Inside The Chart: Strong Impression

Strong Impression: Jordan van den Berg took an unconventional journey to football. But the South African-born, JuCo-grown defensive lineman has adapted at each step – and finally found the success he’s been seeking at Georgia Tech.

Inside The Chart | By Andy Demetra (The “Voice of the Yellow Jackets”)

Midway through his first season, it’s clear Jordan van den Berg loves it here.

Uh oh. There’s that word again. A simple one, but an endless source of amusement to his roommates Haynes King, Jackson Long and Austin Dean.

Van den Berg’s accent has mostly disappeared since moving with his family from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Lilburn, Ga., when he was 10 years old.  But that vaguely Dutch lilt still flares up when he says certain words, and van den Berg’s roommates love to trigger it as a sort of game.

And apparently, hearing “here” – or “heah,” as van den Berg says it – leaves them tickled.

“I feel like they’re always making fun of it, but in a good way,” he said with a smile.

To his roommates’ delight, van den Berg was here, there and everywhere in Georgia Tech’s 24-14 win over Duke at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field. Making his first start of the season, the 6-foot-3, 305-pound defensive tackle finished with two tackles for a loss and a third down sack that pushed the Blue Devils out of field goal range. The performance earned him Tech’s defensive player of the game award for a second time this year.

It also earned him a visit from an impressed spectator afterwards: Duke head coach Manny Diaz, his defensive coordinator the past two seasons at Penn State.

“I got to see him after the game. It was really cool being able to shake hands with him. He just told me that he’s really proud of everything that I’ve accomplished, and he knew I was going to do great things,” the redshirt junior said.

He’s doing his part leading a run-stopping renaissance for Georgia Tech, which last year ranked third-worst in the nation in rush defense. Entering their matchup with North Carolina on Saturday (12:00 p.m. ET, Georgia Tech Sports Network), the Yellow Jackets have climbed to 11th.

Van den Berg wasn’t a part of those defensive struggles last year.  Technically, he didn’t have to feel burdened by them. But as an upperclassman transfer, he felt a deep-seated responsibility to turn them around.

“You don’t want to let your community down. I feel like everyone took it as, if we can’t stop the run, we’re letting down the whole college. Every fan. So I feel like we all really believe that and harp on that,” van den Berg explained.

His metrics have made him stand out even more, even if his conventional statistics look modest (10 tackles, 4.0 tackles for loss). Pro Football Focus recently graded van den Berg the top interior defensive lineman in the ACC and No. 9 interior defensive lineman nationally against the run (89.1). It also tabbed him the No. 10 interior defensive lineman overall.

“Every play is a street fight to him,” said head coach Brent Key in one of his more colorful quotes of the season.

It helps that those street fights are accompanied by an absurd amount of strength. For the past two seasons, van den Berg has appeared on The Athletic’s “Freaks List,” a ranking compiled by longtime college football writer Bruce Feldman honoring the 100 most physically gifted players in the nation. One look at his family tree may explain why: his grandmother, Joan Rocci, once held multiple national swimming records in South Africa, while his grandfather, Francois van den Berg, placed sixth in the Medium division of the 1967 Mr. Universe bodybuilding competition.

The overall winner that year? Some guy named Schwarzenegger, who took home his first-ever Mr. Universe title.

Not bad for a middle linebacker with zero college scholarship offers who didn’t start playing the sport until his sophomore year of high school. Adapting has been a recurring theme throughout his life. Like Diaz predicted, van den Berg has gone on to great things – even if those things took a little longer to accomplish.

Said van den Berg, that chipper, melodic accent poking out again: “I just felt like I needed a real true opportunity to show people what I could do.”

***

Most kids have their favorite football teams and players growing up.

Van den Berg did too – though his may have been Michael Oher and T.C. Williams High School.

Growing up in South Africa’s largest city – auspiciously, Johannesburg is nicknamed “The City of Gold” – van den Berg was a talented rugby player in his youth.  The sport is revered in his home country, with the Springboks winning a record four Rugby World Cups. Yet van den Berg also fell in love with American football, though not exactly by conventional means.

“Watching The Blind Side. I remember watching that when I was a kid. Remember The Titans, just watching that. I was like, wow. I loved it,” he recalled.

The oldest of five boys, he remembers the day his mom, Lisa, and stepfather, John Hendry, gathered their children together to deliver the news. With the economy sluggish in South Africa, they were moving their family to Lilburn, Ga., outside Atlanta, “to have the American Dream” as van den Berg put it. Lisa would continue her career as a photographer, while John had lined up a job in engineering.

“Me and my brothers were all excited. You grow up watching movies, and every movie is in America. We were all young. We were like, America’s got Disney World. Everyone was happy,” he said, adding that his father, Michael van den Berg, moved to the U.S. two years later.

His career in football wasn’t as glamorous as those movies or as storybook as Disney. Every time he asked his parents to let him play – a natural transition from rugby, he figured – they resisted. Concussion concerns, they told him.

“It took me many years to beg them, beg them, and finally they allowed me to play in 10th grade,” van den Berg said. “When I played in high school, you could see that hunger because I really wanted to play it my whole life.”

He made up for lost time, emerging as an all-state middle linebacker at Providence Christian Academy in Lilburn. But his Class A private school didn’t historically produce many Division I players and, despite racking up 157 tackles as a senior, college recruiters stayed off his scent. If he wanted to continue playing, van den Berg realized he’d have to bet on himself at the junior college level.

The coaching staff at Iowa Western Community College in Council Bluffs, Iowa, took a flier on him – with a catch.

“They didn’t have any linebacker spots, and they told me I could walk on and be a defensive end. I had no other offers, so I was like, I’ll do anything. I just want to keep playing the game,” he said.

***

van den Berg had already handled the assimilation from South Africa to Atlanta as a 10-year-old. Moving from metro Atlanta to Council Bluffs, Iowa, he insisted, wasn’t that daunting. The move to defensive end didn’t prove daunting either: in his lone season at Iowa Western in the spring of 2021, he earned first team JuCo All-American honors despite only playing six games.

His film ultimately attracted the attention of Penn State, where he converted to defensive tackle and appeared in 28 games across three seasons (2021-23). His playing time slowly increased with the Nittany Lions, from six tackles as a freshman to nine as a redshirt freshman to 11 as a redshirt sophomore in 2023.

Van den Berg showed flashes of production, but not quite the sustained level he had hoped for. His inclusion on The Athletic’s “Freaks List” may have felt like a hollow achievement in hindsight. When he entered the transfer portal, telecommunications degree in hand, in February 2024, he wanted a place where he could continue his development as a player.

He found a match 25 miles from where his family’s American journey began. Under the tutelage of Georgia Tech defensive line coach Jess Simpson – “probably the best D-Line coach in college football,” van den Berg said – he feels he’s finally tapped into the kind of player he knew he could become.

“J.J. is a great competitor, very physical, very powerful. He’s known for what he’s done in the weight room. He’s probably the strongest guy on our football team. But he combines all that stuff. He plays with relentless effort, he finishes on the ball and he’s really done a great job fitting in to the room,” Simpson said.

He’ll need all of those attributes on Saturday as Tech looks to shake off a pair of frustrating road losses to begin ACC play. Their revived run defense will also get a test from North Carolina running back Omarion Hampton, who ranks fifth in the nation in rushing (127.3 ypg).

However the second half of the season plays out, van den Berg will adapt just like he always has, determined to keep his re-sculpted career going strong.

“I knew that Georgia Tech was the right place,” he said, gazing out at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field.

“I was really happy that I was able to capitalize on my opportunity.”

2024 GEORGIA TECH FOOTBALL TICKETS

Single-Game Tickets

Single-game tickets for Georgia Tech’s two remaining home games at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field in 2024 – Nov. 9 vs. Miami (Fla.) and Nov. 21 vs. NC State – and a limited number of single-game tickets for the Notre Dame game on Oct. 19 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium are on sale now and can be purchased by clicking HERE.

Full Steam Ahead

Full Steam Ahead is a $500 million fundraising initiative to achieve Georgia Tech athletics’ goal of competing for championships at the highest level in the next era of intercollegiate athletics. The initiative will fund transformative projects for Tech athletics, including renovations of Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field (the historic home of Georgia Tech football), the Zelnak Basketball Center (the practice and training facility for Tech basketball) and O’Keefe Gymnasium (the venerable home of Yellow Jackets volleyball), as well as additional projects and initiatives to further advance Georgia Tech athletics through program wide-operational support. All members of the Georgia Tech community are invited to visit atfund.org/FullSteamAhead for full details and renderings of the renovation projects, as well as to learn about opportunities to contribute online.

For the latest information on the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and at www.ramblinwreck.com.