The San Francisco 49ers Just Found Their Next QB KILLER: SAM OKUAYINONU

The San Francisco 49ers Just Found Their Next QB KILLER: SAM OKUAYINONU

Seemingly every single time San Francisco has dealt with an injury this year, they have a player waiting on the bench, ready to break out. And with Bryce Huff dealing with a hamstring injury, I believe that player ready to break out for this team is Samuel Okuanu. In this most recent Falcons game, for instance, the 27-year-old Liberian defensive end routinely found his way into the backfield, had a sack, and showed off great hand usage throughout the game. To me, this means he’s finally getting extremely comfortable with the sport and position. You have to realize he’s not just new to the position. But the sport overall, as he started playing only as a high school senior full-time, as before, as I was mentioning, he was from Liberia and his favorite sport was actually soccer. So, in this video, we’re going to go over how he’s continued to develop as a player in Chris Caceric’s defense, go over his strengths and weaknesses so we can fully understand how he may replace Bryce Huff over the next few weeks. Initially, to start out, the first thing that really jumps out in Okuanu’s film to me is just how powerful of a player he is and how he’s able to transition from speed into this power. Here on Okuanu’s sack, for instance, he’s first challenging the outside shoulder of this tackle. And then once his base narrows, he explodes into a pretty powerful bull rush right here. And then reading Finnick step up, he uses his left arm to throw the tackle up the field, shoots across his face, and then once again, because of his strength, he’s able to disengage from this tackle and ultimately get the sack right here. And even when Okuanu wasn’t directly the one responsible for the sack, his ability to collapse the pocket using his bowl rush routinely made it so other players could eat. To really highlight this point here on this play, Solah is running stunts on both sides of his defensive line with Samuel Okuanu looping over to collapse his pocket. And first, he does a nice job of getting this tackle to commit to the outside. And then as soon as he sees Muel Williams create the open space, he’s looping towards the inside of this offensive line. And with this guard picking it up, he does an excellent job with his hand usage. He catches both of these guards hands, is walking them into the pocket, then is able to disengage with his left hand to establish the under hook right here. And at that point, because of his power, he’s able to just walk him all the way into the back field, ultimately giving Bryce Huff enough time to loop all the way over the defensive line and then put this pressure on Pennix, ultimately forcing the intentional grounding and sending this into halftime. Okuanu’s ability to routinely collapse the pocket also meant many of Pennix’s throws were off because he couldn’t actually step into them. Here on this play, once again, hitting this tackle with a bull rush. I like how violent his hands are disengaging with this under hook on his left side and then he’s able to reestablish his own double under hooks on this tackle and then walk him right into Pendix’s throw which I think personally probably affected it. Outside of Okuanu’s triedand-rue bowl rush, I love the variety of moves he was able to pull out against the Falcons as I believe it shows off his development as a defensive end. Here on this play, for example, Okuanu shows off a sophisticated pass rush. He first is challenging the outside shoulder of this tackle to get his momentum going that direction. Then comes back the other way hard on the hand swipe, which gets 71 to start to hold him right here. And then Okuan, who’s not even finished, he says, “Wait, I still have a rip move I can pull out.” Makes his way into the backfield. And this is a clear hold, which is why the ref threw this flag and ultimately negated a big play for the Falcons. To further highlight Okuanu’s growth as a pass rusher, he wasn’t just overly reliant on one move once he pulled out a hand swipe. He wasn’t just using a handwipe into the rip every single time. But here on this play, he’s actually using a handwipe to set up a spin move, and it’s extremely effective. I mean, once again, this tackle is nearly holding him, and if he just had a half a second more, he might have gotten the sack here. To further highlight how Okuanu, varying his moves, helped out his pass rush here. You can really tell this tackle doesn’t know what’s coming. Is it going to be a bull rush? It looks like he’s preparing for that right here. But then Okuanu comes across his face on the handwipe and rather than pulling out the spin like we saw last play, he just transitions seamlessly into a rip move, puts the pressure on Pinnix and forces his ball out almost instantly on this play. Outside of Okuanu’s ability to just pin his ears back and get to the quarterback, he also offers the versatility to drop off into coverage, which gives Robert Saul a lot of flexibility in his defense because he is a pretty athletic defensive end. I mean, he ran his 40-yard dash in 4.77 seconds, which is faster than Bose’s time of 4.79 seconds. And while mainly so far we’ve been focusing on Okuanu’s ability against the pass, equally as important headed forward for San Francisco is his run defense. And he showed off some nice things against the Falcons. Here on this play, for example, he showed the ability to really set a true edge as a defensive end. As soon as 71’s attacking him, he knows that it’s most likely a run. So, he resets the line of scrimmage and then uses his active hands to disengage from his block, chases down this back, and stops him for only a two-y gain. Okuanu’s ability to set the edge is a big reason why Robinson didn’t have more yards per carry in this game. He had to routinely cut it back towards San Francisco’s teeth of the defense, and players like Bthun were there to clean it up. To really illustrate this point here on this run, even though Okuanu wasn’t the one to make the tackle, he literally throws two offensive linemen to the floor, causes Robinson to cut it back towards the teeth of his defense, and right there, Bthun is waiting. Okuanu also did a nice job of mitigating the weaknesses of his defense. Here, for example, he’s slinging inwards because Chase Lucas is coming on a blitz and the Falcons are trying to kick him inwards, but he’s quickly able to recognize this outside pitch and is able to work his way across the line and stop this back on third and one. Even with all these pauses to Okuanu’s game, he definitely has some areas of concern with probably the most notable in my opinion just being his lack of experience. I’m assuming San Francisco will be calling on him for the next couple of weeks to be the starter bearing any major trade, meaning they’re going to have a pretty big unknown there and other teams will at the very least try to challenge Okuanu and if he does struggle, they’re just going to keep going after him. To go along with that, because Okuanu is a pretty inexperienced player, he can continue to refine his play recognition. I don’t think it’s terrible, but he can get better at it. And overall as a player, I think he’s just going to continue to improve his techniques with more playing time since we’ve already seen this from year 1 to year two in San Francisco system. So ultimately looking at Okuanu for the next few weeks, I expect him to secure a starting role for San Francisco’s defense. Like I said, barring any major trade, and I think he’s going to shock a lot of people. Not only has he continued to refine his bowler rush since entering the league, he’s continued to add tools to his repertoire. and this year he looks like the best he has in his entire career in my opinion. But ultimately, these are just some of my thoughts about Samuel Okuanu’s breakout game against the Falcons as well as him taking over for Bryce Huff. And I want to hear your thoughts down below. How do you think he’ll do over the next few weeks as he takes over for Huff who’s dealing with that hamstring? Do you think he’ll be able to continue to grow as a defensive end and potentially be a pretty solid starter like I do? Or do you think his inexperience will show and San Francisco’s defensive line will struggle because of it? Or maybe do you think San Francisco will decide to go a completely different direction and make a trade for a player like Kavon and Samuel Okanu might actually see his role reduced. It would also mean a ton to me if you did enjoy this video if you could go ahead and like and subscribe. It truly helps out the channel a ton.

With Bryce Huff Set to miss the next few weeks with an injury. The San Francisco’s new starting defensive end may be Sam Okuayinou . In this video we go over his most recent outing against the Falcons, strengths, weaknesses. This is to understand why he could end up being the 49ers next ELITE DE for the San Francisco 49ers.
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