Ochaun
Mathis.
Ochaun
Mathis.
Nebraska· 6'5"· 260 lb· 4.74s 40
"A length-and-leverage edge whose one great season came in 2020 and never came back, drafted on the frame and the run defense rather than on anything he had done to a quarterback since."Pre-draft read
Mathis is a long-levered 6-5 edge defender who lived on the boundary side in a four-man front, playing with a wide base and heavy hands rather than a burst-first get-off. The primary trait is length: he stacks tackles at the point of attack, keeps his frame clean and works down the line with real range for a 260-pounder.
As a rusher he is a converter, not a bender — a long-arm and a rip that win late in the down when the tackle overextends, not a corner-flattening speed threat. He is stronger against the run than the pass, which is unusual for the archetype and part of why teams saw a rotational role first. The signature is the swipe-and-dip he flashed at TCU in 2020, the season that made him a nine-sack Big 12 name.
Four-man front as a base-down defensive end, or a 3-4 strong-side end asked to two-gap and hold the edge
Year 1: run-down rotational end and core special teamer. Ceiling: a starting base end in an even front who comes off the field on obvious passing downs.
A wide-9 speed-rush system that asks its edges to win the corner with get-off and bend on 40-plus pass snaps a game — he has neither the first step nor the ankle flexibility to live there.
His value is tied to being asked to set the edge, not to generate pressure; a defense that grades edges purely on pass-rush win rate has no use for him.
Ochaun Mathis 2020 Highlights
The season the evaluation is built on: nine sacks and 14 tackles for loss in ten games at TCU.
Ochaun Mathis vs Kansas State (2021)
A full-game look at the edge-setting and long-arm rush in his second All-Big 12 season.
Ochaun Mathis TCU Highlights
Career reel from Fort Worth showing the length, the chase range and the limits on the corner.
A four-year TCU starter who transferred to Nebraska for a final season, Mathis is a length-and-leverage edge with the frame teams keep in the building. He sets a firm edge, plays with his hands inside and holds up against down blocks, and he is disciplined enough on contain that his defensive coordinators trusted him on early downs from the first year he started.
The production tells the whole story of the evaluation. He started every game across three seasons at TCU and broke out in 2020 with nine sacks and 14 tackles for loss in a ten-game year, earning second-team All-Big 12. Then it went backward: four sacks in 2021, and 3.5 sacks with only 5.0 tackles for loss in his Nebraska season on a team in freefall. Two straight years of declining disruption from a player already older than the class is the flag that shows up on every report.
Boards had him as a late Day 3 developmental body — the traits and the 2020 tape justified a pick, the two seasons after it did not justify one earlier. The Rams, using a selection acquired from Tennessee in the Robert Woods trade, took him at 189 as exactly that: a long, experienced edge to develop behind an established rotation.
- 01
Length and frame
At 6-5 with genuinely long arms, he extends and locks out tackles at the point of attack and keeps his chest clean rather than getting swallowed inside the block.
- 02
Edge setting
Squeezes and holds contain against down blocks and pullers, the trait that kept him on the field on early downs for three different TCU staffs and then at Nebraska.
- 03
Long-arm rush
Wins with a stab-and-extend that stalls the tackle's punch, then a rip underneath late in the down; it is his one repeatable pass-rush plan and it does translate.
- 04
Chase range
Covers ground down the line and from the back side for a 260-pounder, showing up on tackles a step outside the numbers that most edges of his build never make.
- 05
Experience and durability
Started all 34 TCU games across 2019, 2020 and 2021 and then played every game at Nebraska, a 50-game body of work with no missed-season injury history.
- 01
Get-off
Not a burst player off the snap; he is late out of his stance more often than not, which lets NFL tackles set the corner before his rush plan ever gets started.
- 02
Bend
Stiff through the ankles and hips, so he cannot flatten to the quarterback and instead runs the arc wide, converting pressures into hurries rather than sacks.
- 03
Declining production
Nine sacks in 2020 fell to four in 2021 and 3.5 in 2022, with tackles for loss dropping from 14.0 to 7.0 to 5.0 as the level of competition rose.
- 04
Age and upside
He turned 24 during his rookie season after five college years, so the developmental runway teams pay for on Day 3 was shorter than the raw traits suggested.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.74sp50
- Vertical
- 33.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 118inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 4.38sp50
- Bench
- 21repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | TCU | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | TCU | 12 | 40 | 2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | TCU | 10 | 46 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | TCU | 12 | 45 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| 2022 | Nebraska | 12 | 48 | 3.5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Career | — | 50 | 183 | 19 | 0 | 6 | 1 |
2020, 2021 and 2022 verified line by line on cfbstats.com (TCU pages 2020-2021, Nebraska 2022). 2018 and 2019 are not hosted by cfbstats and come from Nebraska's official 2022 bio, which publishes his TCU career totals of 38 games, 135 tackles, 30.5 TFL, 15.5 sacks and 4 pass breakups; the four TCU seasons sum exactly to those totals. Nebraska's bio credits him with 50 tackles in 2022 while cfbstats has 48 — the cfbstats figure is used here. Interception and pass-breakup columns are left null for the seasons no source publishes them.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Rangy college producer who stuck as a rotational body and special teamer without ever earning a defined pass-rush role.
Long, late-blooming Day 3 edge who grew into a real starting role by pairing run-down reliability with a functional long-arm rush.
Roster-margin defensive lineman who survives on frame and effort, cycling through practice squads without meaningful defensive snaps.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Sixth-round length bet that never found a snap: three years, six organizations, five career tackles and a Super Bowl ring earned in a practice-squad jersey.
The Rams placed him on injured reserve on September 1, 2023 and activated him a month later; he played eight games as a rookie and recorded two tackles. Los Angeles waived him at the 2024 cutdown. New England signed him to the practice squad, promoted him at the end of October and released him three weeks later after five games. Philadelphia picked him up on November 22, 2024, he appeared in one game, and he was on the roster for the Super Bowl LIX run. He signed a future deal, was waived at the 2025 cutdown, and spent the rest of that season cycling through the Tennessee, Cleveland and New York Jets practice squads before the Jets waived him in May 2026. Career line through three seasons: 14 games, five tackles, one forced fumble, no sacks.
In hindsight this was the right price for the wrong bet. Every flag on the pre-draft report was the flag that ended it — the late get-off and the missing bend that turned four-star college length into a player who could not win a one-on-one rush in the NFL. What the report got right was the run-defense floor, which is what kept him in the league for three years on six rosters and got him a ring he earned in a practice-squad jersey. At 189 the Rams risked nothing, and they got nothing back.
Data note: College stats verified on cfbstats.com for 2020 (10 G, 46 tk, 14.0 TFL, 9.0 sacks), 2021 (12 G, 45 tk, 7.0 TFL, 4.0 sacks) and 2022 Nebraska (12 G, 48 tk, 5.0 TFL, 3.5 sacks); 2018 and 2019 are absent from cfbstats and were reconciled against Nebraska's official bio publishing TCU career totals of 38 G, 135 tackles, 30.5 TFL and 15.5 sacks, which the four TCU seasons sum to exactly. NFL production verified against ESPN career splits (2023 LAR 8 G, 2 tk; 2024 NE 5 G, 2 tk, 1 FF; 2024 PHI 1 G, 1 tk). No verifiable Combine or pro day testing numbers exist, so all athletic fields are left empty; height and weight are the school-listed 6-5, 260. Transaction history verified through Wikipedia and footballdb transaction logs.