Nebraska football lands Georgia LB transfer

The Huskers are continuing to add a bulk of talent to the Nebraska football program ahead of Year 1 of the Matt Rhule Era. The latest came today as Nebraska landed a big fish from a big pond: Georgia linebacker transfer MJ Sherman has committed to the Huskers.

Sherman, who has two years of eligibility remaining, is the Huskers’ ninth transfer portal addition of the offseason. He is their fourth portal addition on defense with all four coming from the SEC: Sherman (Georgia), DL Elijah Jeudy (Texas A&M), OLB Chief Borders (Florida) and safety Corey Collier Jr. (Florida)

Sherman, a 6-foot-2 and 250-pound OLB, scheduled a visit to Nebraska on the same day that he entered the transfer portal (Jan. 13) and got on campus the same day. As Inside Nebraska senior recruiting analyst Greg Smith first reported on Friday, Sherman arrived in Lincoln on that Friday night for a visit.

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Things moved rather quickly between the Huskers and Sherman, as they typically do in the college football transfer portal world, and his addition is as big as they could come for Tony White and the Nebraska defense.

Sherman somewhat surprisingly entered the transfer portal on Jan. 13 after three seasons with the Bulldogs. He played in 39 career games, including all 15 games during the 2021 and 2022 seasons en route to becoming a two-time national champion. Most of his game action was spent on special teams, but he totaled 15 career tackles, one TFL and a half-sack in the SEC.

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That was after Sherman entered Kirby Smart’s program as a four-star prospect with a 6.0 rating and was on the cusp of five-star status as the No. 39 overall player and No. 4 OLB in the Class of 2020.

Sherman picked the Bulldogs out of high school over Ohio State and Penn State as the other finalists and was Georgia’s sixth-highest ranked prospect in the 2020 signing class. The Bulldogs signed five prospects ranked as five-stars as part of that No. 1-ranked overall class. Sherman finished ranked just behind them as the Bulldogs’ highest-ranked four-star prospect.

He never garnered a substantial role in his three years in Athens, however, and became the program’s eighth transfer portal entrant just days after the team won a second straight national title. That group includes tight end Brett Seither, another one of the Huskers’ top portal targets who visited Lincoln around the same time that Sherman got on campus.

Seither was a big swing for Nebraska to take, but the Huskers missed as the tight end picked Georgia Tech. Sherman was an even bigger swing, though, and Nebraska hit a home run.

Sherman was the No. 2-ranked player in Washington D.C. when he signed with Georgia out of St. John’s College High School in 2020. So, it’s another example of the Huskers mining the East Coast and using their strong connections in that area to land a big-time talent. It’s the latest in a trend we are likely to see moving forward with Nebraska attempting to establish a recruiting footprint in the DMV area of Washington D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

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