This is the 78th installment of a series of articles covering each player on the Cleveland Browns roster. If you enjoy (tolerate) this article, I encourage you to check back each day to read each one.
#65- Larry Ogunjobi– DT- Charlotte
I call this guy Larry “The Cable Guy” Ogunjobi because when it comes to contributing to this defense he is always able to git-r-done. Ogunjobi is a bit of an underdog story. He battled weight issues as a kid, which got him into football. He attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which had never had a player drafted into the NFL. He was viewed as a project coming out of college. None of those obstacles stopped the young, self-taught pianist from achieving his professional football dreams.
Last season
was a coming out of sorts for Ogunjobi. He recorded a career-high 5.5 sacks
while starting all 16 games for the improved Browns defense. He also recorded a
career-high 52 tackles in 2018. His emergence helped free up Myles Garrett to
have his best season as well (I’m sure Garrett freed him up, too). One would
imagine that the addition of Sheldon Richardson and Olivier Vernon will take
even more attention off of Ogunjobi leading to more production for the
Charlotte grad.
I’ve shared this story before, but one of my favorite Browns memories happened at last year’s training camp. I started a tradition of taking my nephew, who was 10 at the time, to Berea for camp. He got in line with a bunch of other kids to get an autograph from Ogunjobi and Nate Orchard (half of those autographs are cool). A middle-aged woman barreled through the children to get to the front of the line prompting me to make a comment aloud. Ogunjobi, along with the other normal adults, laughed and he grabbed my nephew’s football, signed it and took multiple pictures with him. Watching the young tackle play so well last season was awesome for me as well as my nephew. Ogunjobi will always have a special place in my Browns fan heart.
If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check out yesterday’s breakdown on David Njoku.
