Tinley Park All-American Born Small has Big Shot at NFL

Photo Credit: HoosierHuddle.com

Tinley Park native and Oak Forest High School alum Tevin Coleman is expected to be picked in the early rounds of this week’s NFL draft, but the running back didn’t always have the odds in his favor.

Now 6-foot-1, 205 pounds, it’s hard to picture a tiny Coleman, born 10 weeks premature in 1993 at a weight of only 3.5 pounds.

“I was real little,” Coleman said to parents and supporters of preemies at the March of Dimes 5K walk on Sunday in Grant Park. “I had a 20 percent chance of living. I’m just glad i’m here.”

He went on to play for Indiana University, where he was chosen unanimously for All-American, and declared for the draft as a junior. That year, he rushed for a record 2,062 yards, and 15 touchdowns in 25 passes for 141 yards and also finished seventh in Heisman Trophy balloting. He was the first Hoosier since 1991 chosen for All-American honors.

He has been ranked between the third and fifth best running back in this year’s draft class.

“When he was growing up, people always encouraged us that he was going to make it, he was going to be somebody,” his mother Adlevia Moore-Coleman told WBBM. “And now look.”

Her son was a ”gift from God,” she said, adding that she doesn’t care which team selects him, as long as he’s happy.

Coleman told fans to “keep in tune to watch and see where I go.”

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