Of course, Olu Fashanu doesn't only have drool-worthy points in his game, far from it. The very young 21-year-old player still has a lot of work to do to even come close to touching his seemingly high ceiling, and the most important point for Olu to work on is undoubtedly his Footwork.
His legs are still too often stopped when he's engaged in Run blockHe has a tendency to root himself, which is a pity considering that in Pass pro he manages to activate his legs much better.
While an improvement can be seen between the 2022 and 2023 seasons, he's not yet at the level, in my opinion. For example, he still makes mistakes on his first steps in certain situations.
In Pass pro as well, I find that his Footwork I find that once engaged in a block, his footwork is too often reactive rather than proactive; he follows the rusher rather than redirecting him, whereas once engaged, he could, with his strength, become the actor and take control. The direct consequence of enduring the block is that on an explosive change of direction, he can find himself out of position, and with his somewhat random hand placement, it can quickly lead to situations where he's exposed to flags for HoldingIn the worst case, he gets completely outplayed, allowing pressure or a sack, and as I write these lines with tapes of him playing in the background, that's exactly what just happened in his game against Illinois, even though he had well blocked the player and had him perfectly locked down.
Because of this spectator side, he can sometimes appear as being too "passive" on certain blocks, especially in Pass proI'd like him to be much more dominant because he really has the capabilities and indeed shows it sometimes on certain reps.

I also find Fashanu sometimes really vulnerable to Counter moves due to a certain imbalance in his game. This is particularly the case on interior-exterior attacks, and he will need to be more cautious not to overreact to the interior on Pass pro. Olu knows it's one of his weaknesses, and as a result, he tends to overprotect his interior even when it's not necessary, attacking very quickly even when he has guard help. Therefore, he should be careful not to expose himself too much on the outside. Because of this, Olu is also vulnerable to Stunts, his game against Auburn in 2022 being a good example as he gets caught several times on his outside because he stays engaged with the interior rusher. Moreover, Olu sometimes still shows vulnerability on plays where he doesn't remain under control, and there are still too many plays where he doesn't distribute his weight well enough, making him susceptible to techniques such as, Push-pullor even just a well-timed Swim move . There's noticeable progress between 2022 and 2023, but the work is far from done.

Like many young players, Olu tends to play too upright and thus doesn't take advantage of optimal Leverage he absolutely needs to lower his center of gravity to improve his run blocks, especially since he still has work to do on his head and hip placement on certain specific blocks (the two types of blocks that really come to mind are the Down blocks and some Zone blocks. He sometimes tends to reach for the player with his hands before properly positioning his body on these blocks, putting him in a weak position over the gap he must cover, quickly leading to avoidable flags. Once again, despite the progression in his 2023 season, he still seems to struggle to really swing his hip once the block is engaged in order to create a path for the ball carrier. This is again a matter of Footwork , but if he manages to overcome this hurdle, he could really take on a whole new dimension.

A point that greatly annoys me with Fashanu, because it's not a difficult issue to fix, is his bad habit of taking his eyes off his opponent mid-play to see what's happening behind him when he thinks he's won his rep.
The problem is that often the rep isn't actually finished; his QB might still be rolling or looking for targets, and Olu then has to resume his effort and block in a hurry. It's not uncommon to see the QB forced to throw, run, or get rid of the ball, whereas before the block was released, everything was fine.
Having really redone all his scouting to see his progression from last season, this tendency is still too recurrent. He needs to stop this as soon as possible.

The last point to discuss about Olu, but a very important one, is his average punching ability and rather slow hands. Whether on a run or pass block, his hands are slow to come out, making him really vulnerable to hand techniques.
It's not rare to see him get tricked by techniques based on handwork (all variants of chops or clubs, or sometimes just by having his hands hunted). I fear that in a Pro style offense with pass plays that can take time to develop, he would have allowed numerous sacks or pressures because of this.
In situations of Pass pro, he often places his hands after the defender has placed his, and two problems then arise. First, he doesn't win the inside of the defender's shoulder pad, which is crucial for dominating in the trenches, losing his ability to direct the block where he wants it. Second, if his hands arrive late, he makes the task much harder if he wants to grab the defender because holding will be clearly more visible, and just from the first viewings of tapes, he gets away with several Holding non-called, both in his 2022 and 2023 seasons. Personally, this is one of the points I find concerning with Fashanu.

In addition to his hands being quite slow to come out and having a rather average punch, his hand placement also needs work; he often ends up with his hands outside the numbers and struggles to reposition them (there are many repositioning attempts throughout the season, it's in progress between 2022 and 2023, a slow progress but progress nonetheless), so when he's beaten, it's noticeable, and again, he exposes himself to calls for Holding. In 2022, particularly, the number of unseen or unflagged holdings is alarming, and although we still see this bad hand placement in 2023, very/too far outside whether on Pass pro or Run block, we see that he has tried to work on it.
Most of the time, his strength compensates for these weaknesses, but as soon as he faces a quality rusher, the same problems will recur because his hands are still too slow on some reps, giving the rusher time to work technically, and inevitably, Footwork becomes crucial in this case, and unfortunately, we know that with Olu, we're far from having an elite Footwork .