The Defensive Line Question That Won’t Go Away

As playoff contenders reload in the trenches, Nebraska is still searching for answers and even a coach along its defensive line. The uncertainty mirrors last offseason — and the results from 2025 offer little comfort.

Matt Rhule has built his career through the defensive line - so why is it such a problem at Nebraska? | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

One of those adages that seem to pass throughout time is the idea that “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Winston Churchill, who often gets cited for the popular refrain even if it may have originated from someone else altogether, was likely not talking about defensive line recruiting in 1948 at the British House of Commons.

But for our purposes in 2026, he might as well have been singling out the most troublesome spot for Nebraska football and its recently embattled coach, Matt Rhule.

As College Football Playoff teams like Georgia, Texas A&M and Texas Tech are reloading up front — where all three teams already excelled — Nebraska still hasn’t named its defensive line coach.

The hard part to truly understand, though, is how a coach who has been synonymous with great defensive line play and coaching the position itself at three different stops throughout his career has found himself in a second straight offseason with real questions about the plan up front.

Let’s go back in time — not to England in 1948 but to Lincoln in 2024.

After two strong seasons up front, the Huskers found themselves needing to replace defensive line coach Terrence Knighton, who had left Nebraska along with defensive coordinator Tony White for jobs at Florida State.

Knighton had proved to be one of the immediate hits for Rhule with his initial staff, and the expectation was that Rhule would replace him with a similar kind of defensive line coach — young, hungry and someone breaking into an opportunity.

Nebraska hired Terry Bradden for the 2025 season but moved off after just the one season. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

And that’s exactly what Nebraska did with Terry Bradden — and it’s also where everything went wrong.

Bradden came to Nebraska highly recommended from Kansas City, where he had been the assistant defensive line coach for several seasons.

Getting his first opportunity as a position coach, Bradden came off as incredibly likable in his introductory press conference and looked like the next Rhule success story.

Instead, the coach departed after one season with the Huskers, presiding over a defensive line that featured some of the more highly regarded younger players on the roster but never seemed to take a step forward and was widely considered by many to be the chief culprit in why Nebraska’s defense struggled mightily.

There’s plenty of discussion about what worked and what didn’t for Nebraska’s defense, and while the Huskers moved on from Bradden, Nebraska is now making the same exact mistake it made a year ago.

It’s January 8 and Nebraska still does not have a defensive line coach.

Now, Bradden had been hired and announced at this point a year ago, but while others were involved in portal recruiting and getting on the road to get a jump start for the 2026 recruiting cycle, Nebraska’s defensive line coach spent the first month of 2025 working with the Kansas City Chiefs on a return to the Super Bowl — which they did.

That Super Bowl appearance, Bradden’s fifth since starting with Kansas City, prevented him from really being a part of the recruiting process.

That — and perhaps a limited amount of resources — led to a relatively underwhelming portal haul after watching Ty Robinson, Nash Hutmacher and MJ Sherman all exhaust their eligibility, while Jimari Butler left for LSU via the transfer portal.

Nebraska struggled up front on defense all year. | Dylan Widger-Imagn Images

Nebraska was going to rely on its youth.

And it did.

And Nebraska’s defensive line struggled the entire season.

Now, a year later, Nebraska finds itself in the same spot without Bradden. This time, it’s attempting to add to its defensive line without being able to give interested parties any idea who the position coach will be.

At least a year ago, the response to a visitor or interested player might have been, “Well, he’s coaching Chris Jones in the playoffs.”

Like a poker player shooting for an inside straight on the river, Nebraska’s efforts have largely come up bust.

Nebraska will be the fifth school for defensive line transfer Anthony Jones Jr. | Nick King/Lansing State Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

On Tuesday, Nebraska added Anthony Jones, a defensive lineman who has already made the rounds in the conference, with Nebraska set to be his fifth stop. Thus far, the production hasn’t followed the luggage.

The Huskers are also set to host Colorado (by way of Louisville) lineman Tawfiq Thomas, an interior defender who qualifies as a space eater.

Neither Jones nor Thomas is a tier-one option, though admittedly both are a step up from Jaylen George and Gabe Moore a year ago.

Nebraska has already missed out on a number of its top defensive line targets. The Huskers are likely going to continue working that position as the portal churns along.

But as long as the team still hasn’t hired and announced a defensive line coach, it’s an utter mystery what those players could expect at Nebraska.

If Nebraska struggles again along the defensive line in 2026 without much in the way of reinforcements after a similarly wayward 2025, there won’t be much mystery about who will bear the blame.

Rhule and Nebraska cannot afford a sidestep or a misstep up front.

Nebraska’s schedule is more difficult in 2026, and the program needs to show a strong step forward.

The lack of a defensive line coach in January as the portal started, combined with Nebraska’s inability to land proven commodities up front, indicates the Huskers are already working out of a hole of their own making.

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