Texas Football: Ovie Oghoufo will be disruptive force for pass rush

In the wake of the loss of the former Texas football star junior outside linebacker/edge rusher Joseph Ossai, new head coach Steve Sarkisian and his staff went looking in the NCAA Transfer Portal this offseason to find a replacement. And in that process, the likes of Sark and new co-defensive coordinators/linebackers coaches Pete Kwiatkowski and Jeff Choate found four additions to this position group out of the transfer portal.

Some of the more notable transfer additions include former LSU Tigers senior linebacker Ray Thornton, Alabama Crimson Tide senior linebacker Ben Davis, and Notre Dame Fighting Irish junior edge rusher Ovie Oghoufo. It feels like Sark and this new coaching staff are just trying to see what sticks in the midst of all of the roster turnover, namely from the loss of Ossai.

Texas is going to need the spark from their pass rush to come from somewhere. Not only did they lose their leading sack getter from last year in Ossai, but senior defensive end Ta’Quon Graham is gone too. Both Ossai and Graham were picked up in the 2021 NFL Draft.

Moreover, it won’t be easy for the Longhorns to make up for the losses of Ossai and Graham in the front seven right away. The pass rush specifically will suffer out of the gates.

So who will be counted upon to replace any bit of their production from last year?

Ovie Oghoufo an underrated and disruptive force for Texas football

My personal take is that the former Fighting Irish outside linebacker/edge rusher and blue-chip recruit Oghoufo is a good place to start for Choate and Kwiatkowski in their quest to piece together this front seven. Oghoufo was one of the initial adds out of the transfer portal for the Longhorns this offseason.

And Oghoufo is also one of the most productive edge rushers that Texas brings back this year, despite the loss of key linebackers like Ossai and new Tennessee junior linebacker Juwan Mitchell. He brings six career sacks, 33 combined tackles, six tackles for loss, five pass breakups, one forced fumble, and one fumble recovery, in a limited workload from his time with Notre Dame.

Last fall was a good example of how effective Oghoufo can be in a linebacker/edge rusher rotation. He was only on the field for 78 snaps where he rushed the passer with Notre Dame last season, but he was disruptive very often.

In those 78 snaps where he was able to rush the passer, Oghoufo had three sacks, two quarterback hits, and four additional quarterback pressures. That is good for a pressure rate of just north of 11.5 percent. That would put Oghoufo in a similar ballpark to the likes of former star Texas pass rushers Ossai and Charles Omenihu.

An 11.5 percent pressure rate is actually better than the one that Omenihu registered during his senior campaign with the Longhorns, where he was also the Big 12 Defensive Lineman of the Year.

If you include batted balls at the line of scrimmage, the disruptive rate for Oghoufo last season climbed up above 12 percent. That is pretty high for an edge rusher that didn’t have a heavy workload under head coach Brian Kelly.

And what separates Oghoufo is the level of versatility he brings to the table along with his pass-rushing ability. He has five pass breakups, and three batted balls, to his name from his two seasons playing for Notre Dame. Oghoufo is solid when he is assigned to drop into pass coverage.

This was a solid find for the Longhorns out of the transfer portal given how effective Oghoufo was in limited snaps during his time at Notre Dame. He lined up as an outside rusher in the box in almost all of the snaps he took during his time in South Bend, so he can fill a clear-cut role with Texas right away.