In the middle of a shakeup at wide receiver, the New England Patriots opted to invest one of their draft picks in the position. With the 212th overall pick in the sixth round, they brought TCU’s Namdi Obiazor onboard.
While not among the headline names in this year’s linebacker class — he was ranked 297th on the consensus board, a reflection of how he flew under analysts’ radar — Obiazor brings an intriguing profile to the table. He is a veteran of 53 college games, has experience playing multiple
positions, and posted a 9.14 Relative Athletic Score during the pre-draft process.
More than anything else, however, he vows to bring another rather simple element to the Patriots’ linebacker corps. When asked to describe his game in his introduction with local media, after all, he gave a straight-forward, one-sentence answer.
“I’d say physical.”
Obiazor will have to wait until training camp in late July to showcase his physicality, but it should come in handy in his quest to make the 53-man roster. Not only will he get a chance to display it on defense but also in the kicking game.
For vice president of player personnel Ryan Cowden, that was a major selling point for the team.
“As we look at it and we evaluate these guys from a couple of different angles — from defensive perspective, a special teams [perspective] — especially on the third day,” explained Cowden. “Our special teams coaches took a look and had a lot of positives to say about Namdi’s projections as a special teams player. That’s important at the linebacker position.”
Obiazor was a part-time special teamer during his time at TCU. While he amassed 2,627 defensive snaps in his four seasons with the Horned Frogs, he played 322 in the kicking game.
Those were enough to showcase his physicality, though: being used primarily on the kickoff and punt coverage teams, Obiazor was as stout a tackler who registered seven tackles with no misses. That particular sample size may be small, but it is not an outlier either given that he had a missed tackle rate of under 11% on the defensive side of the ball.
All of that comes back to his physicality, and his multi-faceted background.
For Obiazor, versatility and adaptability are nothing new. In fact, they are an essential part of his football journey from high school through college and now to the NFL.
“I used to play DB; started off at corner in high school,” he said. “My first position switch was to safety, got moved there at JUCO. Came to TCU, played my first year at TCU as a safety and then I started a few games, but was also just playing special teams and stuff. But it was, I’d say, an opening at that linebacker spot, one of the older dudes left to the league, and that’s kind of when my coaching staff made the decision. They asked me to have a position change, and I knew my coaches pretty much wouldn’t be asking me to do the position change if I wasn’t able to do it. But I felt like it definitely helped being a former DB.”
The Patriots moving the 6-foot-3, 229-pounder back to safety seems unlikely, but they are intent on having him wear multiple hats.
“We thought he fit the profile of that,” said Cowden. “I’m excited to work with him.”
