Which undrafted free agents could make an impact in the 2023 NFL season?

#7. Ikenna Enechukwu, EDGE/IDL, Atlanta Falcons (Rice)

Rice defensive lineman Ikenna Enechukwu

Now switching over to the defensive side of the ball, this is a player I saw a path for how he would the NFL might talk themselves out. Having that sort of tweener size at 6’4”, 265 pounds, even at Rice, Enechukwu switched primarily lining up in the B-gap in 2021 to spending 71.2% of his snaps on the edge this past season.

Across those two years, he combined for 86 tackles, 18.5 of those for loss, nine sacks and a couple of forced fumbles, which surprisingly was only good for honorable mention All-AAC mention respectively.

This guy packs some violent hands and you see him ride tight-ends into the pile off the backside on a regular basis, when they try to seal him off. You also see him regularly free himself from blocks later on with a rapid arm-over. He showcases good burst off the ball and the ability to run down plays as the unblocked edge defender or tightly follow pullers in order to blow up plays before they even get set up.

He brings a sudden shoulder-dip to go underneath two-handed punches and is extremely forceful with pulling the inside arm through on rip moves, in order to corner his rushes. Enechukwu displays impressive flexibility to contort his body and run at an angle with his shoulders not being level and his feet outside his frame, without landing on the ground.

There were a lot of “wasted” reps on passing downs, where he was supposed to crash into the outside shoulder of the guard and pull the tackle with him, in order for the linebacker behind him to be free on loops or just flush the QB in the direction of his teammates. Yet. while the sacks numbers didn’t really stand out Enechukwu did put up another 31 pressures across 308 pass-rush snaps this past season.

Now, while you love the violence this guy plays with, he needs to learn being under more control and actually set up pass-rush moves, too often running into and getting hung up with blockers. His hand-placement and ability to deconstruct blocks in the run game and he doesn’t change directions very smoothly, I believe.

Nevertheless, he had a very impressive showcase during East-West Shrine week, where he would routinely blow through the reach of blockers with the rip and flash up the field. That’s why I still believed somebody would take a chance on this guy in the later rounds, as a moveable piece, who can create disruption along the D-line.

Looking at Atlanta’s roster, they did bring back a solid early-down player in Lorenzo Carter on an economic two-year deal and took a one-year flyer on Bud Dupree for just three million dollars. Other than that, you’re looking at a couple of guys from last year’s draft (of which I could see Arnold Ebiketie have a pretty good sophomore campaign) and a third-year from Ohio State in Zach Harrison this year.

Having fortified the interior of their D-line, I could see the Falcons get to more long downs defensively, where a guy like Enechukwu can bring some chaos to set up different games and be allowed to rush from different alignments.