David
Ojabo.
David
Ojabo.
Michigan· 6'4"· 250 lb· 4.55s 40
"One season of production, eleven sacks, and a torn Achilles at his pro day — no evaluation in the 2022 class swung harder on things that had not happened yet."Pre-draft read
Stand-up edge rusher who wins with speed and bend off the outside shoulder. The get-off is genuinely rare: he beats the tackle's set with the first two steps, flattens at the top of the arc without losing ground, and finishes with long arms and a violent dip. Michigan lined him up wide as the reduction rusher opposite Aidan Hutchinson and let him run.
Against the run he is a work in progress, more athlete than technician, and power rushers will still walk him backwards. Hand usage is raw and the counter package is one move deep. The separator is that he had played organized football for barely four years — the traits are years ahead of the technique, and the arrow is straight up.
3-4 or multiple front that uses a stand-up outside linebacker as a designated speed rusher on passing downs
Year 1 sub-package rusher on 20-25 snaps a game; ceiling is a double-digit-sack starting edge once the run defense catches up
A four-down even front that asks its ends to hold the point against tight ends and pull-heavy run games on early downs
Value depends entirely on a coaching staff willing to protect him from early-down run work for two seasons while the technique develops.
David Ojabo 2021 Michigan Highlights
Full breakout season: speed rushes, bend and strip-sacks.
Highlights: Michigan Defensive Lineman David Ojabo | 2022 NFL Draft
Draft-season cut-up of his get-off and finishing at the top of the arc.
David Ojabo 2021 Highlights
Rush reps opposite Aidan Hutchinson, including the Ohio State sack.
Ojabo is a Scottish-raised, Nigerian-born edge rusher who came to football late, played basketball into high school, and needed until his fourth year on campus to start a game. When he finally did, in 2021, he produced 11 sacks, 12 tackles for loss and five forced fumbles in 14 games opposite Aidan Hutchinson on a Big Ten championship defense.
Everything about the profile is upside. The bend and the burst are the traits, the strip-sacks show the finishing instinct, and there is very little tape of him being schemed to. There is also very little tape at all: one year of production, a single-move rush plan and no answers yet against the run. Then, at his pro day in March, he tore his Achilles in front of every scout in the building.
He had been a fringe top-15 talent before the injury. Afterward rooms had to price a redshirt rookie season into a player who was already a projection. Baltimore, which can afford patience at the position better than most, let him fall to 45 and took the traits.
- 01
First-step burst
beats tackles to the corner with the initial two steps, the single hardest trait for an offensive line to coach against.
- 02
Ankle flexion
bends and flattens at the top of the arc without decelerating, turning speed rushes into pressure instead of a run-around.
- 03
Ball production
five forced fumbles in one season, a sign he attacks the arm at the finish rather than just arriving at the quarterback.
- 04
Length and frame
6-foot-4 with the arms to keep tackles off his chest and room to add functional weight without losing the burst.
- 05
Developmental arrow
barely four years into playing the sport, so the gap between his current technique and his ceiling is enormous.
- 01
Torn Achilles
the pro day injury effectively erased his rookie season and adds real risk to a profile already built on projection.
- 02
One-year sample
a single season of production against a run of injury and depth-chart circumstance is thin evidence for a top-50 pick.
- 03
Run defense
gets displaced by down blocks and does not consistently set a firm edge, so early-down snaps are not available yet.
- 04
Rush plan
the speed rush is the whole package; the counters, the long arm and the inside move all need to be built from scratch.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.55sp50
- Vertical
- 35inp50
- Broad jump
- 122inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 4.45sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Michigan | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Michigan | 14 | 35 | 11 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| Career | — | 20 | 36 | 11 | 0 | 3 | 5 |
Both seasons verified on cfbstats: 2020 shows six appearances and one tackle with no other categories recorded, and 2021 shows 14 games, 35 tackles, 12 TFL, 11 sacks, three pass breakups and five forced fumbles. Categories cfbstats does not publish for a season are left blank rather than filled with zeros. He did not record defensive statistics before 2020, so no earlier season line is listed; some trackers credit him with 26-27 career games by counting appearances the cfbstats ledger does not.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Situational edge who produces on passing downs but never earns a full early-down role.
Late-blooming speed rusher who turns bend and burst into double-digit sacks once the plan fits him.
High-ceiling rusher whose career gets defined by soft-tissue and lower-leg injuries rather than by tape.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
David Ojabo missed most of his rookie season recovering from an Achilles injury suffered before the draft. He has seen limited action as a rotational pass rusher for the Baltimore Ravens.
The Achilles cost him almost everything the projection needed. He played two games as a rookie in 2022 and three in 2023, spending both years on the injury list, and by the time he was healthy Baltimore had drafted and developed other rushers. His first real workload came in 2024 — 13 games, two sacks in a rotational role — and in 2025 he played a career-high 14 games with 16 tackles and half a sack. Four seasons in Baltimore produced 32 games and 4.5 sacks. He signed with Miami in March 2026 for a fresh start.
This is the risk everyone priced correctly and the outcome nobody wants. The traits that made him a first-round talent were real, and there are snaps in 2024 and 2025 where the bend still shows. But a player who was already one season of production away from being a finished evaluation lost two developmental years to the Achilles and never got them back. Baltimore's process was defensible — this is exactly the swing a contender should take at 45 — and the result was still a second-round pick who never became a starter.
Data note: Imported from Wikipedia 2022 NFL draft player selections table.