Dan Dorazio had been at the University of British Columbia for one practice in the spring of 2020 when the school suspended its football program because of COVID-19.

But that was long enough for the veteran offensive line coach to notice a talented but raw young lineman by the name of Giovanni Manu.

“I just said big, good-looking guy, I’d like to sink my teeth in on him and help him grow the game, ’cause I could see the talent,” Dorazio told the Free Press in a phone interview this week. “It’s so easy to see, so easy to spot and he was just rough around the edges at that time. One day I just remember him being rough, but he had all the — you could see, he could bend, he could strike, he could hit in that one practice.”

Dorazio’s contract dissolved after COVID-19, and he left UBC for Simon Fraser University soon after.

When British Columbia coach Blake Nill called last spring with an offer to bring Dorazio back, Dorazio’s mind went right to Manu.

Giovanni Manu blocking during a game.
Giovanni Manu blocking during a game.
“As a football coach, it’s a joy to work with guys like him who do it so easy,” he said. “I was really looking forward to it.”

The Detroit Lions traded up to take Manu with the 126th pick of last week’s NFL draft, sending a future third-rounder to the New York Jets for the choice.

Lions general manager Brad Holmes admitted on draft night, “it’s not a whole lot about right now with” Manu, but the team believes it found a developmental offensive tackle with the traits to be special.

“We just kind of got enamored with the upside,” Holmes said. “He came in (on a pre-draft visit) and he did a great job and sat with the coaches, and we felt really good about him. We felt really good about his makeup. He’s wired the right way. He’s got a really cool story and he’s been through some things. But we were so blown away about just his makeup, his character, the way he’s wired and he’s got a lot of upside.”

Manu began tapping into his considerable upside last season when he earned All-Canadian honors for the second straight year while dominating play in a league Dorazio compared to Division II or Division III college football.

In 621 offensive snaps over 11 games, Dorazio, a former teammate of Nick Saban’s at Kent State who has spent most of his five decades as a coach in the CFL and American college football, charted Manu with 16 “de-cleater” blocks (in which he knocked a defender off their feet and on their back), nine “dominating” blocks (in which he “just absolutely takes the guy and displaces them somewhere else”) and 16 “knockdowns” (blocks he knocked a defender to the ground but with less force than a “de-cleater”).

“He’s got tremendous power, he’s got outstanding knee bend. His physical presence, he’s just a strong big man that can bend and really run,” Dorazio said. “If you watch this guy run with the rest of the team, he runs like a gazelle. For a guy that’s as big as he is, he runs smooth, he’s got great stature. I mean, he glides when he runs. He’s an impressive physical specimen as an athlete. He really is. And he plays dominant. The guy played dominant for 11 games against our opponent. No one came even close to challenging him at all. He was above the competition on every single opponent.”

Manu was born in Tonga, a remote island in the South Pacific. He moved to the Vancouver, B.C., area at age 11 to live with an aunt who had promised his mother, still home in Tonga, a better life for her children.

A rugby player in Tonga, Manu discovered football around that time and fell quickly in love with the game.

“I feel like the stuff I took from rugby was the physicality,” he said. “I love physicality. I love hitting people. I love creating big hits and just hitting people in general. And that’s why I played rugby. And transitioning from that to football, sometimes it’s hard to motivate someone to hit someone, or something like that in football, but that just flowed naturally to me.”

Manu said he initially struggled with concepts like getting in a lineman’s stance and learning rules such as holding.

He came to college with limited football experience, and left still raw to the technical side of the game.

But Manu blossomed as a draft prospect with an impressive pro day workout this spring, when he ran a 5.03-second 40-yard dash at 6 feet 8 and 352 pounds, and he made 11 pre-draft visits in a jam-packed post-pro day schedule.

His calendar was so full, the Lions had to bring him in on a Sunday for meetings and a physical.

Dorazio said scouts who came through UBC mostly asked questions about Manu’s work ethic, retention and ability to learn, trying to figure out how likely he is to reach his upside.

“They want to know what he’s like in a meeting room, what’s his attention span, all that stuff,” Dorazio said. “And I told you before, Gio, you sit in a meeting with him and his eyes are locked on you when you’re talking. I mean, he don’t take his eyes off you. He’s one of those guys that’s really intense and as I’m talking and analyzing practice, based on film, and we’re sitting there, I’m noticing eighth, ninth week into the season, he’s scribbling all these notes that I’m talking about. That’s what he’s writing down, and it’s stuff we’ve been doing all year but he’s still writing them down. That just I think really shows you the kind of caliber that he is as far as wanting to be the best he can be. And that’s what he wants to do, he wants to be the best he can be.”

Dorazio, who has coached four CFL Offensive Linemen of the Year, said Manu appears to have landed in a situation that should help him reach his talent — on a good team, with a veteran offensive line and respected line coach in Hank Fraley who can take time to help bring Manu along.

He compared Manu to Jovan Olafioye, a Michigan native who now coaches at Ecorse High and was a six-time All-Pro in the CFL.

And he said he’d be “shocked” if Manu “didn’t excel and really achieve and have a great career in professional football.”

“Obviously, the competition’s going to get better,” Dorazio said. “He’s going to have more challenges. But if you look at his measurables, and you look at it and you add his toughness and competitive desire and want to win, he’ll meet those challenges and he has enough physical ability and he has enough physical presence that when those challenges come that he’s going to have pretty soon when he goes to the NFL, he’ll stand up and really compete well. He has so many things going for him that I see him really being successful for what he’s going to do for the Detroit Lions.”