This Packers Fan Is Most Athletic, Interesting, Underrated Draft Prospect

When Jordan van den Berg says it’s in his DNA to be a professional football player, he’s not kidding.

His grandfather, Francois van den Berg, twice placed in the top six in the Mr. Universe bodybuilding competition. His grandmother, Joan Rocci, held multiple South African records in swimming.

They “definitely” get the credit for the incredible athleticism that has made the Georgia Tech defensive lineman one of the most underrated prospects in this year’s draft. The Green Bay Packers were among the nine teams that brought him in for a predraft visit.

“It’s been awesome,” he told Packers On SI after one of his recent visits. “I’ve been traveling. I’ve been living the dream. This is everything you could dream for when you’re in high school.”

It might have seemed like an impossible dream when he was in high school. van den Berg was born in South Africa and moved to the Atlanta area when he was 10. As a senior in 2019, he was a 6-foot-3, 230-pound linebacker at Providence Christian Academy in Lilburn, Ga. While he was an all-state player, he was a zero-star recruit.

“In high school, I had one D-III offer,” van den Berg said. “I knew what I was capable of doing. I knew I had the ability to play [at a] Power Four [school]. So, I decided to bet on myself and walk on at a junior college and prove myself to the world. I just knew that it was in my DNA to do it. I knew what I was capable of doing.”

His parents didn’t embrace the decision, but the bet took van den Berg to Iowa Western Community College, a junior-college powerhouse known for sending prospects to Division I schools. One of the coaches told van den Berg to play defensive end.

So, he did.

Jordan van den Berg bet on himself. And won. | Photo courtesy Georgia Tech Athletics

“I was like, ‘Hey, coach, I’ll play whatever. I just want to prove myself,’” van den Berg said.

Fortunately for van den Berg, he had his grandfather’s genetics.

“The weight room has always been in my DNA from lifting with my dad and just idolizing my grandfather,” he said. “When I got to college, I just started lifting. I found the strongest guy. His name was Noah Meneses, and he’s my best friend. Me and him just started lifting every day. He was way stronger than me at the time. Whatever he did, I had to do. Even if I was doing it with bad technique, I was making sure I was doing it.”

The hardest part wasn’t necessarily the training. For about six months, he said, “I’d drink a whole gallon of milk every day and I’d eat a normal-size jar of peanut butter every night. The trainers jokingly told him he’d die if he kept it up.

Through diet and training, van den Berg packed on 40 pounds and earned first-team All-American honors with four tackles for losses in six games.

That opened the door for van den Berg at Penn State, where he played in 28 games from 2022 through 2024, and, finally, Georgia Tech.

With the Yellow Jackets, van den Berg earned second-team all-ACC in 2024, when he started seven games. That set the table for a dominant final season. As a sixth-year senior in 2025, he started all 13 games and had three sacks and 11 tackles for losses.

Incredibly, even though he was a member of Bruce Feldman’s prestigious Freaks List, he wasn’t invited to the Scouting Combine. So, he put on a show at Georgia Tech’s pro day. At 6-foot-3 1/4 and 310 pounds, he put up 35 reps on the 225-pound bench press. That was impressive, but not nearly as impressive as his 4.94 in the 40-yard dash and his 4.19 in the 20-yard shuttle. That would have been the fastest shuttle time by an interior defensive lineman at the Scouting Combine by a staggering 0.49 seconds.

Told how incredible his workout was – his Relative Athletic Score of 9.99 ranks second all-time behind Jordan Davis among defensive tackles – van den Berg simply replied with typical politeness, “Thank you, sir.”

Jordan van den Berg Made Fast First Impression

Mr. Woody wasn’t surprised.

Woody Thompson is a performance specialist at Exos, the facility in Pensacola, Fla., where van den Berg did his predraft training.

He quickly took note of van den Berg’s athleticism.

“It was one of those things where like the first week or so when we’re watching athletes warm up, they do their marches, their skips, and once we did our first explosive skips for height, you just saw him float a little bit,” Thompson said. “‘Wow, that’s interesting for a big boy,’ because he’s like 315 and he actually was like floating pretty good in the air.”

Georgia Tech defensive lineman Jordan van den Berg rushes upfield. | Photo courtesy Georgia Tech Athletics

As they got into training, the prospects did what Thompson called their “entry vert.” For defensive backs who are just getting going and aren’t at their testing peak, an above-average height is between 32 and 34 inches. van den Berg was in the low 32s.

“I was like, ‘Damn, that big boy can jump,’” Thompson said.

And move.

“The more we started training, it just kept being more and more obvious that he was very uncommon for his size,” Thompson continued. “We had a lot of great athletes – obviously, they’re all great athletes because they’re training for the NFL Combine – but it was impressive just how well he could bend and the numbers he was putting up on his multidirection drills.

“We had some skill guys making excuses. ‘Can we move spots? The turf is slick. It’s the turf. It’s the turf.’ I’m like, ‘Really?’ I’m like, ‘Jordan van den Berg just did a 4.10 in the 5-10-5 [20-yard shuttle] and he’s 315 pounds. You’re 185. What’s your excuse?’ just to shut them up real quick.”

Georgia Tech defensive lineman Jordan van den Berg attacks off the line of scrimmage. | Photo courtesy Georgia Tech Athletics

Without skipping a beat, Thompson switched from talking about van den Berg the athlete to van den Berg the person.

“My favorite aspect of him outside of his athleticism, he always referred to me as ‘Mr. Woody,’” Thompson continued. “He never called me ‘Coach.’ It was, I hate to say adorable, because, you know, he’s a grown man, but he would come up to me and be like, ‘Hey, Mr. Woody, do you think it’d be OK if I did some extra work?’ Or, ‘Mr. Woody, how’d that look?’ I just thought it was funny, because they usually call me just ‘Coach’ or ‘Woody.’ So, ‘Mr. Woody’ was always fun. I was like, ‘That’s adorable, man.’”

When he’s not training, van den Berg loves fishing and hunting. As he drove around Pensacola for training, he kept a kayak in the back of his truck. One day, Thompson said, van den Berg caught a stingray. He kept it to use as shark bait.

“I did not catch a shark, unfortunately,” van den Berg said. “I wish. It was an awesome time. I was on the beach, just sitting there on my chair, just enjoying the weather.”

Jordan van den Berg Is Quality NFL Prospect

In training van den Berg, Thompson sees a little of Kobie Turner, a third-round pick by the Rams in 2023 who has 24 sacks and 27 tackles for losses in his first three seasons.

“My old mentor would always be like, ‘Hey, you got to look like Spider-Man,’ just to build that picture in their head,” Thompson said. “You would just see them getting low and it’s like, ‘Hey, see how low his chest is and how much mobility he has in his hips and his ankles?’ He can just bend. The way he was just so violent with his turns, it reminded me of Kobie Turner and how violent he could make his turns.”

Of course, every draft cycle has its share of workout warriors. van den Berg, though, is a good football player. No interior defensive lineman from a Power Four conference had more tackles for losses than van den Berg. Being big, strong and fast helps, but Thompson saw the intangibles.

“If you’re just successful because you’re a freak athlete, everybody in the NFL is a freak athlete,” Thompson said. “You’re going to get that level playing field where it’s like, ‘All right, now what can separate you since your athleticism can’t be the one thing you rely on?’

“It seems like with Jordan, he’s very dialed in with attention to detail. He listens intently. When you talk to him, he’s making eye contact, he’s shaking his head. He is just very much engaged and wants to be coached. So, I think when you have somebody that has the athleticism but also desires to be coached, that’s when it often leads to long-term success.”

van den Berg has the mentality necessary to win in the trenches.

Jordan van den Berg was an Academic All-American in 2025. | Photo courtesy Georgia Tech Athletics

“Every play is a street fight to him,” Georgia Tech coach Brent Key said in 2024.

van den Berg grew up playing rugby in South Africa.

“I just love the physicality of the sport,” he said when asked about his run defense. “I love running through people, taking on double teams. I’m seeking contact on the field. I just love it.”

He’s also been “loving every single moment” of the predraft process. That includes his trip to Green Bay, which wasn’t his first. He’s a “big Packers fan.” A girl he dated while at Penn State lived about a mile from Lambeau Field, so he’d been to the city a few times.

“I got a Green Bay hoodie that I wear. I wear it quite often,” he said.

The expectation is that van den Berg will be a Day 3 pick, perhaps as early as the fourth round, because he has all the tangibles and intangibles.

“They feel like I got all the traits that I could develop into a big-time player,” he said. “I feel like I got all the physical attributes and the mental attributes. I was the first-team Academic All-American, which I feel like a lot of teams also like to lean into, because I got the mental capability of being able to decipher backfield sets, formations, type of blocks that I’m about to receive, plus the physical attributes to be able to perform the tasks that they want me to do.”

van den Berg’s grandmother died before he was born but his grandfather lives in Florida and is “really excited” about what Jordan has accomplished.

van den Berg said he’ll be spending next weekend with his family. He said getting that phone call of a lifetime will be “surreal.”

“I’ve always been a firm believer in my faith,” he said, “and I know God took me on this crazy journey for a reason. I just can’t wait for it to all come true.”

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