After NSD, how much space does NU have to keep recruiting the portal and what positions might they pursue? | Recruiting

Sometimes the recruitment of a player to a college program lasts years. Now, with the explosion in prominence of the NCAA transfer portal, sometimes recruitments last a day.

Nebraska’s 28-man 2022 recruiting class spans the gamut on that front. Coach Scott Frost and several of his assistants have known and recruited Orlando wide receiver Victor Jones since before he ever got to Olympic High. That he is now a midyear enrollee going through winter conditioning is the end result of literally hundreds of contacts since before Frost even took the NU job in December 2017.

Then there’s punter Brian Buschini. The FCS All-American entered his name into the transfer portal Dec. 13, received a scholarship offer from the Huskers the same day and committed Dec. 14. He, too, is on campus now as one of 16 midyear additions to the program.

That’s life in the transfer portal era. You can supplement your roster at almost any time if the right player becomes available and you can lose any player at just about any moment.

“It doesn’t matter what I want, it’s not going back,” Frost said Wednesday during his National Signing Day news conference. “It’s not going back. This is the way it’s going to be. I think the landscape of college football is changing a lot with some of these new rules, and I think it is going to continue to change.”

Nebraska is done adding players who can participate in spring ball and attend UNL this semester, but Frost and company will be actively recruiting the transfer portal for potential summer additions virtually every day between now and the beginning of preseason camp.

In particular, the head coach came out of the second signing period, not surprisingly, feeling like the Huskers could still use help along its front lines on both sides of the line of scrimmage.

“We’re always going to look at talent no matter what position it is,” Frost said. “If we come up with guys that we think make our team better, we’re going to keep our eyes open for that. We’d probably still like to add a couple big guys on both sides of the ball, or at least one (on each side), just because our numbers are a little bit down at those positions with departures.”

Nebraska has already added a pair of transfer offensive linemen in Hunter Anthony (Oklahoma State) and Omaha North graduate Kevin Williams  (Northern Colorado), and also signed high schooler Justin Evans-Jenkins. NU is losing four defensive linemen from 2021 and has so far only added high school signee Brodie Tagaloa. That will be a major focus of the school’s portal efforts in the coming months, even though Frost outlined why he thinks his program can carry fewer interior defensive linemen now than in the past.

“When we got here we were a little more ‘odd’ front, which means we played with three big guys all the time,” he said. “We’ve been more ‘even’ now, which cuts that number from three to two. Our number of need at that position and what we target has gone down, but if the right guy shows up, we’ll certainly look to add a body there.”

The “even” structure Frost refers to playing more 4-3 than 3-4, which allows for outside linebackers such as Garrett Nelson and Caleb Tannor to essentially serve as defensive ends in a four-down look.

All the same, Nebraska will be looking for help as players transfer between now and spring practices around the country, and then when another wave of transfers hits during and after spring ball.

The Huskers have to keep a close eye on the space they have on their 85-man roster, but they should still have room to operate in terms of “initial qualifiers,” even though they have 28 new scholarship players in this class already. The normal max is 25, but the NCAA is giving up to seven extra spots to replace transfers who leave their school after Dec. 15. So far, NU has five of those.

So, 25 plus five transfer replacements puts the room at 30, and that number ultimately will grow more, assuming two more players transfer out between now and the summer, which is a near certainty.

The 85-man roster will be much more the limiting factor than the number of initial scholarships, but nobody in the program has expressed concern about running out of room for players that they think can help this fall.

After Nebraska loaded up on offensive skill talent and defensive backs, expect much of the remaining portal activity to be up front and then perhaps a spot or two to either address a position that suffers attrition during spring ball, or grab a player or two deemed too good to pass up.

Meanwhile, NU will also see more players leave the program. The most prominent so far this offseason is quarterback Adrian Martinez. In addition to him, NU’s outgoing scholarship transfers since late November include running backs Sevion Morrison and Marvin Scott; linebackers Jackson Hannah, Will Honas and Wynden Ho’ohuli; defensive lineman Jordon Riley; and defensive back Malik Williams.

“That’s the game and we have to play it,” Frost said. “We’re going to lose kids. Every school is losing kids that they don’t want to lose, some that they might want to lose. You used to try and plug any holes you had on your roster with junior college kids, and now there’s 1,000 kids in the transfer portal you’ve got to sort through.”