photo by: AP Photo/Michael Conroy

Kansas offensive lineman Enrique Cruz Jr. (17) runs a drill at the NFL football scouting combine in Indianapolis, Sunday, March 1, 2026.

The San Francisco 49ers made offensive lineman Enrique Cruz Jr. the first Kansas football player selected in the 2026 NFL Draft on Saturday afternoon.

San Francisco picked Cruz at No. 179 overall with the third-to-last pick of the fifth round. In doing so, the 49ers went back to the well for their second KU lineman in three years after selecting Dominick Puni in 2024 as the highest-drafted Jayhawk since Aqib Talib; Puni has started at guard for them in the years since.

Cruz’s selection — which came two rounds earlier than most mock drafts had projected — caps off an impressive few months during which he competed at the new American Bowl all-star game and then put himself in plenty of draft conversations with his performance at the NFL Scouting Combine. His 40-yard dash (4.94 seconds), standing broad jump (9 feet, 8 inches) and vertical jump (35 inches) ranked among the best results for offensive linemen, and NFL.com named him to its all-combine team. He later took part in KU’s on-campus pro day.

The Chicago native started at right tackle for KU throughout the 2025 season. He was a fifth-year senior after spending the first four seasons of his career at Syracuse, redshirting in 2021, making spot starts on both sides of the line in 2022 and then serving as the Orange’s full-time left tackle in 2023. However, under a new coaching staff he found himself consigned to the bench as a redshirt junior, and he transferred to KU in the spring portal window during the 2025 offseason, then won the starting job and rounded into form around the start of Big 12 play.

The 6-foot-6, 320-pound tackle earned an all-conference honorable mention following the conclusion of his lone year in Lawrence.

He follows a succession of KU linemen to reach the NFL. After Puni in 2024, last year, both of the Jayhawks’ starting tackles, Logan Brown and Bryce Cabeldue, made it to the league, with Brown undrafted and Cabeldue a sixth-round pick. They went on to win Super Bowl rings with the Seattle Seahawks.