Josh
Uche.
Josh
Uche.
Michigan· 6'1"· 245 lb
"He rushed the passer on roughly 300 college snaps and produced 16.5 sacks on them, which is either the most efficient pass rusher in the class or the smallest sample anyone spent a second-round pick on."Pre-draft read
Undersized, explosive sub-package rusher who lines up as a stand-up edge and wins with bend and speed rather than power. The get-off is the trait: he times the snap, presses the tackle's outside shoulder and dips underneath the punch with genuine ankle flexion.
The counter is the second skill — he threatens up the field, then crosses the blocker's face and wins inside when the tackle oversets, which is why his rush wins do not depend on any single move. At 226 pounds he offers almost nothing against the run and can be sealed by a tight end. The signature is the third-and-long rep where he is on the quarterback in two and a half seconds without touching anyone on the way.
Multiple front that builds designed pressure packages for a sub-package speed rusher
Year 1 as a designated third-down rusher taking 20 to 25 snaps a game; ceiling is a 10-sack situational weapon in a defense that scripts his pressures.
A base four-three that asks its edge to set the edge on early downs against pro tight ends, which puts him on the field for snaps he physically cannot win.
His value is entirely coaching-dependent: he needs a coordinator who scripts his rush lanes rather than one who asks him to play a position.
Josh Uche Michigan Football Highlights
Career cut-up of the Michigan pass-rush reps, the whole basis of the evaluation.
Josh Uche | 2018 College Highlights
The seven-sack junior year in a rotational role that first put him on draft boards.
Michigan's Josh Uche shows pass-rushing technique
Uche walking through his own rush plan, useful context for the counter package.
A Miami product who spent four years at Michigan being deployed as a designated rusher rather than a full-time defender, he blossomed in Don Brown's pressure scheme: seven sacks in a part-time role as a junior and 8.5 as a senior, finishing with 16.5 career sacks and 20.5 tackles for loss. At 6-3 and 226 pounds with long arms, he is built like a rush linebacker and nothing else.
The efficiency is extraordinary and the sample is tiny. He never played more than a rotational share of snaps, never carried significant run-defense responsibility, and never took the coverage reps that a modern off-ball linebacker needs. His Senior Bowl week was terrific — he was the best pass rusher in Mobile by acclamation — which pushed a player with 56 career tackles firmly into day-two conversations.
The board split by scheme. Teams that wanted a designated third-down rusher had him in the second round; teams that wanted a three-down player did not. New England, whose defense has always found roles for hybrid pieces, took him at 60 and planned to use him exactly as Michigan had.
- 01
Explosive first step
Times the snap and beats tackles off the ball, which is the single hardest pass-rush trait to teach at any level.
- 02
Genuine bend
Flexes his ankles and dips under the punch to flatten around the corner without losing speed to the quarterback.
- 03
Counter package
Wins inside when a tackle oversets, so his production is not tied to one move or one alignment.
- 04
Rush efficiency
16.5 sacks on a part-time snap share is among the best pressure rates in the class relative to opportunity.
- 05
Senior Bowl dominance
Widely regarded as the best pass rusher in Mobile, which confirmed the tape against better competition.
- 01
Undersized for the edge
At 226 pounds he gets displaced by tight ends and cannot hold up on early downs against NFL run schemes.
- 02
Tiny snap sample
Fifty-six career tackles in four seasons means evaluators are projecting from a fraction of a normal starter's workload.
- 03
No coverage résumé
Barely dropped at Michigan, so the off-ball linebacker conversion that his size suggests is entirely theoretical.
- 04
Role dependency
His value collapses in a scheme that does not build specific pressure packages around a sub-package rusher.
— — — positional median (p50)
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| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Michigan | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2017 | Michigan | 10 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | Michigan | 12 | 15 | 7 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2019 | Michigan | 13 | 35 | 8.5 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Career | — | 39 | 56 | 16.5 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
Sports-Reference totals include bowl games; season sums match the career line exactly (56 tackles, 20.5 TFL, 16.5 sacks, three pass breakups and three forced fumbles in 39 games). The low tackle totals reflect a deliberate part-time role as a designated pass rusher rather than missed time.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A scheme-dependent hybrid who carves out a decade as a valued rotational piece on multiple defenses.
The outcome where an undersized college rusher eventually grows into a double-digit-sack full-time starter.
A speed rusher with one huge season surrounded by years of production that never comes close to repeating.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
New England used him sparingly for two years, then unlocked him in 2022: 11.5 sacks in 15 games on a part-time snap count, one of the best pressure rates in the league that season. It did not hold. He managed three sacks in 2023 and was traded to Kansas City midway through 2024, where he recorded none in six games. He signed with Philadelphia for 2025, posted one sack in 12 games while generating 23 pressures on 142 rush snaps, and returned home to Miami on a contract in March 2026, appearing in the first two games with 10 tackles and no sacks. His career line reads 78 games, five starts, 119 tackles, 21.5 sacks and two forced fumbles across four teams.
The evaluation nailed both the shape of the player and the risk. He was always a pure sub-package rusher, he never became a three-down defender, and more than half his career sacks came in a single season. That 2022 year is the reason the pick was not a disaster; everything around it is the reason nobody has handed him a starting job. For pick 60, a seven-year career as a rotational rusher with one very good season is a slightly below-average return in a round where teams are hunting for starters.
Data note: from Baltimore