Hakeem
Adeniji.
Hakeem
Adeniji.
Kansas· 6'4"· 302 lb· 5.17s 40
"Adeniji is the rare four-year Power Five starter whose value was never the starting job itself but the certainty that he could take any of the five spots for a week."Pre-draft read
Adeniji is a light, athletic tackle who plays the position with movement skill rather than mass. He fires out of his stance quickly, reaches defenders on outside zone, and looks comfortable climbing to the second level and finding work in space. In pass protection he mirrors well laterally and recovers with quick feet when he loses the first step.
The second trait is durability and the football maturity that came with 47 straight starts against Big 12 competition, at both tackle spots. What he lacks is anchor: at barely 300 pounds he gets walked back by power and struggles to reset once a bull rush gets under him. The signature is athleticism and availability, not point-of-attack strength.
Outside-zone-based run game that lets its linemen move laterally and climb rather than displace defenders at the line
Year 1 swing backup at both tackle spots with guard flexibility; ceiling is a serviceable zone-scheme right tackle or starting guard once he adds functional strength.
A gap-and-power run scheme that asks its tackles to displace five-technique defenders and hold up one-on-one against bull rushers in a drop-back passing game.
Hakeem Adeniji Big 12
Kansas cutup of his run-game reach blocks and second-level climbs in Big 12 play.
Kansas Offense vs Boston College (2019)
Full senior-season offensive tape, the cleanest look at his pass sets and anchor limits.
Edge Jason Strowbridge vs OL Hakeem Adeniji [Senior Bowl Practice]
One-on-one Senior Bowl reps against an NFL edge, the pre-draft test of his hands and balance.
Adeniji is the definition of a four-year starter. He arrived at Kansas as a lightly recruited true freshman and started the season opener on Sept. 3, 2016, then never came off the field: 47 consecutive starts across four seasons, split between right tackle and left tackle, on rosters that won a combined handful of games. He was named to the Outland Trophy watch list twice and earned Associated Press All-Big 12 second-team honors as a senior.
The evaluation was about frame and function. He was listed at 6-foot-4 and roughly 300 pounds coming out, light for an NFL tackle, and the film showed exactly what that meant — clean reach blocks and comfortable movement in the run game, real trouble absorbing bull rushes from Big 12 power rushers. Kansas asked him to hold up on an island on a bad offense, so there were losses on tape, but the athletic baseline and the technique were legitimate.
Boards had him as a developmental swing lineman in the fourth-to-sixth range, with most evaluators projecting a move inside to guard where the anchor issues shrink. Cincinnati, rebuilding a line in front of a rookie Joe Burrow, took the flier at 180 as depth with position flexibility.
- 01
Availability
47 consecutive starts from his first college game through his last, at both tackle spots, with no missed time in four seasons.
- 02
Movement skill
he reaches defenders on outside zone and climbs to linebackers comfortably, the athletic trait that made him a fit for a zone run game.
- 03
Lateral mirror
quick, balanced feet in pass sets that let him stay in front of speed rushers and recover when beaten on the first move.
- 04
Positional flexibility
experience at left and right tackle with a frame that projected inside to guard, exactly the swing profile a sixth-round pick needs.
- 05
Football maturity
four years as a Power Five starter on overmatched offenses forced him to play with technique and awareness rather than help.
- 01
Anchor
at roughly 300 pounds he gets walked into the quarterback by bull rushers and cannot reset his base once his heels are moving.
- 02
Play strength at contact
he does not generate displacement in the run game, which limits him in gap and duo concepts that ask the tackle to move a man.
- 03
Hand placement
strikes land wide and late at times, letting defenders into his chest where his lack of mass shows up immediately.
- 04
Level of competition on a losing roster
years of technique under duress on a bad Kansas offense meant plenty of tape of him losing without help.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.17sp50
- Vertical
- 34inp50
- Broad jump
- 115inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 26repp50
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Kansas | 12 |
| 2017 | Kansas | 12 |
| 2018 | Kansas | 12 |
| 2019 | Kansas | 11 |
| Career | — | 47 |
Sports-Reference lists 12/12/12/11 games across the four seasons for a 47-game career, and Kansas confirmed he started every game of his career — his 46th consecutive start came against Oklahoma State on Nov. 16, 2019, one of the longest active streaks among Power Five linemen. Offensive linemen have no statistical production to record, so only games and starts are carried.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Late-round tackle who sticks as the sixth lineman and is pressed into starts when injuries hit.
Athletic swing lineman who turns positional flexibility into a long run of spot starts at tackle and guard.
Light college tackle whose anchor never catches up and who cycles through practice squads.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Cincinnati got real value at 180. Adeniji played in 10 games as a rookie in 2020 and started six at right tackle, then settled into the swing role for the Super Bowl run: he started at left guard during the 2021 playoffs, playing all four postseason games including Super Bowl LVI, and started three more playoff games in 2022 at tackle. Over three seasons with the Bengals he started 15 regular-season games and seven playoff games. He moved on to Dallas and then Minnesota, finishing with 55 regular-season appearances and 16 starts across five seasons. He signed with Baltimore in the summer of 2026 and was placed on the reserve/retired list eight days later, ending his career.
In hindsight, this is what the sixth round is supposed to produce. He never became a full-time starter — the anchor limitation that showed on Kansas tape never got fixed, and he was exposed when he had to play extended snaps in the playoffs. But he gave a contending team five years of interior and tackle depth, dressed for 55 games, and started seven postseason games including a Super Bowl. Judged against the pick, that is a clear hit; judged against a starting job, the ceiling was always the ceiling.