Yale product Oluokun NFL’s top tackler with Jaguars
Foyesade Oluokun has led the NFL in tackles two years in a row, posting 192 for the Falcons in 2021 and 184 for the Jaguars this season after signing a three-year, $45 million free agent contract.
Having revitalized the Jacksonville defense the way Trevor Lawrence has the Jacksonville offense, Oluokun, once a quiet Yale recruit and a long-shot Ivy League professional prospect, is becoming a household name if he isn’t one already. At 27, he’s rich, just hitting his prime, the world at his fingertips.
“I’ll tell you a little bit about him,” Yale coach Tony Reno said. “You can probably summarize him with this one statement. Every single bye week he’s had as a professional football player, he’s come back and spent his bye week with us.”
Oluokun, a linebacker, is playoff-bound for the first time in his five-year NFL career. The Jaguars (9-8) won their final five regular season games, including a winner-take-the-division matchup this past Saturday at home against the Titans, to win the AFC South.
Up next: an AFC Wild Card game, also at home, Saturday night, prime time, against the Los Angeles Chargers.
Upcoming, undoubtedly, soon after the season: Another trip to New Haven, to the Yale campus, to visit places and people that clearly remain at the center of his world.
“We’re really close,” Reno said. “We talk frequently. I’m really excited for him. He’s an amazing person and obviously he’s an incredible football player and he’s one of those guys who has had a lot of individual success. But the teams he’s been on at the professional level haven’t had a lot of success and if you know him at all, he just wants to win. So for him to make the playoffs, it’s really fulfilling.”
Reno is at the height of a recruiting period and won’t be in Jacksonville. He’ll watch Saturday’s game at home, perhaps from the same seat where he watched the 2018 NFL draft alongside Oluokun, then a departing Yale senior with a degree in economics.
Oluokun was selected in the sixth round, 200th overall, by the Falcons. He’s gone on to become one of football’s most dominant defensive players. Fittingly, he made the tackle to seal Saturday’s 20-16 victory, stopping Tennessee’s Hassan Haskins shy of the line to gain on fourth down in Jacksonville territory with 1:37 remaining.
Lawrence took a knee to run out the clock. And the party began at TIAA Bank Field.
“That was pretty cool,
but we earned that,” Oluokun, who had 13 tackles and a sack in the game, said in a locker room interview posted to the Florida Times Union website, jacksonville.com. “Having that point in the season right now, it was cool and stuff and we earned that but we have to remember how we got to that point . ... We’ve got to keep preparing the right way, keep using this equation and keep fighting all the way through the game. Obviously, we’ve done a lot to get here.”
Oluokun was a teammate, in both basketball and football, of Cowboys running back Ezekiel Elliott at the private John Burroughs School in Ladue, Mo., a St. Louis suburb. The football team was coached by former longtime NFL quarterback Gus Frerotte. He came to Yale as a wiry 185 pounds or so, a defensive back who played corner as a freshman, then moved to safety.
After tearing a pectoral muscle as a junior, he was granted an extra season by the Ivy league and returned in 2016. It wasn’t until 2017 that Oluokun, who had put on about 45 pounds of muscle over his four-plus years, was moved to linebacker. He thrived inside and outside for the Bulldogs, in coverage, in pursuit of the quarterback — everywhere.
Alongside Matt Oplinger, another dominant linebacker, Oluokun was a major part of Yale’s run to the program’s first Ivy championship since 2006 and first outright championship since 1980. He had just four tackles, but a game-sealing interception with 1:13 remaining, as Yale won at Princeton, 35-31, to clinch the title.
“And then really the last game against the team up in Cambridge, he was dominant — I mean, dominant,” Reno said of Oluokun’s final game, a 24-3 victory over Harvard. “I don’t know what the stat line was but it seemed like every
time they dropped back he was in the quarterback’s face.”
Oluokun that day had nine tackles (three for a loss), a sack and a forced fumble.
Numbers that were equally important to his future would be posted in the spring.
Oluokun wasn’t invited to any college all-star games, or the NFL scouting combine. But after a few months training in Colorado at Landow Performance, under Broncos strength coach Loren Landow, he took part in pro day activities at Fordham and Yale and performed in ways that aligned with some of college football’s top prospects. He run the 40-yard dash in in 4.48 seconds, the 20-yard shuttle in 4.12, and his vertical jump was 37 inches.
“Did I think he was an NFL player? Yes,” Reno said. “Did I think he’d make a roster and push to be a starter? Yeah, I did. What he’s done since he became an NFL player is just gotten himself to a really high level, a Pro Bowl level. A lot of guys don’t continue to improve at the rate in the pros that they did in college or high school. He has.”
Actually, Oluokun has not been a Pro Bowler the past two years despite leading the league in tackles by eight last season (ahead of the Seahawks’ Jordyn Brooks) and four this season (ahead of the Chiefs’ Nick Bolton). He has 645 tackles in 81 games over five NFL seasons.
“What he’s created for us is, since he’s been in the NFL we’ve had triple the amount of scouts at our practices,” Reno said. “People don’t want to overlook Yale anymore because of what he’s doing.”
Oluokun is one of three former Yale players currently in the NFL. Rodney Thomas, a seventh-round draft pick last year, started 10 games at safety this season
for the Colts, finishing with four interceptions. Dieter Eiselen, a center out of Choate who went undrafted in 2020, signed with and remains with the Bears.
“We’re a little different than the other Ivies,” Reno said. “Our guys come here because they want to play in the NFL and they want to get a great education, not the other way around. We recruit guys who have dreams and aspirations of winning a championship here and want to play at the next level. It’s not a bad fallback plan when you’re falling back with a Yale degree. So we’ve been fortunate. We’ve got a lot of guys with that mindset.”
Oluokun hasn’t disappeared through his success.
He has returned to Yale during all those bye weeks, and at other times. He’s been at spring practice. He’s worked out on campus. He’s been at Yale basketball games here and there. He’s gone out to dinners with Reno and visited the family at the house — much like he did so often during time off as a student between 2013 and 2017.
He continues to impact the football program. He’s been on the sideline for several games including the most recent one, the season finale Nov. 19 at Harvard, when Yale clinched another Ivy championship, its third in five seasons.
“I just think that speaks volumes to who he is as a person,” Reno said. “He really valued his experience. And the type of person he is, he wants to give back. He wants to give back to the guys who are coming up and he takes a lot of pride in the other guys making the NFL. To have him as the role model who does it the right way in every area is really incredible for our football program.”