Penn State’s Jayson Oweh heard his name called on opening night of the NFL draft, going 31st overall to the Baltimore Ravens.
Tony Dejak | AP photo
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Never mind the zero sacks in 2020. Jayson Oweh’s goose egg didn’t make Big Ten coaches think lesser of him. Nor did it drop him far — if at all — on NFL teams’ draft boards.
Penn State’s freakishly fast pass rusher is a first-round pick.
Oweh had to wait until the end of opening night of the draft, but he cashed in on his enormous potential when the Baltimore Ravens picked him at No. 31 overall right before the stroke of midnight Thursday night.
“The Ravens are getting one heck of a young man & football player!” Penn State coach James Franklin wrote on Twitter. “(Oweh), you are just beginning to scratch the surface of your potential. Take this opportunity, compete like crazy & accomplish all your dreams! You will always be family & I will always be here for you!”
Combined with good friend and classmate Micah Parsons, who went 12th overall to the Dallas Cowboys, Oweh’s selection gave Penn State two first-round picks in the same draft for the first time in 18 years, when the Lions had four first-rounders in 2003.
Northwestern was the only other Big Ten school with two first-round picks this year. Ohio State and Michigan had one apiece.
A defensive end at Penn State, the Ravens announced Oweh as an outside linebacker. His athleticism was his top selling point, checking in at 6-foot-5, 257 pounds while clocking an absurd 4.35 in the 40.
There simply aren’t many people on the planet who are that fast at that size, which outweighed the fact that Oweh only started playing football midway through high school — switching from basketball — and spent just three seasons at Penn State.
But in his lone season as a starter last fall, Oweh earned first-team All-Big Ten honors from conference coaches despite not recording a sack. One stat-tracking service, Sports Info Solutions, credited him with 26 quarterback pressures in seven games in 2020.
And the Ravens thought enough of Oweh’s potential that they used a first-round pick on an edge rusher for the first time since 2003, when they landed perennial Pro Bowler Terrell Suggs.
“I think he’s a perfect fit for our defense,” coach John Harbaugh told Baltimore media early Friday morning.
Penn State is expected to have a third player drafted on Friday night, which consists of the second and third rounds. Pat Freiermuth is the top-rated tight end available in most projections.