Is there a more well-liked player in the NFL than Alejandro Villanueva? At least among offensive linemen, there certainly isn’t. The former Army Ranger was inadvertently caught in the national spotlight this past September and the immediate resulted in him briefly becoming something of a household name.
Need an example of this? He was the only offensive lineman in the NFL among the top 50 in player merchandise sales for 2017. And the vast majority of those sales came just in the fourth quarter of the year. It even helped vault him into the Pro Bowl, though the Pittsburgh Steelers’ success—and his own performance of course—also helped get him there.