Edefuan
Ulofoshio.
Edefuan
Ulofoshio.
Washington· 6'1"· 236 lb· 4.56s 40
"A walk-on from Anchorage who became the green-dot voice of a national title-game defense, then tested like a top-five athlete at the position — the tape never quite caught up to the numbers."Pre-draft read
Ulofoshio is a downhill-triggering off-ball linebacker who spent six years at Washington and finished as the defense's signal-caller, working from the box as a run-and-chase MIKE. The calling card is speed and tackling volume: he beats climbing linemen to the spot, closes hard on the flat and finishes in space.
Coverage is his cleanest area. He carries tight ends vertically, gets real depth in zone drops and clicks on throws in front of him, even if he gathers through sharp transitions. Against the run he is a mover, not a thumper — he gets caught in the trash, struggles to hold his gap against tight ends and plays with more speed than certainty. Testing was elite: 4.56, a 39.5-inch vertical and a 10-8 broad at 236 pounds.
Nickel-based defense that keeps two off-ball linebackers clean behind a two-gapping front and asks them to run and cover rather than take on blocks.
Year 1: four-phase special-teams contributor and third-down coverage linebacker. Ceiling: a WILL starter in a light box, protected from tight ends and pullers by the front in front of him.
A downhill 3-4 that asks its inside linebackers to stack blockers head-up and spill runs; his lack of take-on strength gets him washed out of the gap on early downs.
Value concentrates on third down and on kick units, not on first-and-10.
Edefuan Ulofoshio Washington Highlights
College cutup of his Husky career, heavy on range, chase tackles and zone drops.
Edefuan Ulofoshio Highlights — Welcome to the Buffalo Bills
Post-draft reel assembled after Buffalo took him at 160, focused on his 2023 season.
Edefuan Ulofoshio makes BIG tackle after helmet gets knocked off in Sugar Bowl
Single-play clip from the CFP semifinal that captures the effort trait teams bought.
Ulofoshio is a six-year Husky and former walk-on out of Anchorage who turned himself into the defensive voice of a national title-game team. Everything in the profile is effort, athleticism and accumulated tackles — a linebacker who wins by covering ground rather than by processing the run fit a beat early.
The 2023 season was the resume. Fully healthy for the first time in three years, he piled up 94 tackles with 8 tackles for loss, three sacks and an interception across 15 games, was named a Butkus Award finalist, made first-team All-Pac-12 and earned second-team All-America honors. The flags are as loud as the production. Injuries wiped out most of 2021 and 2022, he turned 24 before the draft, and evaluators consistently flagged shaky run diagnosis and a lack of take-on strength: he gets displaced by tight ends and often looks like he is guessing where the ball is going.
The board read him as a fifth-to-sixth-round special-teams linebacker with coverage upside — good testing, real leadership, questionable instincts. Buffalo took him at 160 as the third of three fifth-rounders, betting a nickel-heavy defense could use a fast cover linebacker on third down while he earned his keep on kick units.
- 01
Sideline-to-sideline range
Beats climbing linemen to the spot and chases plays down from the backside, using 4.56 speed to erase angles most off-ball linebackers cannot.
- 02
Coverage feel
Carries tight ends vertically, gets legitimate depth in zone drops and clicks on throws in front of him, his most projectable NFL skill.
- 03
Tackling volume
Racked up 94 tackles in 2023 and 251 for his career, finishing consistently in space rather than throwing shoulders and missing.
- 04
Explosive testing
A 39.5-inch vertical and 10-8 broad jump at 236 pounds put him at the top of the linebacker class in lower-body explosiveness.
- 05
Leadership and toughness
A former walk-on who became the green-dot voice of a national title-game defense and played through a brutal injury stretch to get there.
- 01
Run diagnosis
Slow to key and read, especially against zone concepts, and he often arrives late or in the wrong gap because he is guessing rather than seeing.
- 02
Take-on strength
Gets displaced from his gap by tight ends and pulling linemen, and he does not use his length to stack and shed at the point of attack.
- 03
Injury history
Season-altering injuries wiped out most of 2021 and 2022, leaving one healthy college campaign as the basis for the entire evaluation.
- 04
Age and runway
He turned 24 before the draft as a sixth-year senior, so a team was buying a finished product rather than a developmental linebacker.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.56sp50
- Vertical
- 39.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 128inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Washington | — | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 |
| 2019 | Washington | — | 47 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | Washington | 4 | 47 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 1 |
| 2021 | Washington | 6 | 51 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2022 | Washington | 5 | 10 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | Washington | 15 | 94 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Career | — | 30 | 251 | 7 | 1 | 8 | 5 |
Season splits from cfbstats (2020-2023, includes bowl/CFP games) and CFBD game logs (2019); 2018 line from verified reporting (2 tackles, 2 forced fumbles on kick coverage). Game counts for 2018-2019 are not verified in the canonical source and are left null rather than estimated, so career games is null. Career tackles (251) is the sum of the six verified season totals; CFBD-derived aggregates read 243 because they exclude bowl and CFP games.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Athletic, high-effort second-level defender who lives on special teams and spot starts.
Undersized run-and-chase MIKE who made the leap by processing fast enough to weaponize his speed.
Late Day 3 linebacker who never converted testing into a defensive role and bounced off rosters.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Buffalo essentially redshirted him. Ulofoshio made the 53-man roster out of camp in 2024 but was a gameday inactive 13 times, did not debut until Week 9 on eight special-teams snaps against Miami, and played only four games all year. His one real opportunity came in the regular-season finale at New England, where he took every defensive snap and finished with five tackles and a pass breakup. He was passed on the depth chart by undrafted tryout linebacker Joe Andreessen, and Buffalo waived him at the 2025 cutdown. Cleveland picked him up and he spent 2025 on the roster fringe, appearing in one game — the Week 18 win at Cincinnati. Two seasons in, he has five games, one start and six tackles.
In hindsight this is a fifth-round miss, and the reasons were visible before the pick. The athletic testing never translated into the instincts an NFL linebacker needs to earn early-down snaps, and a 24-year-old prospect with two lost injury seasons had no development runway. He never even locked down the special-teams role that was supposed to be his floor, which is what separates a survivable Day 3 pick from a wasted one.
Data note: Season splits from cfbstats (2020-2023, includes bowl/CFP games) and CFBD game logs (2019); 2018 line from verified reporting (2 tackles, 2 forced fumbles on kick coverage). Game counts for 2018-2019 are not verified in the canonical source and are left null rather than estimated, so career games is null. Career tackles (251) is the sum of the six verified season totals; CFBD-derived aggregates read 243 because they exclude bowl and CFP games.