Dallas has dropped four straight contests to San Francisco, including back-to-back playoff games in the 2022 and 2023 seasons. The Cowboys’ last victory over the Niners came in 2020, the season before they selected Odighizuwa in the third round of the draft.<\/p>\n
After switching sides, Odighizuwa is intent to keep the streak going for his new San Francisco squad, even if he still has love for his first NFL team.<\/p>\n
Odighizuwa, who played 84 games (76 starts) with 17 sacks rocking the star on his helmet, said Dallas trading him wasn’t “super unexpected,” but that he’s still dealing with “a mix of emotions.”<\/p>\n
“I’m definitely happy to be [with the 49ers],” Odighizuwa continued. “It’s a great organization from top to bottom. I feel like it’s definitely just a winning mentality over here, so it’s definitely cool to be a part of that and go from one good organization to another one, and just being in a great space. I feel like I’m part of the cavalry, you know what I’m saying? I’m not coming to a place that’s rebuilding anything at all. I’m just coming and adding to a great team and a lot of great players that’s already here, so it’s kind of awesome.”<\/p>\n
Given the Day 2 capital the 49ers spent to acquire him, they expect Odighizuwa to be a particularly important cavalryman during their upcoming season.<\/p>\n
He’s well aware of the the team’s prolonged run as a contender. The 49ers have made five of the past seven postseasons amid a stretch that includes two Super Bowl appearances, and he intends to help them continue trending that way.<\/p>\n
“Definitely want to make the deep playoff run and get to the dance,” Odighizuwa said. “I want to get that ring for sure. Being on a team that’s been in two of the last [seven Super Bowls] is very hopeful. Going into the playoffs, I think they made it to the second round of the playoffs with a bunch of guys hurt. And then just bringing guys like Dre Greenlaw<\/a> back, bringing me in and Mike Evans<\/a> and stuff like that, it’s awesome.”<\/p>\n Individually, Odighizuwa should have plenty of opportunities to take advantage of matchups as one of the middle men of a strong front four that includes 2025 second-round DT Alfred Collins<\/a>, 2025 first-rounder Mykel Williams<\/a> and former Defensive Player of the Year Nick Bosa<\/a>. The latter two are both returning from ACL injuries and Collins is likely to be thrust into the starting lineup after making one start as a rookie, meaning the 49ers D-line will be entirely revamped after finishing 32nd in the league in sacks last season.<\/p>\n As part of helping rectify that performance by the unit, Odighizuwa aims to mark his first year in red and gold with a breakout.<\/p>\n “For the past five years I haven’t scratched the surface of the player that I am,” he said. “It hasn’t been put on full display, so I just plan on putting that on display.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas has dropped four straight contests to San Francisco, including back-to-back playoff games in the 2022 and 2023…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":661377,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[6255,1816,3,349,6257,215714,22006,560,99],"class_list":["post-661376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-around-the-nfl","tag-dallas-cowboys","tag-news","tag-nfl","tag-no-minute","tag-offseason-news","tag-osa-odighizuwa","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=661376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/661376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/661377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=661376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=661376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=661376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}