The 49ers have been on a five-year quest. A quest… for an edge rusher to pair with Nick Bosa.
Since Dee Ford’s back failed him in 2019, San Francisco has sought out that player. That search has been mostly unsuccessful, but the 49ers cannot be faulted for trying:
2019: Drafted Nick Bosa. Traded a second-round pick to the Chiefs for Ford and paid him more than $46 million mostly to not play.
2020: Signed Kerry Hyder Jr. (let him go to Seattle, then brought back in 2022 and briefly in 2023). Extended Arik Armstead on a five-year, $85 million deal. He eventually moved to the interior.
2021: They took a flier on Arden Key and signed Samson Ebukam to a two-year, $12 million deal. Traded a sixth-round pick to the Texans for Charles Omenihu.
2022: Drafted Drake Jackson in the second round, traded for Jordan Willis in a sixth-for-seventh swap with the Jets.
2023: Drafted Robert Beal in the fifth round. Signed Clelin Ferrell, traded a third-round pick to the Commanders for Chase Young and swapped a sixth for a seventh to acquire Randy Gregory from the Broncos.
2024: Gave Leonard Floyd a two-year, $20 million contract and Yetur Gross-Matos a two-year, $18 million contract… and promoted Sam Okuayinonu to the active roster.
In that search for a Bosa partner, their greatest success — outside of Dee Ford’s 2019 flash — was with Omenihu and Key. Key left after one year in 2021, and Omenihu played two seasons before inking a two-year, $20 million deal with the Chiefs before last season. He’s recovering from a torn ACL and will likely be on the sideline Sunday, but was under-recognized for being elite at creating pressure and holding edges with the 49ers.
As it stands, Floyd has shown some early, promising signs of being a solid cleanup man on pass downs. Gross-Matos is on injured reserve. Neither has shown they are an every-down option.
But the last defensive player on the roster, Sam Okuayinonu? He has shown legitimate signs of being a capable every-down option.
You might know Okuayinonu (oh-kwu-AHN-new) more colloquially “Sam O.” He broke out against the Patriots in a game defined by his forced fumble on Rhamondre Stevenson. The hype has cooled a bit, but there is every reason to believe it should still be at a simmer.
Okuayinonu has been on the field for just 53 pass rush snaps and 36 run snaps. But in that short time, he has been magnificent. Per Pro Football Focus data, Okuayinonu ranks 17th out of 249 qualified players in pressure rate. He’s 40th out of those 249 in pass rush win rate.
In the run game, PFF ranks him as the 11th-best run defender amongst 251 qualified defensive linemen. He has the third-highest run stop rate at 14.3 percent and is, on average, tackling players 0.4 yards behind the line of scrimmage. That’s tied for the fourth-best mark in the league.
It’s a limited sample size. But the eye test backs up the data. It tells the story of a torqued-up edge rusher with the strength to set the edge on run downs, and the tweener size and flexibility to slot inside successfully. If the early returns stick, that is a monumental find.
He leads with power, and counters with a move you might have seen before: a two-hand swipe. It looks an awful lot like the move that Nick Bosa turned into a five-year, $170 million deal.
That’s because it is that move. Okuayinonu ripped it right off Bosa.
“Hell yeah, that’s Nick’s move,” Okuayinonu told me. “That was one of the things I stole from him. I’m always asking Nick questions in meetings and practice… Being in the same room as him is insane."
Against the Seahawks, Okuayinonu pulled that move off from a 3-technique position against right guard Anthony Bradford to sack Geno Smith for the only sack of the game on either side.
“It's funny, because we've been working on that all camp,” Bosa told me. “That was the best one he's had, including practice. So it shows that he's an in-game player.”
Bosa said he’s not surprised about how well the third-year pro is playing.
“He's playing really good,” Bosa said. “Definitely wouldn't say I'm surprised, but he's improved a ton. And he was on that trajectory during camp, and then he had a hamstring [injury], and then he came back and was a little off for a week or two, didn't make the team. The only thing that surprises me a little bit is just how quickly he's translated it to the game.”
At the start of training camp, Okuayinonu clocked in as just another guy. Teams need 90 players to compete in camp, and he registered as someone who probably wouldn’t make the roster.
But he showed flashes. He caught the eye at a time when the defensive line depth looked shaky, and made the initial roster before being cut almost immediately and stashed on the practice squad. After a couple gameday activations from the practice squad, he was signed back to the active roster at the end of September.
The reason few had heard of Okuayinonu was because he was and still is new to football. He grew up in the west African nation of Liberia, and moved to Lowell, Massachusetts with his mother when he was 12. He only started playing football his senior year of high school.
“It's crazy to think about that, the fact that I'm even here,” Okuayinonu said.
He bounced from Coahama Community College in Mississippi — the “first time” he saw real football — after spring ball, when he failed to get a scholarship. After sending his highlight tape around desperately, he landed at another junior college, Minnesota North College Mesabi Range. There, he had a 17.5-sack season, becoming a three-star prospect who transferred to the University of Maryland.
His production at Maryland, where he often slid inside over guards, at 3-technique, was decent, but not domineering. He finished with a 6.0-sack final season with 8.5 tackles for a loss.
But his athletic testing numbers were eye-catching. At his pro day, he had 31 bench press reps (96th percentile), a 35.5-inch vertical (87th percentile), a 10-foot, ⅜ inch broad jump (92nd percentile) and a 4.77-second 40-yard dash (76th percentile) with an 89th percentile 10-yard split at 1.62 seconds.
(Brock Purdy had a 4.84 40-yard dash and 1.61-second 10-yard split).
He went undrafted and signed with the Tennessee Titans, where he played six games and had half a sack in 2022, but was bumped up and down from the practice squad. That confidence and swagger he usually plays with wasn’t there. His approach was to avoid mistakes, not to make plays.
That confidence, Okuayinonu said, is back for the first time since his junior college days in Minnesota.
“I feel like the biggest difference for me is finding my confidence,” Okuayinonu said. “I feel like, really now, I'm starting to get my confidence back that I had at Mesabi Range. Even at Maryland — I had a good career at Maryland, but I feel like that swagger, that energy that I usually play with, I wasn't playing with that. Even Tennessee. Tennessee, I was scared not to mess up. But now I'm playing to make plays, and I'm excited to make plays. I'm not playing to not mess up. I'm playing to make plays now.”
The 49ers scooped him up to their practice squad in January of last year. They got him for nothing, and may have found something real.
Much of that credit goes to defensive line coach Kris Kocurek.
“He's been that big part of that confidence booster for me," Okuayinonu said. "Even when I have bad plays, he's very understanding. He's like, 'You're a football player, stuff happens,' and it's the next play. It's always about the next play. What you could do on that play to fix it, to make sure it don't happen again. But other places I've been, it's like you make a mistake, man, they scald you. And that kind of sticks in the back your head. It's like, ‘I don't want to mess up.’”
That's a fundamental shift from playing scared to being aggressive, and it shows up on tape.
In the fourth quarter against the Patriots, Okuayinonu stood up and pump-faked a pressure at the line of scrimmage a la Myles Garrett. His post-play celebrations — from beating his chest, to prowling on the ground — are impossible to miss.
Okuayinonu said he frequently watched tape of both his defensive line partners, Bosa and Floyd — as an admirer of the cross-chop — along with Aaron Donald, and a couple players in Elvis Dumervil and Cliff Avril, who had similar styles and physiques to his own.
His appreciation of players like Dumervil and Avril is a reflection that he knows his own strengths. He’s capable of slotting outside or inside with a stout frame at 6-foot-1-inch and 269 pounds.
Kocurek sees that too. Okuayinonu laid heavy praise on Kocurek for identifying his and others’ specific skillsets.
“He's so passionate about coaching,” Okuayinonu said. “The passion jumps out at you. You want to play for a guy like that. I just love how he coaches everybody to their strength. He understands everybody's different. Everybody has different body styles, different strengths, different weaknesses, and he coaches you to your advantages. And that's my favorite thing about him. Best coach. Best coach I've had for sure.”
Whether Okuayinonu can sustain this promising start to his 49ers career remains to be seen. But the early returns for the longshot are excellent, and the 49ers are going to continue to turn to him.
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