15-20 pounds in the offseason and Onwenu hit the high end of the target and then some. It didn’t take long for the coaching staff to notice. “He’s leaner, he’s quicker. Oh my gosh is he moving,” Warinner told the media in April. “Playing better with his hands. Understanding little details. Practicing better. It all starts with his attention to detail in meetings. He’s improved in every area. Wow is he talented. His ceiling is so high. (He) can be unstoppable.” 

By August the excitement over Onwenu’s potential had reached a fever pitch. He was down to about 370 pounds, and offensive coordinator Josh Gattis said in a press conference during fall camp that Onwenu had one of the lowest body fat percentages on the offensive line. Onwenu’s natural strength and increasing athleticism were posing a problem for the defense in practice. “The other day, there was a blitz or a pressure coming and the linebacker came from five yards deep and when he hit him, it feels like running into a brick wall,” Gattis said.

Onwenu continues to build his skills, and the additive process is reinforced by newfound success. He has already been named the team’s Offensive Lineman of the Game once this season and named one of the guards on Pro Football Focus’ National Offensive Team of the Week after a dominant game against Army. Just today he was named a first-team midseason All-American by Pro Football Focus. Getting to the level he is playing at this season required coaching, but it also took self-reflection. “I started accepting more and more criticism, not just the bare minimum or what was said. I started asking questions about everything or as much as I could throughout summer, throughout spring ball, through all of the process and all the plays and whatnot. I think it went for the best.” It did, as Harbaugh noted on his podcast. “Mike has always been strong,” Harbaugh said. “He has always been a strong player. He can always move anybody he’s up against, but he’s doing so many subtle things now where his awareness to pass off twist games, or zone block and redirect during the progression of the blocking scheme.”

“Yeah, I think that’s where his growth has come is he has been studying the game,” Warinner responded. “No one has been more aggressive asking questions, texting, wanting to know more, watching film. Those details are what’s going to make him a great player, because he is talented. His ability to understand the zone schemes and some of the things that we see from our defense, where his eyes should be, his hand placement, bumping off games and twists, communicating, getting to the second level—he’s just doing a lot of those high-level details now and we’re seeing them in practice. It’s because he wants to and he’s listening to those things and asking for those things. No one sends us more text messages about ‘What should I do on this?’ He watches film on his iPad and takes a picture of something and sends us. We are really happy with Mike.”

​

[Fuller]

But Mike is not necessarily happy with Mike. He’s still searching for ways to improve, including turning to Mason Cole for midseason advice about preparing for football at the next level. “He came up to me and he asked me what are the things off the field I do to stay healthy in terms of rehab and stuff like that,” Cole says. “The biggest thing I told him is just doing as many little things as possible, whether it be getting extra massages or ice tubbing or stretching or rolling out, whatever it might be. If you can do as many of those things, I think they all add up and they’ll make a really big difference.” 

It was the first time Onwenu had reached out to Cole for advice, but it wasn’t the first time he had tried to pattern his game after Cole’s. Onwenu carefully observed players like David Dawson when he was at Cass Tech to learn the habits of successful players, then again observed Dawson and others like Cole at Michigan. He’s fascinated with the process of turning potential into results. “Probably all the relationships I’ve built [motivate me], because it’s knowing where people are and where they can go is probably one of the most important things to me. Like when you see potential in somebody, like even now when I see potential in the freshmen or anybody I know I’m like, ‘I can see so much good for you. You just got to achieve it or do what you want to do to get there,’” Onwenu says. “Even with myself, I know I can go far but it’s just about me doing it every day, taking it one day at a time.”

*****

The task would not be easy, but it certainly seemed necessary. Rosaline’s business had outgrown the family’s basement; it was time to open a storefront. The family worked tirelessly to transform the shop. The kids helped with the work. They painted, then they painted some more. They assembled shelves. They stopped to order Chinese food, then got back to work. It’s one of Michael’s favorite memories, that time with his parents and siblings and the hours they spent setting up what would become the family headquarters for the past 15 years.

The work paid off. Sterose International Boutique has become a staple of Detroit as Rosaline’s wares and talents have been featured at expos, in print, and on television. The kids don’t begrudge the time they spent helping vacuum or sweep or any of the other things they did around the shop to help it run. While it was a place they could stop after school to grab a snack or ask for their allowance, it grew into something much more important. “I would say probably look back on our family and where we came from and the struggles our parents had before and the challenges they had to go through to come here to America and to have us, to raise four kids and put us through college,” Stephanie says. “I think that’s a huge aspect to what motivates Michael and all of us in general.”

“It’s just like everybody’s going up a level and it just made me want to be successful too. Like if my mom and my brother can do it, I can do it, too,” Jessica says. “It was inspiration for us and motivation for us to become successful. My mom became successful so now we want to be successful so we can reward my mom back for all the hard work she’s put in to raise all four of us, and with us being so close in age that is kind of hard for a parent.”

The heart of the store hasn’t changed over the last decade and a half, but the exterior has. Sometime in the last decade a mural was painted on the side of the building. The background is a vibrant orange, the text a hand-lettered mix of fonts in three different colors. At the center is a portrait of a woman in a gele who bears a striking resemblance to Rosaline. The level of detail is such that it must have taken an incredible amount of time to finish, especially considering the medium: it is painted on brick.