London-raised Seydou Traore becomes first NFL Academy graduate drafted

The Miami Dolphins selected Seydou Traore on April 25 with the 180th overall pick in the fifth round of the 2026 NFL Draft, making the 23-year-old the first graduate of the London-based NFL Academy ever drafted into the NFL. Miami said the pick came via a trade with the Dallas Cowboys, and the team later listed Traore as its third of three fifth-round selections.

Traore’s route carried him through one of the league’s newest development pipelines. The NFL Academy identifies him as part of its very first intake, with years at the programme listed as 2019-2020, and Reuters later described him as one of the academy’s original 2019 players. From there, Traore moved on to Mississippi State University, where the Dolphins identified him as a Mississippi State Bulldogs tight end before the draft. That path from a London training base to a power-conference college roster and then to an NFL selection is exactly the kind of ladder the academy was built to create.

His background adds to the scale of the achievement. Traore was born in France and raised in London, with a father from Ivory Coast and a mother from Algeria. The combination reflects how the NFL’s talent pool is widening beyond the usual American routes, while still asking international prospects to clear the same hurdles of size, technique and exposure that U.S. players have long taken for granted.

Traore was picked in the same draft as Uar Bernard, a Nigerian prospect who had not yet played a game of American football, underlining how unusual Traore’s journey was even among international selections. ESPN described Traore as unusually league-ready for a London prospect and linked his rise to the International Player Pathway Program, while noting that working with Travis Kelce’s coach helped ignite his NFL dream. For British and European players who once had no obvious route into the league, Traore’s selection gives the NFL Academy a concrete first proof that a London pipeline can end in the draft, not just in possibility.