Contextualizing Josh Uche’s Career College Sacks At Michigan

There was a lot of focus on and buzz about Michigan product Josh Uche at last week’s 2020 Senior Bowl. That’s certainly understandable considering how Uche was used at Michigan in addition to the sack and pressure numbers he posted during his college career at Ann Arbor.

With Uche officially listed as an EDGE this past week in Mobile, AL, where he measured in at 6013, 241-pounds with 33 1/4-inch arms, I thought I would do a quick contextualization of the 16.5 sacks he had at Michigan.

As you will certainly see below when you click and watch each sack, Uche is a very athletic player and a lot of his sacks include him coming off the edge. While Uche’s sack reel isn’t loaded with high quality sacks, there are a few of them. One thing that sticks out in a few of his sacks is his quickness off the edge both up the field and back inside. He’s a quick twister to the inside on stunts as well and that’s how he registered a few of these sacks. A few, however, were gimmes. He also possesses tremendous straight-line speed.

What you don’t see in Uche’s sack reel is him winning much with power, such as with a bull rush. In short, he’s not a refined pass rusher, but he does use his hands well just the same.

Uche is going to be an interesting evaluation from now until draft day because of how he was used at Michigan, which sometimes included him being off the ball. At 6013, he’s either going to be considered an outside linebacker in a 3-4, or an off-the-ball linebacker. He was a productive pass rusher at Michigan, especially when his snaps increased this past season, but that appears to be the long and short of him.

Uche is not much of an edge setter, so there’s that. There’s also not seemingly a lot of tape of him playing against the run off-the-ball, either. Both those areas of his game need to be explored deeper by myself and others, however.

I suspect Uche will be invited to this year’s scouting combine and if so, he figures to test well in Indianapolis. Teams have until the draft to figure out just how Uche fits on defense. We’ll obviously be trying to do the same with him on this site.