The Unknowables 25: Can NU ascend while rebuilding on the defensive line?

There's plenty to like about Nebraska in 2025, but the defensive line is a big question mark. Maybe the biggest.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

It’s hard for a team to be bad when it’s good on the defensive line. Not impossible, of course, but difficult.

Case in point, Phil Steele publishes his list of top units in each annual edition of his preview magazine. On the defensive line, he highlights the top 15 groups in the country. Over the past four seasons, those 60 teams (15 each year) combined for a record of 544-254 (.682). That group of 60 included every national champion over that span and just 13-of-60 finished the year with a losing record. On average, a team with a top-15 defensive line according to Steele¹ won slightly more than eight games.

Nebraska was fourth in those rankings last summer. Made sense on paper. Ty Robinson and Nash Hutmacher were veteran earth-movers, and the Huskers had some exciting pass-rush specialists in Jimari Butler, Cameron Lenhardt, Princewill Umanmielen and James Williams. That group largely played to those lofty standards, ranking fourth in the Big Ten (behind three Playoff teams) in tackles for loss and seventh in sacks.

And that group, minus Lenhardt, is gone for 2025. So are former defensive coordinator Tony White and line coach Terrence Knighton.

The broad consensus on Nebraska—including from rival coaches—is the Huskers are trending up, but the question for this second 2025 installment of The Unknowables² is if NU can remain ascendent while rebuilding on the defensive line.

Let’s start with what we can be most confident about entering the season. Senior Elijah Jeudy spent most of last season listed at No. 2 on the depth chart at nose tackle behind Hutmacher. The Texas A&M transfer and former 4-star recruit played in all 13 games in 2024, starting one, and posting career-highs in tackles (13) and TFLs (2.0). If you had to make a depth chart today, Jeudy’s probably No. 1 somewhere on the front.

After a promising true freshman season that saw Lenhardt record 16 tackles with 5 for loss, his numbers dipped a bit in 2024 to 16 tackles with 3 TFLs. He was listed third at end behind Butler (now at LSU) and Williams (FSU), but Lenhardt likely needs to be a factor this season.

We have less to go on with sophomore Riley Van Poppel, but we know this—he was wise enough to look at NU’s line last year and volunteer to take a redshirt season. That decision, plus what we did see of him in 2024, has me bullish on his future. Van Poppel played in four games plus the bowl game, making three tackles with one for loss, but if you’re looking for the next Robinson or Hutmacher on the current roster, I’d make Van Poppel the odds-on favorite to eventually get there. How close can he get in his first season as a presumed starter? It took Robinson and Hutmacher a while.

Those three players, all entering their third year in the program, are what we kinda know about Nebraska’s front in 2025. Things get murkier from there.

The Huskers brought in three transfers on the line. Williams Nwaneri, a former 5-star recruit who transferred after a redshirt year at Missouri, is a total upside play. It’s a decent bet to make, but Nwaneri didn’t force his way into the rotation as a true freshman at Mizzou, so what’s fair to expect in Year 1 at Nebraska? The Huskers could use someone who looks like a 5-star, even a young one.

Jaylen George offers some experience after starting 23 games over three seasons at Tennessee Tech. It’s probably a good thing if he’s part of the regular rotation, given the experience, but he’ll be transitioning from FCS football to the Big Ten, which is a steep curve for a defensive lineman.

The Huskers also landed Gabe Moore from Mississippi State. He redshirted without playing a game in 2023 and was out for all of 2024 with an injury. The most we know of Moore is that he at least has potential-tackle size at 6-4, 290 pounds.

Things get young in a hurry for NU after that. Sophomore Sua Lefotu has appeared in five games over two seasons but was third on the depth chart at Robinson’s spot by the end of 2024. Sophomore Keona Davis was ready enough to forego a redshirt as a true freshman, appearing in 12 games with 10 tackles and 1.5 for loss in 2024. In terms of up-and-comers on the roster, Davis is a reasonable favorite.

Or maybe that’s true freshman Malcolm Simpson, a 4-star recruit and the 17th-ranked defensive lineman in the country by On3. True freshman have played on the line in each of Matt Rhule’s first two seasons, so I’d honestly be surprised if we didn’t see Simpson in 2025.

Given that broad overview, how confident are you in Nebraska having an above-average defensive line in the Big Ten this season? Can it increase its win total if it doesn’t?

In some ways, I think those might be the key questions of the offseason. It’s hard to be bad with a good defensive line, but there are ways to be good without one, it’s just harder. The onus, in my view, was already on the offense to produce more this season. If this ends up being a growth year for the defensive line, the bar gets even higher for the offense.

That’s football. Things rarely line up perfectly. Nebraska has more upside than downside for the season ahead, but if I had to pick the biggest potential limiting factor in 2025, it’s that this line is probably better a year from now.

But I don’t know that, which makes it perfect for The Unknowables.

1. I have my reservations about some of Steele’s methodology elsewhere, but here I think his lists are useful because they’re consistent. He’ll have one in every issue and he and his staff are always doing the rating.

2. An occasional offseason series focused on things we can’t prove about Nebraska yet.