Leaner body isn’t only reason Larry Ogunjobi feels like new man in Year 2 with Steelers

Larry Ogunjobi feels likes a new man. And even if that reinvigorated soul isn’t palpable to his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates, Ogunjobi has the literal look of a new man.

“Did you see that body change?” fellow defensive lineman DeMarvin Leal said, asking a rhetorical question almost with a sense of awe.

“But everything else is the same — he’s still Big Larry.”

Only this August, Big Larry doesn’t quite look quite as big.

Though Ogunjobi says he’s at roughly the same playing weight he was last year in his first season with the Steelers, those approximately 305 pounds are distributed much differently on his 6-foot-3 frame. Ogunjobi is noticeably more cut — the chest larger, the belly slimmer, the arms more defined with muscle.

“Body fat down, getting super clean, working extremely hard,” Ogunjobi said after Wednesday morning’s walkthrough at Saint Vincent.

Ogunjobi was a motivated man in his approach to his seventh NFL offseason, in part because it was in no way like his sixth.

Whereas last year Ogunjobi was under doctor’s orders to limit activity as much as possible as he worked to rehabilitate a foot injury suffered in January, this spring and summer Ogunjobi has been unencumbered in his workouts and in his training.

Hence, that feeling like he’s a new man. It’s because Ogunjobi feels like his old self.

“When you lose something or you are not doing things that you are used to doing and capable of doing, you don’t ever want to take that for granted when you get an opportunity to be at that level again,” he said. “For me, it was just attacking this offseason.”

It took 3 trips into free agency for Larry Ogunjobi to sign a long-term contract with an NFL team. https://t.co/5tY9gTYdhU

— Tribune-Review Sports (@TribSports) June 6, 2023

The leaner and (figuratively) meaner Ogunjobi says he’s healthy in 2023, something he can now fully acknowledge after having everyone else observe he wasn’t at full strength in 2022. The Lisfranc foot injury Ogunjobi suffered during a playoff game that ended his only season as a member of the Cincinnati Bengals was significant enough that Ogunjobi failed a physical with the Chicago Bears in spring 2022 after he’d agreed to a three-year, $40.5 million contract with that team.

Three months later, after the retirement of Stephon Tuitt, the Steelers signed Ogunjobi for one year and $8 million. And though Ogunjobi provided a steady, reliable presence over 16 of the Steelers’ games (playing 63% of their defensive snaps), he clearly was still hindered by the foot injury. The proof was in that Ogunjobi rarely practiced throughout the week, particularly toward the end of the season.

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“That tedious repetition is super important to kind of get in the habit and lets you fine-tune some of the skills that you want to,” Ogunjobi said. “So (this year) just being able to be out here and grind and build that camaraderie and get that feeling with teammates, I think it’s super important and I never want to take that for granted again.”

Ogunjobi’s new lease on life was buoyed by way of a new contract with the Steelers, worth up to $28.75 million over the next three years. He has enjoyed a full offseason as part of the organization, rather than joining it at the end of summer workouts like last season.

Ogunjobi become the clear No. 2 defensive lineman on the team after captain Cameron Heyward, someone capable of playing in all situations and with a varied skillset.

“He’s definitely one of those veterans we all can learn from,” fellow defensive lineman Armon Watts said. “He made a name for himself, and he lets his work speak for itself, one of those guys who has a lot of professionalism.”

That professionalism has been honed over 60 NFL games and 47 starts in the past six years, all spent in the AFC North. When he was drafted in the third round by the Cleveland Browns in 2017, Ogunjobi was a 22-year-old coming out of a mid-major college (Charlotte) who’d only began playing football as a high school sophomore.

“Now I’m in Year 7, it’s crazy thinking about it,” Ogunjobi said. “It feels like I was just a rookie.”

At 29, despite being five years the junior of Heyward, Ogunjobi recognizes he now is counted on to be a leader for the younger players in a Steelers defensive line group that lost a pair of veterans in Tyson Alualu and Chris Wormley.

“I feel like Larry’s always taking care of his job,” said Leal, a 23-year-old in his second pro season. “He’s always been a guy taking care of himself mentally, physically, emotionally …. whatever he has to do. He comes in every day to work.”

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