REVISITED: Did Nebraska’s Portal Haul Meet Its Needs?

Evaluating which issues on the roster we can cross off and which remain concerning

Marques Watson-Trent. Photo courtesy Georgia Southern Athletics.

More transfer portal additions by Nebraska could technically still happen, but after a two-month flurry of rumors, visits, and commits, chatter about NU’s activity has been dead since early February. The Huskers’ roster for winter conditioning and spring practice appears to be set.

NU added 16 players in this cycle to a team that already needed to shed massive numbers to comply with the new 105-player rule — a newfound aggressiveness toward the portal after coach Matt Rhule had used it more as a garnish in his first two offseasons. The additions were split fairly evenly on offense and defense and between older, immediate impact veterans and younger developmental pieces.

Before the portal opened, I published a list of what I thought Nebraska needed to address in the winter window based on my charting and film study:

I created that list only after the initial flurry of NU’s departees entered the portal, so some needs popped up later that weren’t mentioned there. And it also came after some key returning Nebraska players were granted extra years of eligibility, filling some holes. So that article ended up being more a snapshot in time of NU’s needs than a full accounting of the roster. But, at the time, the areas I though Nebraska should address were:

STRICT NEEDS:

• As Many Box Linebackers As You Can Get

• A Proven Edge Rusher, And Depth

• A Rover Safety

• A High-End Outside Receiver

• A Starting-Caliber Interior Defensive Linemen (Or Two)

PROBABLY SHOULD GETS:

• A Veteran Backup QB, And Maybe A Younger Developmental QB, Too

• A Good Kicker

NICE TO HAVES:

• A Right Offensive Tackle

• A Home-Run Hitting Tailback

DEVELOPMENTAL PLAYS:

• Receiver Depth?

• Safety Depth?

I think it’s useful now that the cycle is finished to go back and look at what Nebraska addressed compared to what I viewed as the holes on the roster. We’re not privy to in-house evaluations of the staff, so there may be mystery practice/redshirting players that coaches are high on at certain spots whom they believe can fill a role. Just keep in mind that we’re operating off incomplete information. I’ve tried to do an initial examination at some of the underlying data for the players NU picked up and if their performance backs up their transfer rating. But don’t take those as gospel or finished evaluations; that was purely just stats work and came with no film watching. There will hopefully be time for that later in the offseason.

I’ve broken this up into four categories: need I feel were fully met by NU’s portal additions, needs I feel were partially met, needs I feel weren’t met, and areas I didn’t feel were needs but Nebraska addressed:

NEEDS MET

Wide Receivers

If we can take away one thing from new offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen’s moves after his arrival, it’s that he thought the group of receivers he inherited at Nebraska wasn’t good enough.

NU made three portal additions at the spot, bringing in immediate impact players in Kentucky’s Dane Key (the No. 19 player in the portal per On3) and California’s Nyziah Hunter (No. 59) and also adding a younger developmental prospect in Hardley Gilmore, also from Kentucky. It was in contention for several other wideouts, too.

I wrote in the needs post Nebraska should try to pursue an elite receiver who could threaten defenses and would be someone they would have to gameplan for — something that hasn’t been present on the team in the last couple of seasons — and also add to its depth if it wasn’t happy with the team’s younger options. The staff did both.

Key is the most impactful immediate get and arguably the overall best receiver for purely next season to hit the market. He was On3s No. 8 overall receiver in the portal, but all but one of the players ranked higher than him come with multiple years of eligibility. Key is a one-year mercenary, but he has produced over 500 receiving yards in each of his first three seasons despite playing in an anemic Kentucky passing offense during that stretch. He was one of the 49 Power 4 receivers to get at least 85 targets last year, and his efficiency ranked 15th out of that group, with a 2.46 yards per route run. His targets also came further down the field than all but seven players in the group, so his production was coming in higher difficulty situations and not just on bubble screens, etc. He was asked to do hard receiver stuff by UK and was efficient doing it. Key played about three-quarters of his snaps at outside receiver but also had the versatility to play in the slot about a quarter of the time. He’s not really a run-after-catch threat, but he was one of the better downfield ball-winning receivers in college football last season. Nothing is guaranteed when a player transfers over, but that’s about as safe a bet as you can make for continued future production. This is exactly the type of player I thought NU should pursue with the cache of Dylan Raiola in the fold.

Hunter is a slightly more developmental bet, but he’s already been an effective major-conference player. Hunter was the most efficient starting wideout for Cal as a true freshman last season, finishing with 578 yards and five touchdowns. He’s a big body at 6’2, 210 pounds, and caught nine of the 15 contested targets that were thrown at him, which was 48th nationally among all P4 wideouts total. He profiles pretty similarly to Key, just with three years of eligibility.

Gilmore only played about 72 passing downs last season as a 17-year-old consensus four-star freshman with the Wildcats, but he was productive in those snaps with a 2.32 Y/RR (second on the team only to Key) and represents more of a downfield burner element to the room. He was a good get to supplement the depth who can also hopefully contribute as a No. 4 option right away.

With all of that, it’s hard to argue NU didn’t nail the best case scenario for additions at wide receiver.

Box Linebacker

The ILB spots were partially addressed by the portal, and partially addressed by Javin Wright being granted a seventh year of eligibility after the season.

Linebacker was a pressure point for me in the needs post because NU was losing over 2,300 combined snaps with the departures of Wright, John Bullock, Mikai Gbayor and Stefon Thompson, with only Vincent Shavers Jr. returning having played any real game snaps. But Wright’s return lessens the impact of the departures, giving NU two proven, experienced options to man the two starting spots.

NU supplemented that by adding Marques Watson-Trent, the 2024 Sun Belt Conference Defensive Player of the Year at inside linebacker. Watson-Trent was just the 504th-ranked player in the portal, but he played 2,502 career defensive snaps with the Eagles and has 309 career tackles. He was the second-best Group of 5 linebacker in run defense last year per PFF, and his coverage charting data shows he’s been solid against the pass in his career.

His play will still have to translate to the power-conference level, but I’m almost more inclined to say these elite production lower-conference players coming up are safer portal bets than average or developmental P4 players. I’m not really basing that off anything but vibes, but the experience factor the lower-conference studs bring — assuming they meet certain physical thresholds — seems to just be an inefficiency in the portal market right now. That was essentially Indiana’s playbook last year, and it carried the team to a playoff berth.

Nebraska will have to fill in the depth behind those three still, but with 13 other linebackers on the roster, including highly touted freshmen Christian Jones and Dawson Merritt, you’d hope that would be possible and you could check this position off the needs list.

Quarterback Depth

It was going to be hard for Nebraska to bring in QBs with Raiola entrenched as the starter. You were asking players to come into a program to not play, at least in the immediate future. And that’s at a position where most players who are leaving programs are angling for starting spots.