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The 49ers traded a third-round pick to the Dallas Cowboys for disruptive 27-year-old defensive tackle Osa Odighizuwa. It’s a deal that almost made too much sense for both sides.
The 49ers, who managed a league-low 20 sacks last season, badly needed an interior pass rusher. The Cowboys, after trading for both Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark over the past year, had too many of them.
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Dallas also needed to cut about $4 million of 2026 salary-cap expenses to fit under the limit by Wednesday’s start of the new league year. Moving Odighizuwa slashed their total cap liabilities by $4.75 million — the perfect amount. The 49ers, meanwhile, were more than happy to take on Odighizuwa’s $16.75 million in 2026 pay – earlier this week, after all, they finished as runners-up in a bidding war with the Tennessee Titans for defensive tackle John Franklin-Myers. The final price tag there was a $21 million annual salary.
So the 49ers already had money earmarked for a pass-rushing defensive tackle, their biggest need on that side of the ball. They’d also already addressed their biggest flaw on the offensive side by signing future Hall of Fame X receiver Mike Evans.
The clues all pointed in one direction: The dawn of the new league year meant that it was time for another high-profile trade between the 49ers and Cowboys.
Back in 1992, San Francisco infamously sent edge rusher Charles Haley to Dallas. The swap tipped the balance of power atop the NFL. And although the 49ers’ 2023 trade of quarterback Trey Lance to the Cowboys wasn’t nearly as consequential, it certainly was notable.
Odighizuwa’s arrival marks the logical next step in the 49ers’ multiyear plan to revitalize their defense. After a disastrous 2024 season in which they finished with the No. 29 run defense, the 49ers scrapped their front down to its foundation. They cut Javon Hargrave, Maliek Collins, and Leonard Floyd — all veteran pass rushers who hadn’t been effective against the run. The 49ers replaced them with 2025 draftees Mykel Williams, Alfred Collins, and CJ West — all rookies who specialized in run defense.
The change produced the desired results as the 49ers catapulted into the top-10 of run defene rankings for the portion of season when all three were healthy and available. But the interior pass rush was predictably anemic, even when its key tackles weren’t hurt.
Odighizuwa projects as the missing needle-mover on the inside. Though he’s managed just 17 sacks, a relatively modest number over five years, Odighizuwa has registered multiple top-10 finishes in more predictive stats like pass-rush productivity, pressures, win rate, and quarterback hits.
In fact, Odighizuwa (No. 7) ranked ahead of even Franklin-Myers (No. 10) in pass-rushing productivity — which factors in sacks, QB hits, and hurries — last season. Odighizuwa turns 28 in August. Meanwhile, Franklin-Myers will be 30 this season — that was Hargrave’s age when he signed a similar deal with the 49ers in 2023.
That contract did not work out. The 49ers cut the oft-injured Hargrave after only two seasons as part of the 2024 purge that centered on durability. Enter Odighizuwa, who’s played in 87 of 88 possible games since entering the NFL as a third-round draft pick out of UCLA in 2021.
It’s clear that new 49ers defensive coordinator Raheem Morris will perpetuate the 4-3 alignment that the team has embraced since Kyle Shanahan took over in 2017. Last week’s hiring of assistant Matt Eberflus, who has an extensive 4-3 coaching background, verified that. And perhaps it also hinted at this trade for Odighizuwa considering Eberflus was the tackle’s defensive coordinator last season in Dallas.
Odighizuwa — who is a one-gap, 4-3 defensive tackle — likely wouldn’t have fit as well in the evolving three-down front of new Dallas defensive coordinator Christian Parker. But the 288-pounder’s explosiveness and substantial arm length projects well for the aggressive style of 49ers’ defensive line coach Kris Kocurek, especially because the team has already stocked the tackle position with Collins and West — run-stoppers who weigh over 320 pounds.
Plentiful questions remain regarding the 49ers’ defensive direction under Morris. For one, Lynch hinted at an expansion of responsibilities for defensive ends so that the 49ers can run more five-man fronts. It’s unclear how that will look in practice. Since Morris has yet to conduct his introductory press conference, it’s also hard to know what he thinks of the team’s linebackers and safeties outside of superstar Fred Warner.
But the addition of Odighizuwa verifies that the 49ers are following through on their two-year plan to rebuild the defensive line, the initial engine of this side of the ball under Shanahan and Lynch which had suffered real erosion in recent years.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on our defensive front,” Lynch said last month. “That’s something we want to address and we will address.”
By adding Odighizuwa, the 49ers have done that — and they may not be done. They’ll return star edge rusher Nick Bosa, a force-multiplying talent, from a torn ACL in 2026. His last name happens to rhyme with Odighizuwa’s first, and Bosa has a brother who’s available in free agency.
Perhaps the 49ers turn in Joey’s direction next.