Safety DeShon Singleton set to return for 2025

Nebraska’s defense received good news earlier this month when veteran inside linebacker Javin Wright confirmed to Inside Nebraska he was returning for a seventh season in 2025. Today, another positive development has emerged for coordinator John Butler’s unit.

DeShon Singleton, a safety who started all 13 games in 2024 and was second on the team in tackles with 71, is set to return for his fifth season of college football and fourth at Nebraska in 2025, he confirmed to Inside Nebraska on Friday night.

Singleton is taking advantage of the NCAA’s blanket waiver for athletes who attended a non-NCAA school to remain eligible for 2025-26 if they otherwise would have exhausted their eligibility in 2024-25. Singleton spent his true freshman season in 2021 at Hutchinson (Kan.) Community College before joining the Husker program in 2022.

In August, months before the NCAA’s waiver and Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia’s preliminary injunction that started it all, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule said he contacted the NCAA in regard to getting another season of eligibility for Singleton because of the circumstances surrounding his season-ending knee injury in 2023.

The injury happened in Nebraska’s fifth game — one game past the four-game redshirt threshold — against Michigan, the program that would be at the heart of the sign-stealing scandal. Singleton went down on the second play of the Wolverines’ first offensive series.

The NCAA denied Rhule’s attempt at Singleton getting another year.

“I thought he shouldn’t get penalized for one play in a game that, in my mind, isn’t a real game,” Rhule said in November. “But the NCAA disagreed, so he did not get that year back.”

Rhule, when discussing players who would be taking part in the Senior Day ceremony before the Wisconsin game, said he thought Singleton was leaning toward leaving even if he was granted an extra season of eligibility.

“I think DeShon, even if he could, would probably go pro,” Rhule said then. “I think he’s probably going to get some invites, I think he’s racing up people’s boards right now.”

On Dec. 19, it was announced Singleton had accepted an invitation to play in the East-West Shrine Bowl. But with the NCAA’s blanket waiver, Singleton decided to take advantage and suit up one more season for Nebraska in 2025.