In many ways, Ade Ogudeji protects as a prototypical NFL prospect at defensive end. He’s nearly 6-5 with long arms, weighs 255 pounds and has a relentless motor and speed off the edge.
His NFL potential was amplified at the end of the 2019 season when he recorded 14 total tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks in the final three games. According to Pro Football Focus, he also chipped in five hurries and one quarterback hit during that span of games.
Part of his newfound productivity was a result of season-ending injuries to fellow defensive ends Julian Okwara and Daelin Hayes, but Ogundeji seized the moment.
“I was blessed enough to have the opportunity to go out there and play a little bit more than I usually do it,” Ogundeji said on the podcast Inside The NFL Prospect. “That gave me an opportunity to make some plays on the field.”
With one more season at Notre Dame, Ogudeji should be able to parlay his opportunity as a full-time starter into an NFL contract, which may be surreal for the rising fifth-year senior to think about given how his collegiate career started.
By now, it's common knowledge that Ogundeji was an unheralded three-star prospect who initially committed to play at Western Michigan, but his recruitment picked up some steam at the end of his junior year after attending several camps, which is how he eventually landed a Notre Dame offer.
Like most future Fighting Irish players, he ultimately picked Notre Dame due to the program's rich football tradition and the university’s high academic standards.
When Ogundeji arrived on campus in the summer of 2016, he was a sparsely 210 pounds and had not played much football over the past year due to a torn MCL, which caused him to miss most of his senior season at Walled Lake Central High School in Walled Lake, Mich.
At the time, another factor that played into Ogundeji's limited development was his age. When he first enrolled at Nore Dame, he was still 17 years old.
“When I first got here, I was getting into things,” Ogundeji said. “I would be the first to admit that I wasn't ready to be playing college football.”
That progressively began to change as he added weight and spent more time around older players such as Isaac Rochell and Jerry Tillery and bonded with his 2016 defensive end classmates: Okwara, Hayes, Khalid Kareem and Jamir Jones.
