Though this defense needs all the help it can get, it's difficult to be heartbroken about the Dallas Cowboys choosing to trade Osa Odighizuwa this offseason. They sent him to San Francisco for a third-round pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, and that was a pretty fair price for a good-not-great piece.
Despite trading the 27-year-old, the Cowboys still have Quinnen Williams and Kenny Clark clogging the middle of their defensive line. Since they have a combined seven Pro Bowls between them, it's not like they had much use for Odighizuwa anymore, especially given the financial hurdles.
However, that doesn't mean that Dallas won't soon live to regret making this trade. In typical Jerry Jones fashion, the Cowboys have regretted most of the recent trades they have made sans the George Pickens deal, so this could become another chapter in a story that's full of disappointment.
The Dallas Cowboys may live to regret trading away Osa Odighizuwa
While going over five underrated acquisitions from the most recent NFL offseason, Pro Football Focus' Bradley Locker gave the Odighizuwa trade a spotlight. And this is because it may not take a lot for the 49ers to make the Cowboys regret making an offseason trade that felt inevitable on paper.
"Over the last three seasons, Odighizuwa has established himself as one of the sport’s foremost pass-rushing defensive linemen," Locker wrote. "Since 2023, Odighizuwa ranks seventh among qualifiers at the position in total pressures generated, and his 14.2% pass-rush win rate is fifth. Impressively, Odighizuwa has been fairly steady year over year with at least a 70.2 PFF pass-rush grade in each of the last four campaigns."
This is an instance where this has nothing to do with the Cowboys and everything to do with the 49ers. Not only was San Francisco's pass-rush battered by injury last season, they were one of the worst-performing defensive lines in football last year. They finished 24th in defensive EPA per play.
Locker noted that the 49ers' interior defenders produced the worst overall PFF grades by a wide margin in 2025 and the fewest total pressures. That included rookies Alfred Collins and CJ West, who were two of the worst-graded interior linemen in terms of both PFF grade and run defense grade.
And now the 49ers are going to pair up the 2021 third-round pick out of UCLA with Joey Bosa and Mykel Williams, so he will do some damage. They've struggled to generate any sort of pressure from the interior, and Odighizuwa's presence will make a dangerous San Francisco pass-rush even scarier.
The 49ers' biggest weakness was the interior of their defensive line, and trading a polished pass-rushing lineman like Osa Odighizuwa fixing that issue could make the Dallas Cowboys regret making this deal.
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