Chargers defensive lineman CJ Okoye is with the team as part of the NFL’s International Pathway Program, which identifies athletes from other countries who have NFL talent but no experience with football. And Okoye showed both his talent and his inexperience in his first preseason game.
Okoye sacked Rams quarterback Stetson Bennett, but he didn’t realize when he took Bennett down that it counted as a sack, because Bennett had rolled out of the pocket and Okoye thought that made him a runner and no longer a passer.
“Believe me when I tell you I didn’t even know that was a sack,” Okoye told Rich Eisen. “I didn’t know. Like I thought he was out of the pocket, so I thought it was a tackle or something. When I did it I was like yeah, I already got him down I was like, ‘Okay, it’s a tackle for loss or something.’ Then a teammate of mine just walked up to me and said, ‘Yo you just got a sack!’ I was like ‘what?’ He said it again, ‘you just got a sack.’ Then I just went crazy, I did my dance.”
Okoye did a dance on the field after sacking Bennett and then repeated the dance in the Chargers’ locker room as teammates cheered when coach Brandon Staley handed Okoye a game ball. Okoye said it’s a dance he’s been doing since childhood.
“When I was little I have this friend, she used to dance I just pick up that dance from her,” Okoye said “I don’t know how to do it but it always makes my family laugh when I do the dance. And I see everybody on my team as family. So I just thought okay, so if this is my family, if you’re my family, you might love this too. . . . I was doing the same dance since I was a kid and they used to laugh. So I just feel like I should do the same dance.”
Okoye has a lot of learning to do, and probably would need some time on the practice squad before he could make the Chargers’ 53-man roster. But he has enough talent that he may some day do his sack dance in regular-season games.