David Ojabo Is Ready To Clear the Next Hurdle

After suffering an Achilles tear at his pro day, the former Michigan linebacker's draft stock plummeted. But now, after being taken with the 45th pick by the Ravens, he sees his injury as nothing more than another unexpected obstacle to overcome.

Wearing a tilted Ravens hat and a fixed look of disbelief, David Ojabo plopped onto a bench at his draft party, stealing a break from the celebration. He scrolled through his texts and shook his head at the sight: 105 unread messages and counting. Nearly all of them could wait until morning, the former Michigan edge rusher said, but he made a lone exception for the person who motivated him to start playing football in the first place.

“I’m moving in with you, so create space!” Ojabo hollered to Odafe Oweh over video chat, pumping a fist and flexing a bicep into the camera. “I’m a Raven, brooo!”

Less than six years ago, as an international transfer student still adjusting to life abroad, Ojabo left behind his first love of basketball for a sport in which he possessed zero prior experience and admittedly knew little terminology beyond field goal and touchdown. ​​Why? Because of the example set by Oweh, his friend and fellow native Nigerian at Blair (N.J.) Academy—and now his teammate along Baltimore’s defensive front seven after Ojabo was selected in the second round, at No. 45, last Friday night.

Combine this connection with the presences of rookie coordinator Mike MacDonald and defensive assistant Ryan Osborn—who occupied the same roles for the Wolverines last season, when Ojabo broke out with 11 sacks opposite No. 2 pick Aidan Hutchinson—and a reasonable conclusion could be reached that this was the most perfect personal fit to emerge from last week’s proceedings in Las Vegas. No wonder Ojabo found himself breaking down soon after hanging up with Baltimore brass.

“I’m really not a crier, but I was just so overwhelmed,” he told Sports Illustrated later. “I couldn’t hold it back.”

The tears have dried, but every last drop of emotion remains. Scanning the party at the Houston home of his American host family, Ojabo soaked up the scene. A group of loved ones danced next to a kitchen island spread of suya skewers, puff-puff dough pastries and other Nigerian favorites. A disco ball spun on the patio as hip-hop music thumped and a fire pit crackled; plans were in the works to switch the swimming pool lights Ravens purple and gold. Many attendees wore T-shirts bearing Ojabo’s personal logo, his initials interlocking beneath a crown.

To reach this moment of culmination, though, Ojabo had to overcome an army of Goliath-sized obstacles, from his football inexperience to most recently a torn left Achilles suffered at Michigan’s pro day in March that turned him into a symbol of the harsh realities of the football business. “Everything in this life that I've had to face is against the odds,” he said. It all adds up to a journey unlike any other in his draft class—one that the 21-year-old summarized as he shook his head again and took a sip of Hennessy from a plastic cup printed to resemble a football.

“It’s crazy, bro,” he said. “This is some movie s---.”

Ojabo enjoyed the draft with friends and family in Houston / Alex Prewitt

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In the beginning, in the Hollywood script of his mind, Ojabo imagined becoming the next LeBron James or Cristiano Ronaldo. Raised in Scotland after his family moved from Nigeria when he was 7, young David chased his heroes with gusto. He pored over Manchester United highlights before hitting the pitch to practice what he saw, doing the same on the court with the Miami Heat amid the Big Three era. He would tune into the NBA draft with his older brother, Victor Jr., and pretend to don hats and call each other’s names as though they had been picked.

At 15, seeking to prove himself as a small fish across the pond, he convinced his parents, Ngor and Victor, to let him move away alone to play at Blair, a boarding school in New Jersey, “I just saw America, and all the opportunity, and I couldn't pass it up,” Ojabo says. “I wanted to come and be a star.” The cultural transition alone proved “just a complete 180,” he recalls. But that was nothing compared to the surprise he soon faced when underwhelming basketball and soccer seasons as a sophomore forced him to reevaluate his future in the two sports that brought him here. “It was a hard pill to swallow,” Ojabo says, “realizing I’d have to move on.”

Fortunately for Ojabo, a model had already materialized in Oweh, a similarly gifted athlete whose hard pivot to football at Blair had been met with instant interest from top college programs. Knocking on the office door of coach Jim Saylor midway through his junior year in early 2017, Ojabo pitched himself as a similar project. And indeed it was an undertaking in some ways: Saylor remembers Ojabo missing summer practices due to soreness from bending into the foreign position of a three-point stance. “Didn't know how to buckle up the chin strap,” Ojabo says. “Didn't know what the hash marks were.” But the room for growth was also undeniable, especially after Ojabo ran a 10.9-second 100-meter dash on Blair’s track team that led to his first scholarship offer, from Rutgers, months before he ever lined up for his first game.

Looking back, Ojabo traces much of his pass-rushing foundation to his multisport background in Scotland. “My spins, my footwork, my hand-eye coordination, everything,” he says. But the most important trait that helped him get ahead was his spongelike ability to soak up what he was taught. Saylor saw it when Ojabo reclassified to repeat his junior season and spent upwards of four days a week performing extra technical drills with Blair’s defensive line coach. “He’s a perfectionist,” Saylor says.

So did Tyler Plocki, who hosted Ojabo on his recruiting visit to Michigan and later became his freshman-year roommate after Ojabo chose Michigan out of more than 25 FBS offers, including one from Oweh’s new home at Penn State. “It was overnight, once he figured it out,” Plocki says, pointing to the physical gains that Ojabo—now listed at 6'5" and 250 pounds—made after getting on a more regimented lifting program, as well as Ojabo's ability to quickly pick up their friend group’s go-to after-practice activity of Fortnite. “Very focused, very wise,” Plocki adds.

Still, Ojabo had to wait his turn behind a logjam of future first-round ends like Rashan Gary and Kwity Paye, earning the scout team Defensive Player of the Year award in his redshirt year and logging just 26 snaps and one tackle in Michigan’s pandemic-shortened 2020 season. But he never lost his thirst for knowledge, as he demonstrated last fall when he asked the highly touted Hutchinson to let him tag along to the film room, to the cafeteria, to anywhere he could learn something new about greatness. “I told him, I see they got you going high [in mock drafts]; show me the way,” Ojabo says.

The result was a two-headed blitzing monster that devastated opposing quarterbacks with 25 combined sacks, helped Michigan capture the Big Ten title and a College Football Playoff berth and appeared to cement Ojabo as a first-round pick.

“The game came a lot slower to me, so I could use my athleticism and do my thing,” he says. “The stars were aligning, really.” 

Ojabo had a breakout junior year at Michigan that vaulted him high up on draft boards :: Junfu Han/USA TODAY NETWORK

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Until he started playing football, Ojabo had never been injured. Even after switching to the gridiron, for five years the most serious ailment he had ever suffered was a jammed pinky that remains slightly crooked. But that was before he dropped back into coverage during his final rep on March 18 at Michigan’s pro day, leapt to intercept a pass, and heard a pop in his left leg.

“I remember taking the second step and not being able to hold myself up,” Ojabo says.

Video of the incident went viral, not because of what happened to Ojabo but because of what came next: a coach who ignores the writhing edge rusher as he robotically walks past to scoop up the football from the turf. “Treatment of injured Michigan linebacker David Ojabo shows cold-blooded NFL life,” read the headline of a USA Today column. “The most HEARTLESS Sh*t I think I’ve ever seen!!” declared the title of a YouTube video with close to 60,000 views, while NFL Network analyst and former receiver Bucky Brooks decried “the lack of concern or empathy from the scouts, coaches and observers” in a tweet that now has 222,000-plus likes.

For his part, Ojabo says that he had no idea his injury had even caused such a stir. He remembers medical staff fetching him from the field and putting him in a cast and boot. He remembers getting an MRI that night that confirmed a ruptured Achilles, flying to New York the next morning and undergoing surgery on the third day with Martin O’Malley, the orthopedic surgeon who repaired Kevin Durant’s Achilles tear in 2019. As for the rest? “I mean, I didn’t look up and see anyone pass me,” Ojabo says. “You’re the one telling me that. I’m being real, I haven’t even seen the video. I've never seen it. I don't intend on seeing it. I’ve already experienced that.”

Instead, as always, he is looking ahead to his next lofty dream: this time a healthy return to the field for his NFL debut in 2022. “So far no pain, good flexibility, already biking,” he says. “Cam Akers busted it and played in five and a half months. That lands me at August, September, maybe even October. Season’s still going. So, yeah, I anticipate playing.” Even if he is asked to take it slow and sit out for a year, though, the approach won’t change: “The way I carried myself throughout my whole life is what got me here, so I’m just going to apply that.”

Ojabo has maintained this level-headedness throughout the pre-draft process, with the injury limiting his ability to visit any team on-site aside from the Texans, who sent a car to pick him up at his host family’s Houston home. (The Ojabos and the Handins met when both were living in Scotland; with his parents still abroad, David has visited Houston for most holidays since moving to the U.S., and has been living in their guest suite since his surgery.) But Ojabo insists he isn’t looking at his Achilles as a matter of what could have been, either on the draft board or in his bank account.

“People have been working their whole lives toward this,” he says. “People wish they could sit on a couch and know their name is getting called.”

Which is why, despite spending Thursday night quietly slouched on a couch at a draft party that never quite gets going—despite five fellow edge rushers, including Georgia’s Travon Walker at No. 1 to Jacksonville and Hutchinson to the Lions, hearing their names called among the top 32 picks—Ojabo tucks his crutch under his arm and hobbles off to bed in good spirits. As Ojabo put it earlier that afternoon:

“Before I always get a big win, God always takes something away from me. Came over from Scotland, didn’t get no offers, had to switch sports. Boom. Found football, went to Michigan, didn’t play for two years. Boom. Played, got first-round talk. And then now, Achilles. Boom.

“So stay tuned for what’s after.”

“LOVE YOU COACH!” Ojabo would write on a jersey for his high school coach. “Thanks for taking a chance on me. Means the world.” / Alex Prewitt

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The next morning Ojabo awoke to a text from Rhonda Todd, a former academic advisor at Michigan (now at Cornell) whom Ojabo lovingly refers to as his “Michigan mom.” It was a link to “We Ready,” the early 2000s hype track by late rapper Archie Eversole. Hours later, inside the Handin house, Todd put on the song again as Ojabo entered in a tailored tracksuit topped by a sparkling jeweled pendant in the shape of his logo. “Tonight is a party night!” Todd cries.

The first 12 picks lurched past with palpable tension in the air; hardly anyone touched the Nigerian spread reheated from the previous night, so glued were they to the draft coverage. But then Ojabo sat up on the couch with a start, having felt his phone buzz in his lap. He waved the device in the air and beckons for the room to quiet. He heard the voice of Ravens GM Eric DeCosta, who confirmed the obvious: “The way that you played this year, we would’ve been talking about you in the first round if not for your injury.” Next the phone passed to coach John Harbaugh, brother of Michigan coach Jim, and then finally Ojabo’s old-turned-new defensive coordinator. “I’m so proud of you, so fired up for you,” Macdonald told him. “It’s like a dream,” Ojabo replied. “It’s like a dream, man.”

The room erupted into cheers as Ojabo hung up, pumped his first and hugged everyone in sight: His immediate family flanking him on the couch, of course, but also childhood friends from Aberdeen, Scotland; college teammates from Ann Arbor like Plocke; and Todd’s counterpart in New Jersey, Keica Tillman, his “Blair mom.” Saylor was there, too, beaming, and later he asked Ojabo to sign a No. 55 jersey to put alongside Oweh’s in his TV room at his place in Myrtle Beach.

“LOVE YOU COACH!” Ojabo would write. “Thanks for taking a chance on me. Means the world.”

The second and third rounds continued on the living room television, but no one paid attention; aside from whisking away for a Zoom interview with Ravens beat writers, and briefly punching BALTIMORE into Google Maps to see how far it is from Houston, Ojabo mostly occupied himself by rewatching videos of the moment of “raw emotion” when he burst into tears. “It’s just a fat weight lifted off,” he says.

As the party went on, it was clear that Ojabo’s slide into the second round will serve as a source of motivation moving forward; at one point he solicited help in naming the full roster of edge rushers who went before him in the first and second, as though committing it to memory. And while he knows certain functions of his inexperience will present more obstacles at the pro level—“Just technique refinement, getting used to the sport, that’s the biggest thing for me,” he said—the simple thought of pouring his life into football as a job is a thrill.

“School’s done, other responsibilities are done, it’s just heal up and learn,” Ojabo said.

That’s no movie. It’s the life of King David, and it is shake-your-head real.