AAMU Alumnus Now in His 3rd Year with the NFL

He’s been to the NFC Championship and Super Bowl, and spent time shooting newly retired NFL star Jason Kelce. Alabama A&M University alumnus Marlon Sanders, Jr. is a Video Assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles and has one heck of a journey to the NFL. The football player who arrived on The Hill from Mobile, Alabama, hoped to join the Bulldogs as a walk on, but his mother had other ideas.

"My mom told me to concentrate on school,” says Sanders. “But I was missing football. So, when the football team tweeted it was looking for videographers, I reached out. I remember it was 10:06 p.m. I ended up joining my roommate and best friend, Da’Vonta Ealy, shooting video for the Bulldogs. Ealy is also in the NFL with the Baltimore Ravens. 

Sanders graduated from AAMU with a communications media degree in 2019 and had a difficult time finding a job during the pandemic. "Da’Vonta had taken an internship with the Washington Redskins in 2018,” says Sanders. “He called me and said, ‘You can do this!’ I ended up back home in Mobile and interned with the University of South Alabama. I got to work the Senior Bowl in Mobile and helped the Panthers and Dolphins film all week. After that, I started reaching out to the NFL. When I called Patrick Dolan, vice president of football technology for the Eagles, he said, ‘I’m glad you called. I was just about to call you.’ And the rest is history.”

Sanders interned as a seasonal video assistant for a year before the Eagles hired him as a full-time video assistant in March 2022.

“This isn’t the glamourous, flashy video you see on TV. There is no audio. It's “Teach Tape,” what the players, coaches and scouts watch for grading everything from coaching to effort,” says Sanders.

Last year Sanders was on the sidelines when the Eagles beat the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship and advanced to Super Bowl LVII.

“You come back with thoughts of winning it all, and you want to share that moment with the people you work countless hours with, they’re essentially your family,” says Sanders. “We started off 10-1, and it looked as if we were well on our way, and we lost 5 of the last 6 games and lost the playoffs against Tampa in the first round. We’re support staff, we’re not playing or scoring touchdowns, but we do have a duty and standard to uphold, to keep a positive mindset every day and to bring optimistic energy.”

Sanders says one of the year’s highlights was the Monday Night Football game against Kansas City, a Super Bowl rematch and on the road at Arrowhead Stadium. “I’ve always heard how loud it is there and the atmosphere on that cold night in November didn’t disappoint, and we got the win,” says Sanders. “Another one was the energy from our fan base at Lincoln Financial Field when we wore our throwback Kelly green uniforms on Sunday Night primetime against the Bills. That place was electric, and we pulled out a nail-biting win in overtime. That was my first time filming an overtime game in the NFL.”

Sanders also shared his thoughts on time he spent shooting recently retired Eagles Center Jason Kelce.

“One of my first duties my intern year here was filming the offensive line for practice, that was my group all day, all year,” says Sanders. “Getting to watch him every day was special, the way he conducted the offensive line and helped the younger guys was like having an extension of the coaching staff on the field. Seeing the hard work he put in throughout the week and then getting a huge standing ovation during pre-game intros put me in awe. He is everything that being a Philadelphia Eagle is.”

Sanders says he’s looking forward to next season, as the Eagles will play in the first NFL game ever to be played in Brazil. He and fellow Bulldog Ealy talk almost every day.

“The moment that took the cake was filming next to Da’Vonta for the first game of the year in the preseason,” says Sanders. “The interesting thing about working in coach’s video, we're the only department in the NFL that works side by side with each other on game day. We manned the secondary end zone booth for our respective clubs and had a blast. We kept saying to each other, ‘Who would've thought?’”