The Dom: The Road to the NFL
Rookie defensive tackle Domonique Orange, a third-round pick, had to overcome issues with his weight, grades and discipline before becoming a pro.
Domonique Orange can be candid about the situation now.
But in the moment — to his family and friends, in his hometown of Kansas City? No way.
It was Orange’s junior year, and he was suspended for Iowa State’s game against Kansas at Arrowhead Stadium for a locker room altercation with one of his coaches the week prior.
Orange, now a rookie defensive lineman with the Vikings, told most people he was hurt. Only his mom and his teammates knew the truth. Iowa State lost the game 45-36, only its second loss of the season.
“That kind of lit a fire under me,” Orange told the Minnesota Star Tribune in mid-September. “Of course, some things were said that ticked me off a little bit, but it really made me understand. ... ‘Yeah, I can’t be selfish when I’m playing this game.’ That was kind of the mindset I had.”
Orange’s journey with accountability — to himself, then to those around him — has been one years in the making. But to be a pro, and, more specifically, a defender in Brian Flores’ vaunted defense, it was a necessary one.
Just a handful of games into the third-round pick’s first NFL season, Orange has shown he knows how to play his role. The 6-2, 322-pound nose tackle was credited with the tackle on a pivotal fourth-and-1 stop against the Green Bay Packers in the Vikings’ Week 1 comeback.
Flores called the play “a testament to playing deep team defense, handling your responsibility.”
Orange’s suspension in November 2024 was a turning point that helped make it possible.
Across the field from him that day in Kansas City was his high school coach, Leon Douglas, now the Director of Player Development at Iowa State.
Douglas didn’t know he wouldn’t see his former protege on the field.
The conversation the pair had afterward stuck in Orange’s head.
“Whatever happened, put it aside,” Orange recounted Douglas telling him. “It’s just the business of the game. Stuff’s gonna happen that’s not gonna go your way. How are you going to respond?”
The next Saturday, Orange played what he believes is one of the best games of his career thus far.
That set him off on his path to the NFL, and what he hopes is a long tenure in Minnesota.
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Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger!
Domonique Orange struggled with weight
Another part of Orange’s journey he’s blunt about now that it’s far behind him?
His senior season in high school.
“I got fat,” Orange said with a laugh.
Orange was already deep into his courtship with Iowa State at the time, having been identified by then-Cyclones assistant Nate Scheelhaase — now the Los Angeles Rams’ offensive coordinator — coming out of his freshman year. Orange was offered a scholarship shortly after attending a linemen camp at the school. He was around 300 pounds at the time.
A strong junior campaign earned Orange offers from around the country, but he’d been gaining weight through the COVID-19 pandemic, bored and eating “from sunup to sundown.”
By his senior season, his weight had slipped out of control. Orange said he reached 400 pounds.
“I kept telling him, ‘Man, the film’s awful. It’s awful,’” said former Iowa State defensive line coach Eli Rasheed, Orange’s other main recruiter. “Really everybody fell off of him ‘cause it was really bad.”
The Cyclones knew Orange still had potential. They stuck with him.
Douglas did his best to help Orange manage his weight.
When workouts were limited by COVID, Douglas would put Orange in the final group of the day so he could run him extra after practice.
He even bought a ski machine so Orange could do cardio with lower impact on his joints. It’s still at North Kansas City High School.
“I can tell you this: However much he weighed, he was still the best football player,” Douglas said. “He’s a pretty damn good football player at every stop of his journey.”
But Douglas knew the best way to help Orange was to get him to college as soon as possible. There were resources he couldn’t provide, help he couldn’t give.
So Douglas helped Orange graduate early. Orange enrolled at Iowa State in spring 2022 to being training with the Cyclones.
Orange at first hoped to coast through the back half of his senior year, but the realization leaving could mean he’d see the field earlier in college sold him.
“Yeah, bro, I’m on top of the world,” Orange recalled thinking.
Domonique Orange learns to lock in at Iowa State
Orange quickly came crashing down to earth at Iowa State.
He hadn’t yet learned to hold himself accountable, and no one on campus was doing it for him.
“I ain’t got nobody holding my hand to go to class,” Orange said. “I ain’t got nobody telling me when to wake up. I hated school.”
Only one semester into college, Orange was ineligible. Summer school classes got him back above the minimum GPA needed to play, but he was barely scraping by.
Then-Iowa State coach Matt Campbell had a refrain for players: “If you’re not going to do your school work, what makes you think I would trust you to go out there and play for our team, play in front of thousands of fans?”
Hearing that was part of the motivation Orange needed to get himself in order. His relationship with Rasheed — one Orange described as “like father-son” — helped, too.
He eventually became a four-time Big 12 Commissioner’s Honor Roll recipient.
Orange played right away at Iowa State but did not become a regular starter until his senior year, after the suspension.
During the spring ahead of his senior season, Orange debated whether he even still wanted to play football. He struggled with perfectionism and feeling like he wasn’t doing things “right,” he said.
He knew Campbell had big expectations for him in 2025. Iowa State would need Orange to be on the field as often as possible on defense. They had to give him breaks in previous seasons due to his weight, Rasheed said.
“I was trying to also make [Campbell] happy, me happy, teammates happy, defensive line coach happy, my momma happy,” Orange said. “Everything is piling on, and it’s like, ‘Hey, I can’t take it no more.’ That was kind of the battle I was fighting, but luckily I got out of it.”
Orange embraced the challenge. He averaged 46 snaps per game in 2025 across his 12 starts, maxing out at 62 late in the season. Across the three prior seasons, Orange had averaged just 27 snaps per game.
Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger!
Domonique Orange went to NFL with changed mindset
Years before that postgame conversation between Orange and Douglas at Arrowhead Stadium, Douglas spent time with the Kansas City Chiefs as a Bill Walsh NFL Diversity Coaching fellow.
One of Douglas’ biggest takeaways? Orange was going to the NFL. He could just see it after getting that close-up look at the league.
“The reason why I felt so confident about Dom is because the sheer size and athleticism, he had it, and I seen it already,” Douglas said. “It was one of those deals where it was just like more of not if, but when.”
Rasheed also recognized Orange’s pro-level talent early on, taking it upon himself to keep pushing him.
While others saw Orange’s future clearly, the challenges he faced along the way — his weight, school struggles, the suspension — tested his resolve.
He had to forge a new mentality at Iowa State. His embracement of the “Big Citrus” nickname, coined online by Cyclones fans, was part of that.
“I had to realize ain’t nothing guaranteed,” Orange said. “The only thing that’s guaranteed is death and taxes. ... I gotta put my head down every day and work.”
The Vikings picked Orange at No. 82 overall, making him the ninth defensive tackle drafted in 2026. He was the only Iowa State player taken.
Orange appeared for over 20 snaps in each of the Vikings’ first two games behind and alongside more seasoned teammates like Jalen Redmond and Levi Drake Rodriguez and 13 against the Buccaneers in Week 3.
He’s a personality in the locker room. Teammates respect that he knows his role.
It’s been a long journey to get to this point.
“As long as you work as hard as you can, the cards gonna fall where they lay at that point,” Orange said. “You did everything you can.”
Hurry-up Vikings, we ain't getting any younger!
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