ARIZONA - Arizona Cardinals outside linebacker BJ Ojulari was one of the team's biggest roster cuts ahead of the regular season. Now, after a few weeks, he's found a new home.
According to NFL insider Jordan Schultz, the Jacksonville Jaguars are signing Ojulari.
Ojulari arrived to the desert with high hopes of reaching the quarterback after a successful college stint at LSU, which made him a second-round pick. His length made him an attractive edge player for the Cardinals in general manager Monti Ossenfort's first draft running the show.
Ojulari generated plenty of buzz during his rookie season, tallying four sacks and setting the stage for what many had hoped to be a second-year leap.
However, a severe knee injury suffered during training camp derailed those hopes. Ojulari would miss the entire 2024 season and the first half of 2025 before he eventually returned. In the eight games he played last year, Ojulari notched one sack with three quarterback hits and nine tackles.
Entering this summer, all eyes were on Ojulari to see how he would look finally entering a training camp at full health. Ojulari failed to make an impact in a fairly set Cardinals edge room, and his participation deep into every preseason game signaled Arizona was eying other options in the room.
That ultimately proved to be true, as underdog outside linebacker Eku Leota made the Cardinals' final 53-man roster over Ojulari, sending the fourth-year edge rusher to find a new team.
"We made a decision based on what we felt was best, and I feel for BJ," Cardinals head coach Mike LaFleur told reporters after roster cuts.
"If you guys saw the work that he put in behind the scenes to try to get back to the level that he knows he's capable of, you'd root for him too. And his journey and his story is not over. But that was a rough injury that he went through, and in my six months here, however long I've been, all I saw was a guy that had his shoulders up and his head held high, and he just attacked it."
That was weeks ago, and now with Week 1 fully under our belts, the Jaguars decided to pull the trigger on adding Ojulari to a room that holds former Cardinals linebacker Dennis Gardeck . Ojulari was likely signed to help replace edge rusher BJ Green, who left Week 1 with an elbow injury.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/cardinals/onsi as Ex-Cardinals OLB BJ Ojulari Lands New Opportunity .
