Duck Dive: Northwestern Wildcats Football 2025 Preview

Special thanks to David Gold, editor emeritus of InsideNU, for joining me to discuss Northwestern’s roster on this week’s podcast:

After completing the coaching staff overhaul that began in the 2022-to-2023 offseason and finally gaining access to some modern roster management tools to turn over many of the inherited pieces of the previous system, Coach Braun’s team is looking at a belated Year 1 with a stable group of coaches and schematic identity.

The Wildcats went 1-11 in 2022 but surprisingly surged to 8 wins in 2023 during Braun’s season as interim head coach, then encountered something of a falloff in 2024. This lead quite a few observers to wonder which of these trajectories was the illusion – is this at core a bad team with 2023’s success just being a fluke and 2024’s dip confirmed it, or was the upward trajectory with the new staff that they’d shown in 2023 the real deal and 2024 just a quick ephemeral setback and they’ll get back onto the growth curve shortly?

After reviewing the film and charting data and talking with David, I’m inclined to think the latter is closer to being true, or at least, bad luck last year at certain key offensive positions had an outsized effect on the entire team and both sides of the ball while the fundamentals show they’re ready for growth if they’d just get some good luck. But Northwestern is on a pretty impressive run of bad luck at those positions, so it’s anybody’s guess if this is the year that fortune smiles on the Cats.

Northwestern’s seven-year search for a stable quarterback solution continues in 2025, having last seen a reliable starter finish the season in 2018 with Clayton Thorson. For as dispiriting as the injury-riddled back-and-forth between Ben Bryant and Brendan Sullivan was in 2023, it turned out to be a local high point in the Wildcats’ recent QB history, as they finished that year with relatively respectable 128.4 and 140.2 NCAA passer ratings.

In 2024, both had departed and Northwestern went with transfer Mike Wright, then when he didn’t pan out, the backup #12 QB Lausch finished the year (I’d dismissed Lausch from previous tape as just a runner, but eerily David predicted both Wright, who hadn’t even gotten on campus at the time, and then Lausch getting the job). The passer ratings collapsed, to 99.6 for Wright and 104.8 for Lausch – multiple standard deviations below FBS median. On the season, Northwestern QBs threw 400 fewer yards, 13 fewer touchdowns, 30 fewer completions, and three more interceptions on almost exactly the same number of attempts as in 2023.

(Curiously, the passing stats I track from charting show fairly similar figures both years, but this turns out to be entirely due to a single freak game performance by Lausch against Maryland — possibly the strangest Big Ten game of the year — in which he absolutely shredded the Terps’ secondary in a schematic mismatch plus a lot of scrambling which I count as called passing plays. Eliminating that game from the count causes the numbers to look as expected, a falloff by 2-4 percentage points in each category and nearly a full yard in adjusted YPT.)

As a result of the QB situation (as well as some other personnel issues discussed below), we didn’t see much of the potential in new OC Lujan’s offense with which he’d previously led South Dakota State to back-to-back FCS championships. It wasn’t as oppressively stodgy and slow-paced as former OC Mike Bajakian’s offense, but the precision timing and constraint plays in the wide open offense just weren’t there because the QBs couldn’t execute them.

That may change with the new transfer from SMU and near-certain starter, #8 QB Stone, a mid 4-star from the 2021 cycle and career 156.7 passer. Stone had an electric 2023 season with the Mustangs in Rhett Lashlee’s offense and looked to repeat it in 2024’s playoff run, but on David’s suggestion I reviewed the tape of their first few weeks and it was pretty grisly. SMU’s new offensive line was getting pushed around in the opener by Nevada (shocking given that program’s systemic strength & conditioning issues) and during the first three games of the season they used a planned rotation between the pocket passer Stone and the dual-threat QB Kevin Jennings. Stone had the heroic game-winner to prevent a major upset against Nevada but at halftime in the third game against BYU the rotations came to an end and Jennings had the job full-time for the rest of the year as his mobility was needed to deal with the o-line situation. Stone only came in for a couple of late garbage time reps and a goal line TD pass in a tight game against Louisville.

I think David’s take that we worked out going through each of the successive units about Stone’s fit and potential for the offense under Lujan is right – if he has first and foremost the offensive line protection, and secondarily some more help than what’s already a given in terms of reliable targets, the skillset and style of play could be one of the best in the league. If the line is a repeat of the SMU situation, David told me Stone isn’t a total statue in the practices he watched, but that’s obviously not the best use of his talents.

If Stone is unavailable, Lausch returns and will probably lead a repeat performance. There are a three more young QBs in the room; David thinks that one is likely unplayable and the third string job would either go to the redshirt freshman #2 QB Boe who played a bit last year or the true freshman #13 QB Romain who was getting some second-team reps at the Spring scrimmage David attended.

The running back unit used three ballcarriers last year and with no significant additions or departures it looks like it’ll be the same lineup and distribution again in 2025. #4 RB Porter will be going into his fourth year in five seasons as starter (he missed 2021 with an injury), which is nearly as amazing as the fact that in every year I’ve charted him — despite changing coordinators, offensive lines, and defensive schedule difficulties — his per-play metrics are functionally identical, 46.5% success rate and 3.9 adjusted YPC. Those are reliable if hardly spectacular numbers, and they reflect that Porter simply bullies his way through the line every time, with only a handful of chunk-yardage runs in his entire career.

The remaining carries were split pretty evenly between two younger backs, #6 RB Himon and #5 RB Komolafe (then wearing jersey #25). Komolafe is built like Porter and was clearly brought on to be his successor in Bajakian’s final recruiting cycle for pounding the ball in A-gap runs, but he was simply nowhere near as effective at 31.5% success and 3.5 YPC. I asked David if he thought there was a chance Komolafe would step up his game and he thought it was unlikely, and I tend to agree.

Himon is a change-of-pace back and on last Summer’s podcast David was raving about his future, so when he turned in a disappointing 29.5% success rate in 2024 David seemed down in the dumps about it. I actually think David had the right of it and Himon has the potential to be much more effective because of what he flashed on the few carries that were successful – even with such a terribly low success rate his average adjusted YPC still hit the FBS median of 4.5 (not to mention that he had some of the best hands out of the backfield on the team at 6.2 adjusted YPT), meaning that he was breaking exactly the big plays Porter never does on the occasions that he’d get through the line, he just had a harder time getting through. If the line improves — already something we’re contemplating for the passing game – Himon stands to be a major beneficiary.

It was also an odd management choice that David and I discussed during the time when Porter’s ankle was dinged up: the staff didn’t want to give his inside runs to Komolafe (because he’s not very effective) so they gave them instead to the more productive Himon, but that’s not his wheelhouse. This is another area where if Lujan gets to open the playbook more as we saw at SDSU, with toss plays to the outside and misdirection stuff to get him into open space, Himon could really thrive.

The tight end unit has been a pretty significant disappointment all four years I’ve been charting Northwestern, and David confirmed last year that the plan was to allow the upperclassmen-tilted room to shuffle off after 2024 and restock with younger and hopefully more effective guys (he’s been quite a source of comedy on the podcast for stories about tight ends fouling up plays and costing the Wildcats dearly, blaming the previous coaching staff and evaluating the quality of any given tight end by how isolated he’s been from the last TE coach). So, that plan seemed to mostly have been followed as the longtime starters as well as one more longtime backup got their diplomas and left, while they recruited three incoming freshmen.

However, none of the five returning tight ends have gotten any playing time in anticipation of the transition to 2025, and both David and I are at a loss to find anything to recommend them … one has been injured a lot, another is the backup longsnapper, a third has been on the team for five years and done nothing, and the last two are sophomore mid 3-stars. David’s pick is #18 TE Magee, I’ll go with #85 TE Schaller because he looks bigger.

The only transfer into the unit at this point is #88 TE Lines, who I am astonished still has eligibility as I think Northwestern is his sixth school and I remember charting him at Arizona in 2021 (David pointed out he actually has two years left due to the NCAA’s Pavia waiver, which floored me). That Arizona season was Lines’ only mildly productive one, in which he got 10 catches for a little over a hundred yards. David denied it when I asked since there are already nine TEs in the room, but my gut still tells me Northwestern would be in the market for another portal TE later this Summer.

The Wildcats lose their top two wideouts who represented about 70% of meaningful receiver targets: Bryce Kirtz who’d been a solid contributor for all four seasons I charted and AJ Henning who for the last two seasons has clearly been the most talented guy in the room since Malik Washington a couple years ago (who transferred to Virginia for his final season and was drafted by the Dolphins). Another ~10% apiece went to then-redshirt freshman #3 WR Covey and redshirt junior CJ Johnson; Covey returns although David noted he’s been fighting the injury bug, while Johnson hit the portal.

Stone will have one obvious target to throw to, #17 WR Wilde who was South Dakota State’s top receiver with over a thousand yards last year and previously worked with Lujan in Brookings. David said the connection with the 6’2” outside receiver looked strong in the practice he observed. He also said that #10 WR Ahumaraeze should be penciled in as a starter, coming off of missing virtually all of last season with an injury, although while I figured that at 6’4” he’d play outside, practice reports have had him in the slot while Covey has been the other outside receiver.

It may be that those three are what the solution is in the Fall but it’s difficult to parse since we have so little data on any of them at Northwestern, or what the alternatives might be. Everybody else in the room is a freshman with zero field time except one (and that’s minimal): low 3-stars #87 WR Grove and #80 WR Eligon, #19 WR Wagner who came in as a walk-on, two mid 3-star prep recruits #82 WR Blueitt and #14 WR Enongene, and mid 3-star Stanford transfer #20 WR C. Farrell who redshirted last year.

It’s very unusual to play such a tall guy out of the slot and if they want a more traditional configuration, it’s hard to pick out where their shorter slot man would come from – Farrell, Grove, and Wagner are all listed as 5’10” or 5’11” and interestingly it was Wagner, the walk-on, whom David said the staff was highest on. I think it’s possible the Wildcats may be looking in the portal for some more experienced slot receiver help later this Summer.

The offensive line situation was quite a lot to sort through at the end of the 2023 season, between several injuries, a lot of action into and out of the portal, and the clear need to make some moves to improve performance. I’m pretty happy that David and I nailed the starting lineup — with the notable surprise of a position flip of a longtime starter — but it lasted for all of a month into 2024 before injuries knocked out two starters for the entire season and another for a couple of games, causing a substantial amount of shuffling and subbing in several linemen we’d written off or not even mentioned, and the predictable consequences to how well the line held up.

The Wildcats got the two tackles they wanted to play all season, #72 LT Tiernan as expected on the left where he’s been since 2022, and on the right was the surprise of moving the center for the last few years, Ben Wrather, over to tackle. He’d never really graded out well on my tally sheet as an interior lineman and I don’t think he was much of an athletic fit for Lujan’s offense as a tackle either, but at least he stayed healthy all year. Tiernan returns and should have his LT spot again, while Wrather has graduated.

The third starting lineman who played most of the year was Josh Thompson, who’d taken over at RT a few games into the 2023 season for that year’s original starter who was benched for poor performance. Thompson wasn’t a massive improvement but we figured he’d stay as a starter in 2024; he did but at RG instead. He got banged up and missed a couple of games midseason, being replaced, somewhat shockingly, by then-true freshman #62 RG Oratokhai for a couple of games against teams with elite d-lines. Thompson has transferred out but Oratokhai returns.

The two starters who got hurt early and missed the rest of the season but return in 2025 are #74 LG Herzog and #69 C Bailey. Herzog was in the position we expected, it’s not really certain what his injury issue is but David said it was the kind of thing that kept flaring up and rather than aggravating it they chose to take the redshirt and let him come back healthy the next year. He was replaced by Cooper Lovelace, a former Juco who’d ridden the bench at USC for years and I’d dismissed because I figured if he were playable then USC — who needed a viable guard even more than NU did — would have used him by now. Lovelace wasn’t great in my first time seeing him ever but he was better than some of the things I’ve seen in LA.

Bailey has followed OL coach Boyle to every stop and played guard for him there, from Kent St to Colorado and now Northwestern, so starting wasn’t a surprise but at center was. He tore his ACL against UW in week 4 and was replaced for the rest of the year by #65 C Carsello, who was even worse as a center than Wrather during an experimental switchout back in 2023 so we hadn’t considered him, and he picked up in 2024 where he left off the year before.

Everyone except for Thompson and Wrather returns (Lovelace hit the portal shortly after David and I recorded), including three guys we’d talked about last year as potential backups — #64 OL Birsa, #73 OL McGuire, and former Texas Tech starter #61 OL Keeler — but who didn’t play at all. The fact that the staff moved Wrather out of position and went to poor performers Carsello and Lovelace plus a true freshman when injuries started piling up rather than any of those backups is a good indication of their perceived playability.

They’ve taken three transfers who might play — #60 OG Beerntsen from South Dakota State, #63 OT Gray from Liberty, and #75 OL Lewis from Minnesota — and a fourth after David and I recorded, mid 3-star redshirt freshman Talan Chandler from Mizzou whom I think will continue to develop. The first two are multi-year starters at RG and RT and it seems clear that they’ll slot right in to those spots; each individually are obvious fits for the offense with Beerntsen working under Lujan previously and Gray playing in a modern veer scheme. Lewis has a peculiar history, he was an experienced backup in 2022, started every game at RG in 2023, was moved over to start the first two games at RT last year, then RG in the third game, then he seems to have been demoted to backup where he played the rest of the season … an odd trajectory for a lineman who doesn’t really have substantially different grades than the rest of the Gophers’ line. David thinks Lewis is going to be the 6^th man, ahead of the rest of the returning backups, which seems like good analysis to me.

So that adds up to Tiernan at LT for the fourth straight year, Herzog at LG and Bailey at C again assuming they’re healthy, the experienced transfers Beerntsten at RG and Gray at RT, and the transfer Lewis as the 6^th man ahead of all the other returners despite his weird history because it seems the staff has zero confidence in anybody else.

Northwestern’s offensive line has been a messy situation for a long time. In 2025 it looks like they’ll have the starting lineup they want with everyone in a position he’s supposed to be playing, and it’s hard to believe that they’ll be as or more unhealthy than they were last year, which means they should be substantially ahead of where they’ve been lately. But there are still a number of risks to putting an actually good product on the field – the two projected starters on the left side are Bajakian offense guys, Bailey and Herzog are coming off injuries and we don’t know at what point they’ll truly be at 100%, starting multiple portal linemen empirically creates its own issues in gelling the unit together, and the backup situation does not inspire confidence if there’s even a single problem … and neither David nor I could remember a season when NU’s line didn’t encounter a significant problem.

Northwestern’s steady defensive improvement overall and in each of the six categories I track from charting for the seasons leading up through 2023 seemed very clearly tied to their stability and continuity – the same system, retaining and promoting DC McGarigle from his LB coaching spot as the one survivor of the total staff change, very little roster turnover, and a clearly planned pipeline of player development from redshirts to backups to multi-year starters. That was all set to continue into 2024 and indeed the underlying elements did — notwithstanding a bit of unfortunate injury news at a couple of spots, although they were situated just fine in terms of depth to handle it — and so it seemed a safe bet that the Wildcats would take another incremental step forward to become a top-20 defense in F+ advanced statistics.

Instead they slid by about 25 ranks, falling in most of the metrics I track as well as their success rates in most of the down & distance categories I’d pointed out as critical benchmarks of progress in last year’s preview. I think there are a few personnel hardships here but at worst they’d explain a failure to improve, not backsliding. David’s suggestion on the podcast was to examine defensive fatigue factors, because that’s really the main change between 2023 and 2024 – getting rid of the slowpoke Bajakian offense but not substantially improving their offensive performance or conversion rate meant they were going 3 & out and putting the defense back on the field much faster, and we both saw a defense that was doing well at the beginnings of games but running out of gas quickly.

Even a rudimentary statistical analysis confirms that this is the right answer (there’s insufficient data and it’s too noisy to include 4^th quarters as they frequently run into garbage time; this is typical for time-series analyses in football):

This means a couple of things for Northwestern. First is that, assuming the offense performs better on the other side of the transition to modernity, 2024 would be the low point for the team overall since that was the year they were getting the worst of both worlds – a tired defense from no longer holding the ball but no scoring benefit to pay it off. Second, my usual statistical tools for evaluating the defense are less useful, as an overriding factor of which the defense has no control is probably the primary thing affecting their performance. I’m left to subjective evaluation from watching film and predictive models inferring performance from large datasets – how well have guys like these done in similar circumstances, compared to how these guys looked on tape.

The defensive tackles used a relatively even five-man rotation in 2023 and only lost one of them, so I was expecting a straightforward balance in 2024 with some younger players working in as deeper backups. Instead they wound up playing seven guys in what seemed like sporadic order and I needed David’s help sorting the timeline – it turns out a combination of a rash of injuries with some younger guys looking to be much better than some older holdovers and so had jumped the queue scrambled playing time around. The upshot is that, according to David, the two tackles who are departing, RJ Pearson and Hank Knez, were both lower impact players pulled into the rotation by necessity despite Pearson having some of the most playing time in the unit.

The other five return, including one I’m sure will be a starter in 2025 because he was highly productive in 2023 and is an upperclassman, #90 DT Bastone, but he had his playing time limited by an injury in 2024. I think that’s probably also true of #95 DT Story, who’s been a solid contributor in every game for each of the last three seasons. However, David argued that if he’d stayed healthy then #55 DT Roberts, who’s been playing but on a limited basis since he was a true freshman in 2023, would have taken Story’s spot. The fourth tackle who figures for the main rotation in 2025 is #15 DT Flakes, who’s essentially had a just-behind-the-starters job for the last two seasons though that was also obscured by the injury situation last year.

David argued that #54 DT Gant, despite getting a pretty substantial amount of play since his true freshman season in 2023, is likely to continue to be behind the primary four in the rotation and had only gotten pulled up due to injuries, which matches up with his grades on my tally sheet. That’s also his assessment of the journeyman transfer #94 DT Jackson from Utah State, who’s been a career backup with the Aggies and at Charlotte before that, and the prep recruit #56 DT Mayne who was on campus for Spring ball but is likely undersized still.

At any rate, the Wildcats’ DTs should have plenty of depth if they get tested again by the injury bug and are returning a lot of experience. It’s a bit difficult to assess the actual talent here because fatigue hits this unit the hardest and that intersects with four of the five returners playing fewer than eight full games in 2024, but it looks far from an outright embarrassment and may be a real strength if they all stay healthy and get back on the development curve the pre-2024 trajectory indicated.

The star of the defensive end unit figures to be #91 DE Hubbard again, going into what’ll be his fourth straight season as a member of the primary rotation since his redshirt freshman year in 2022. He’s been the leading havoc stat producer during meaningful play on my tally sheet for the Wildcats by a wide margin for each of the last two seasons and I expect that to continue.

Northwestern had played six guys in the 2023 rotation at end, lost one at the end of the year, and kept the returning five in the rotation in 2024 without adding any of the freshmen. I thought it was clear from watching their tape from the last two years that of guys not named Hubbard, there was a stark divide in production and grades between the seniors / grad students vs younger, more talented guys. David essentially confirmed this and said the program was letting the older players age out due to fidelity, which has happened this offseason.

The Wildcats return high 3-star #47 DE Kilbane from the 2023 cycle and low 4-star #4 DE Saka from 2022 who have a couple years experience; David and I both expect them to take another step forward in 2025. They’ve taken no transfers here, it’s three redshirt freshmen and three true freshmen all of whom are mid 3-stars and none of whom have any playing time. It would have been nice had the Wildcats staff laid some groundwork in advance for this room in 2024 but as it is we’re left to guess the pick for the fourth rotational guy; David went with #44 DE ​​​​Campbell because Coach Braun recently said some kind words about him in a press conference, which is as good a reason as any.

To hear the Big Ten commentators talk about Northwestern’s linebackers for the last four years, you’d think they’ve been on a run of nothing but All-Americans. While I think McGarigle has clearly been doing a great job teaching sound assignment football, I’ve found the constant effusive praise of the unit overall difficult to square with my tally sheet as I’ve been less impressed with the athleticism here in terms of sideline-to-sideline mobility, flowing to the play with square shoulders, and especially pass coverage, and I think there’s a reason none has been drafted since Anthony Walker a decade ago.

At the MIKE spot should be returner #37 LB Uihlein. They lose the starting WILL for the last three years, Xander Mueller, as well as the primary backup, Greyson Metz, to graduation, and the fourth guy in the rotation, redshirt sophomore Kenny Soares, has transferred out. This room had a surprising number of bodes in it last year, with two more covid super-seniors graduating without ever playing, plus a 2024 recruit, Qayvier Johnson, no longer appearing on the roster for reasons I haven’t been able to determine.

The Wildcats also had another low 3-star true freshman from last cycle who redshirted, #32 LB M. Smith, and a low 4-star from the 2023 cycle, #42 LB Glover, who returned to Northwestern from Ohio State after leaving when the previous staff was fired but who hasn’t played yet at either school. They’ve added a mid 3-star prep recruit this cycle, #38 LB Veldman (although he’s so tall I wonder if he’ll switch to DE when he bulks up), and the portal addition is Purdue’s starting middle linebacker for the last two years, #14 LB Y. Karlaftis.

The obvious path forward, which David confirmed, is to simply plug Karlaftis into Mueller’s spot. I think they’d get more of the same, as I’ve been pretty down on him with the Boilermakers and I don’t see how the change of scenery will make a difference (I was surprised that David agreed with my take, I was expecting some violent pushback but maybe that Medill temperament is worth its reputation). In my opinion the Wildcats’ shot at juicing the performance here is new blood, the most likely candidate being Glover if he’s made significant progress in the offseason. I pressed David about the program culture and if the staff would recognize that kind of playable talent if it were there to deviate from planned seniority – he said yes, they’re not hidebound and they want to win with the best available backers, so if we don’t see Glover (or anyone else) then it’s a reasonable inference that he’s in fact not ready to go.

Of the five starters in the secondary, Northwestern loses Coco Azema to graduation, Theran Johnson who transferred to Oregon, and Devin Turner who transferred to Baylor. Azema had been a starter since 2021 but missed some time each previous year with injury and also moved between safety and nickel, which resulted in more meaningful rotational time for other DBs over the years. Johnson and Turner were both backups in 2022 and starters for the last two seasons, at outside corner and deep safety respectively. There was also an injury to the projected starting corner opposite Johnson, #7 CB Adeyi, just before the 2024 season began (David told me Adeyi had unfortunately broken his leg, which was news I wasn’t able to find).

As a result, some guys have gotten earlier playing time than they otherwise might have. Adeyi’s last-second replacement was a redshirt freshman in 2024, #13 CB Fussell, and close statistical evaluation of the tape showed his side of the field was getting picked on a lot more than the upperclassman returning starter opposite him for obvious reasons. The deep safeties had already broken in #6 DB Fitzgerald back in 2023 due to Azema’s situation so he was fine in 2024, but redshirt freshman #21 DB Walters at times looked lost to me when he was put in as relief.

The corner situation for 2025 seems like it’ll wrap up cleanly as just a delayed version of what it would have been in 2024 if not for the injury – Adeyi gets the starting spot he should have as a backup who graded out well in 2023, Fussell keeps his starting job and hopefully performs a bit better with incremental improvement (especially now that the heat is off), and modestly talented backups #23 CB Shivers and #12 CB E. Smith will continue to occasionally see the field.

David told me that #2 DB F. Davis, who started his career at Clemson in 2020 as a high 4-star recruit and has bounced to UCF and Jacksonville State since then, will probably take the nickel spot and has intriguing speed on the field. He said that behind Davis looks to be #9 DB B. Turner, who got a lot of run as a backup on the outside with middling grades on my tally sheet last year, which is interesting because he has more of a cornerback’s build and this position is better understood as a hybrid safety, so we’ll see how that plays out.

Fitzgerald will likely keep his job at one of the deep safety spots, but I was interested to see how it would go between Walters and Memphis grad transfer #0 DB Coffey for the other spot. I had figured that Northwestern brought him in to take Walters’ job away after an unsatisfactory 2024, but David thought otherwise and that it’ll be Walters’ position after some understandable growing up from his first season, with Coffey as the rotational guy as needed. I had it marked down as an intriguing Fall camp battle … then two days after David and I recorded, Coffey bailed again and flipped to Purdue, so I suppose it’s Walters after all. Shows what I know.