Julian
Okwara.
Julian
Okwara.
Notre Dame· 6'4"· 252 lb
"A long, bendy Notre Dame edge with one full season of production and a broken leg to close his career, asking teams to pay for first-step explosiveness and bet that functional strength would arrive later."Pre-draft read
Okwara is a long, loose edge rusher who wins with first-step quickness and bend rather than power. He gets off the ball in a hurry, threatens the outside shoulder immediately and can dip under a tackle's punch to flatten to the quarterback. When he times the snap and the tackle is slow out of his stance, the rep is over before the pocket forms.
The frame is the other half of the appeal: he has the arm length to keep blockers off his chest and the closing burst to finish plays he starts. What is missing is mass and a plan. At roughly 250 pounds he gets moved in the run game when a tackle gets hands on him, and his counters are underdeveloped, so pass-rush reps that are not won in the first two steps tend to stall against the block.
Four-man front that rotates edge rushers heavily and lets a speed specialist pin his ears back on obvious passing downs.
Year 1 designated pass rusher on third down while he adds functional strength, with a ceiling as a starting weak-side end who wins with get-off and bend.
A two-gap or heavy-set front that asks the end to hold the point against tight ends and double teams on early downs, where his lack of anchor is immediately exposed.
His value is tied entirely to snap-count management; the fewer run downs he plays, the better the rush numbers look.
Notre Dame DE Julian Okwara Career Highlights
Full career cutup, the clearest look at the get-off and bend that carried his draft grade.
Julian Okwara Notre Dame Highlights (2018)
The breakout junior season with eight sacks and 12.5 tackles for loss, his only full year of production.
Notre Dame's Julian Okwara vs. North Carolina
Single-game reel with two tackles, an interception and three hurries, useful for grading full-snap consistency.
Okwara followed his older brother Romeo from Charlotte to South Bend and took three years to arrive. He played sparingly as a freshman, filled a rotational role as a sophomore with 17 tackles and 2.5 sacks, then broke out as a junior in 2018 with 39 tackles, 12.5 tackles for loss and eight sacks, leading the Irish in both categories with 21 quarterback hurries.
The senior year was supposed to confirm it and instead ended early. He was a team captain and a preseason All-American, produced a three-sack, two-forced-fumble performance against Virginia that earned national defensive player of the week honors, and then broke his leg against Duke in the ninth game. He finished 2019 with 19 tackles, seven tackles for loss and five sacks, closing his college career at 79 tackles, 24 tackles for loss and 15.5 sacks.
That left teams grading a player on 13 productive games and an incomplete pre-draft process, since the leg injury limited what he could do in Indianapolis. The tools were obvious: length, get-off and bend that no amount of coaching creates. So were the concerns, because he was a light edge who never anchored against the run and whose production came in bursts rather than steadily. Detroit, already rostering his brother, took the traits at the top of the third round.
- 01
First-step explosiveness
Times the snap and beats tackles off the ball, generating pressure before the protection sets and forcing the quarterback off his spot.
- 02
Ankle flexion
Genuinely bendy for his height, able to dip under the punch and flatten his path to the quarterback rather than running himself past the pocket.
- 03
Length
Long arms that let him extend into blockers and keep his frame clean, a trait that translates against NFL tackles even when the power is lacking.
- 04
Peak production
Eight sacks and 12.5 tackles for loss as a junior, then three sacks and two forced fumbles in a single game against Virginia as a senior.
- 05
Developmental frame
Carries his weight well with obvious room to add functional strength, which is the specific fix his profile needs most.
- 01
Play strength
Gets displaced at the point of attack when a tackle lands hands on him, which limits him to a designated pass-rushing role on early downs.
- 02
Pass-rush plan
Relies heavily on speed to the edge with underdeveloped counters, so when the first move fails the rep is over against better blockers.
- 03
Injury and sample size
A broken leg ended his senior season after nine games and left only one full year of high-level production to evaluate.
- 04
Run defense
Inconsistent setting the edge and holding contain, which means a defense has to substitute for him rather than leaving him on the field.
— — — positional median (p50)
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| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Notre Dame | 11 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | Notre Dame | 12 | 17 | 2.5 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2018 | Notre Dame | 13 | 39 | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Notre Dame | 9 | 19 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| Career | — | 45 | 79 | 15.5 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
Bowl-inclusive totals; season figures sum exactly to the career line of 79 tackles, 24 tackles for loss and 15.5 sacks. Notre Dame's official site lists marginally different 2018 and 2019 splits because it excludes bowl games in some entries. The 2019 season ended after nine games with a broken leg suffered at Duke. Pass-breakup splits are not published in a verifiable source and are left null.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
His own brother: a rotational edge who produces in the right role and season but never locks down a full-time job.
The ceiling version, where a raw, long, explosive edge adds real strength and becomes a double-digit-sack starter.
Light, bendy rusher drafted for traits who never adds the strength to stay on the field and bounces around as a depth piece.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The injury followed him. Okwara played six games as a rookie in 2020 while still recovering from the leg, then delivered the one season that looked like the projection: 27 tackles, six tackles for loss and five sacks in 13 games in 2021, with an interception and a forced fumble. He never built on it. Injuries and the arrival of better edge players cut him to 10 games and two sacks in 2022, and nine games with two sacks in 2023 before Detroit moved on. He signed with Arizona for 2024 and played 13 games in a rotational role with one sack, and has since been a depth and practice-squad signing. His career line stands at 72 tackles and ten sacks across 51 games with no starts of consequence.
In hindsight this is a miss, and a fairly predictable one. The evaluation identified a light, one-move edge rusher with a single productive college season and a broken leg, and the NFL response to that profile was exactly what it usually is: brief flashes when the speed rush worked, then a steady slide down the rotation once opposing tackles had answers. Detroit did nothing unreasonable taking the traits at the top of the third round, but the fixes the profile required, added strength and a counter plan, never came, and ten sacks in five seasons is not a return on that pick.
Data note: Imported from Wikipedia 2020 NFL draft player selections table.