Osa Odighizuwa will be on the move after all. A trade has been agreed to which will send the veteran defensive tackle from the Cowboys to the 49ers, NFL insider Jordan Schultz reports. The deal is now official.
San Francisco will send Dallas a third-round pick, Ian Rapoport of NFL Network adds. As such, the Cowboys will add the No. 92 selection in April’s draft. The team did not own a second- or third-rounder in 2026 prior to this agreement.
[RELATED: Cowboys Trade DL Solomon Thomas To Titans]
A report from Tuesday indicated teams were showing trade interest in Odighizuwa. Dallas already has Kenny Clark and Quinnen Williams on the books. The Cowboys also lined up a deal with free agent Otito Ogbonnia, adding further to their depth at the defensive tackle spot. Inquirers from the Bengals did not yield traction, but Dallas clearly remained open to moving forward with a swap in this case. The team will create $4.75MM in cap space while generating $16MM in dead money.
The Cowboys will clear Odighizuwa’s $16.25MM salary in 2026 as a result of this trade. The 49ers, meanwhile, will take on the remainder of his contract; the pact runs through 2028. Odighizuwa inked a four-year, $80MM deal last offseason, but the arrivals of Clark and Williams threatened to cut into his playing time. A heavy workload will await him in the Bay Area, while Dallas will not face the challenge of maintaining three DTs attached to large contracts.
As Schultz confirms, the 49ers were among the runners-up for free agent John Franklin-Myers. The former Bronco wound up agreeing to a lucrative deal with the Titans. San Francisco has pivoted in short order. In addition to wideout Mike Evans, this constitutes certainly a significant addition on the part of general manager John Lynch early in the new league year.
Jordan Elliott lined up an agreement with Tennessee during the early stages of free agency, thinning out the 49ers’ defensive line. Odighizuwa will help serve as a replacement, and he will be counted on to remain a strong contributor against the pass in particular on his new team. The 27-year-old has recorded between 3.0 and 4.5 sacks each season since his rookie campaign. He totaled 64 QB pressures over the past two years, and disruption on that level would be welcomed in San Francisco.
The injury-ravaged 49ers ranked last in the NFL in sacks this past season. A healthy year from Nick Bosa and others would of course go a long way in helping the team bounce back in that regard. Nevertheless, Odighizuwa’s arrival should provide a pass rush boost along the interior for 2026 and beyond.
Whoa! Honestly he fits a straight base 4-3 as an attacking 3tech. Good first step. Sad to see him go.
Football and 49er fan…never heard of this guy
He’s something like the 16th best 3 tech lineman in the league. Not something that will win you a ton of attention, but a solid guy to have around.
We didn’t have many good players on defense. He was one of our better players and leader.
Very solid DT. You’ll like having him, but he’s not a game buster by any means. I liked him, but I get why they dealt him away. I wish it wasn’t to the niners, though.
We traded osa?! We just gave him 4 years 80mil. Between trading for Clark and quinnen and going to the 3-4 defense I can see why now
This trade is a bit of a scam. He is worth more than a 3rd rounder. Jerry Jones could’ve made a better trade.
“Jerry Jones could’ve made a better trade.”
Clearly not.
Unfortunately the Bills had already been fleeced so there was one fewer sucker available
Jerry is an idiot and always will get fleeced
Wish this didn’t happen. He’s a good player but that cap hit and also giving up a premium pick is worrisome. Dallas capitalized on our biggest need which is the DL.
Feels like nice business for the 49ers. It’s a weak free agent class for defensive tackles and they could use a more polished veteran tackle to go with the recent picks. Can see him making sense next to Alfred Collins. And a third isn’t a bad price, especially considering DT salaries have already gone up since he signed his.
For Dallas… Look, I get that their scheme is changing. I get that getting Kenny Clark in the Parsons trade was nice. I get the appeal of trading for Quinine Williams. I get taking the 92nd pick when it feels like Osa’s fit isn’t worth the money anymore.
But man, how many times have we seen Dallas eat money because they changed their mind about a guy after one year? Or had to get rid of a good player because they kept adding big contracts as if they could do it indefinitely? They’re going to eat more dead money from this trade this year than they save against the cap, and they’re going to swap a useful player to an NFC contender and get an end of the third round pick for their trouble.
How many times? Care to share examples?
He doesn’t fit their scheme anymore. Their defense sucked last year. Change is good sometimes. Armchair GMs… not so good.
I get the scheme thing, but again, they signed him to a huge extension to then acquire two more big ticket DTs and trade him all in the span of exactly one year and one week. And sure, you want other examples? They gave Jaylon Smith $35.5 million guaranteed and cut him two years later. They gave Amari Cooper his big contract and then traded him two years later for pocket change when he was still playing well.
Only Amari Cooper wasn’t still playing well. Cooper repeatedly would give a team to our three good years and then start mailing it in. He did it to the Raiders, and then to the Cowboys, and then to the Browns. Unfortunately, for the Cowboys that hadn’t yet become a pattern.
* 2 or 3 good years
That was overstated at the time and you’re overstating it now. And they traded him because they needed room for another contract and they traded him for Pennie’s on the dollar. He returned less to Dallas than he did to Cleveland as an older midseason acquisition.
No, I’m not overstating it, look at his stats. By year 3 with each team his stats decline and his team trades him. The Raiders gave up on him and traded him, the Cowboys traded him, and then the Browns traded him to a WR starved Bills team. In a half a season with the Bills and Allen in 2024 he had 297 yards. Cooper retired at age 30 in training camp in 2025. And you’re not just trading the player, you’re trading his contract. Sometimes you’re lucky to get anything in return for a big contract.
Yeah the year the Bills traded for him was the year the wheels came off him completely. Thats different than when the Cowboys traded him coming off an 800 yard season between thousand yard seasons. And his remaining contract at the time was 3 years $60 million, when Mike Williams had just signed for that with more guarantees. The Browns got a steal.
No one is questioning Cooper’s talent. I’m questioning his heart. There’s a reason that every team he’s been on has traded him. Yeah, he bounced back after that 800 yard season, just like he bounced back every other time he got traded until he was washed. The Raiders, Cowboys, and Browns all saw him start going through the motions and they all moved on from him despite his talent. He’s a five time pro bowler that kept on getting traded. You don’t routinely trade pro bowlers unless there is some other issue. No team wanted to build their offense around him.
But the Cowboys traded him for next to nothing because they had put themselves between a rock and a hard place with contracts. “Heart” doesn’t explain what I’m talking about here.
How do you explain the Raiders moving on from him? He was on a cheap rookie contract. He was a bargain for the Browns, until he wasn’t and so they ditched him. Team after team moved on from him once his production went down.
The Raiders traded him for a first round pick in the middle of a contract year. That’s extremely different.
OR the Raiders traded him after he put up a 680 yard season over 14 games in his third year. Rather than signing him for a fifth year, they traded him near the beginning of his fourth year. As I said, Cooper was traded by three different teams after his production fell off.
BTW, I find you to be a worthy poster most of the time. I just don’t agree with you on this. Ciao
Sorry, you’re right, it was his fourth year. But the difference in draft compensation is still wildly different. I’ve been talking about asset management here from the Cowboys. I could also list another half dozen different times they cost themselves by grossly mismanaging the timing of signing guys.
I’ll ask-even with Clark’s experience in a 3-4, does he offer more than Odigizuwa at this point in his career? The 3-4 switch obviously is going to begin another defensive rebrand, but it’s odd to me that the three of the best defensive players last year were interior defensive linemen, and the Cowboys switched to a scheme that can’t get them on the field frequently. In light of the switch, the trade is great, and Odigizuwa had much more value than Clark does right now.
I just would have rather seen Dallas build a defense that capitalized on the Parsons trade instead of slowly moving to back to baseline. They got Clark, spent a pick for Williams, and got rid of their other good defensive tackle because they switched to a new scheme. The moves aren’t directly related, of course, but it doesn’t feel like the Cowboys came out ahead. I mean, they traded for Williams after that Parsons trade because they ran a 4-3 base and were going to play him at DT. They didn’t lose out, that’s not what I’m saying, but it just doesn’t feel like the franchise moved forward the way that they should have. There’s still one good pick left from that, so there’s time, but unless Parsons drops off or misses more time, it just feels like Dallas made that trade and then transitioned and didn’t get better after losing a potentially generational talent.
Some of this stuff is also overblown. How much time do teams actually spend in base defense anymore? We just watched a team go all the way to Super Bowl champions spending most of their season in nickel. And Parker’s last stop was Philly, where they would have been able to make use of all these guys.
I mean, fair enough, but all of the moves post-Parsons were aimed at bolstering a 4-3 defense. Not only that, but the Cowboys invested in the mist 4-3 specific part, which is the defensive interior. That’s the part that translates the least to the 3-4. Now, Odigizuwa, who was the most promising player outside of Williams there, is out. Dallas swung a good trade for him, I do agree, but it just seems like an unceremonious ending to a dramatic affair that didn’t really result in many positives for the defense.
That last sentence can be cut and pasted a lot for the Cowboys.
3rd round picks seems like a lot
A late third in a weak draft is a lot?
LOL weak draft…like you can even project that to the 3rd round. Nice one
Jerry is truly an idiot. He extends the old guy and sends the young one away. Because his ego can’t admit that he got swindled by the Packers on the Parsons deal. And then added a washed player on a bad deal for another 4th!
“…Swindled by the Packers on the Parsons deal…”
Two 1st Rd picks, a solid DT / 3x Pro Bowler in Kenny Clark and $24M in cap space to put towards other players. And indirectly, acquiring Quinnen Williams with one of those 1st Rd picks…
…All of that just to overpay a record setting amount to an injury ticking time bomb in Parsons…
…All of that for a player who was supposed to make the Packers the NFC favorite by most pundits to make the Super Bowl, only to finish as a middling 9-7-1 Wild Card team that got booted by the Bears in the first round…
…All of that just to see Parsons second season with them wiped out by a major injury…
…All of that just to have Parsons and Company give up 40 points and get tied by the Cowboys?
The Packers backloaded their massive deal to open a 3-yr window of contention (2025-2027). Now, year 1-2 are poised to be massive failures with uncertainty surrounding Parsons’ ability to bounce back to his previous form after a more significant injury than just a traditional ACL tear.
Yeah, you’re right. The Packers “swindled” the Cowboys. Good luck with that LOL.
Yes. They did. Anyone who is not a cowboys fan thinks the same. As a packers fan I’d do that deal 100/100 times
Whatever you say, sir. Good luck this season with your non-elite QB!
Best thing about this it allows Mykel Williams to go back to his DE position.