The inference I make is that Kelly will be fully in charge of the 2026 offense. Charlie told me that head coach Braun intends to have some say in the offensive direction, but that he mostly wants to focus on overall team management and the defensive side (Braun was the newly hired DC in the 2023 offseason when the Northwestern hazing scandal broke and he was elevated to interim then fulltime head coach).

Charlie also told me that, so far as InsideNU has been able to discern from their interviews with the Northwestern coaching staff, there won’t be anything like the strict restraints and oversight that Ohio State head coach Day implemented with Kelly when the two of them were essentially co-OCs in Columbus in 2024.

Predicting how exactly the Northwestern offense will look in the Fall is quite a challenge, not least because of Kelly’s penchant for playbook surprises. I’ve charted every college game he’s coached for the last 20 years and I suspect that if he’s fully indulged, the heterodoxies, roster management imbalances, and dilettentish qualities that mark Kelly’s career will catch up to the Wildcats sooner or later.

But at least in the short term, his ability to re-imagine the inherited roster into novel roles and devise explosive plays that hidebound Big Ten defenses are ill-equipped to recognize and defend have the potential to make Northwestern under Kelly a dreadful experience for complacent conference foes.

At long last Northwestern had a stable quarterback in 2025, SMU transfer Preston Stone, though he didn’t look it in his first outing and that single game performance in the opener did lasting damage to his overall passer rating. Charlie’s prediction when he and I talked in the Fall — that Stone would settle down and finish the season fine — proved to be accurate, and I think he got the most out of the top two receivers, the second of which didn’t come on until later in the year.

There are two points of relevance for 2026 to Stone ultimately turning out to be fairly reliable QB who was available for all of 2025: first, as Charlie and I discussed, it seemed to expose that outside of the top two receivers, Stone didn’t have very productive targets to throw to … and when he tried, passing plays were unsuccessful for reasons that largely weren’t his fault.

Second, Stone has graduated and might have been a brief exception to Northwestern’s seemingly cursed QB unit, which would explain why the staff retained all four returners and brought in three additions — including two experienced transfers — for what’s a very stuffed room.

The returners are last year’s backup, 2024 mid 3-star #2 QB Boe, two other mid 3-stars in the developmental pipeline but I haven’t seen yet #11 QB Gray from the 2023 cycle and #12 QB Romain from 2025, and grad student #13 QB Frakes who’s on his third stop. They also got another mid 3-star addition to the developmental group in the 2026 recruiting cycle, #9 QB O’Brien.

The two transfers are #0 QB Chiles, the mid 4-star who started out at Oregon State in 2023 then went to Michigan State with head coach Jonathan Smith in 2024 and 2025 but was benched for ineffectiveness midway through last season a few weeks before Smith was fired, and #4 QB Marchiol, a 2022 low 4-star recruit to West Virginia who was the backup for three years, got his shot in 2025 when head coach Rodriguez took over, but was also benched for ineffectiveness.

On the podcast, we agreed instantly that Chiles is certain to have the job, he’s actually a much more ideal fit for a Kelly-style offense than Smith’s. I’m not sure he’ll ever get over the deep ball inaccuracy problems that kept him from taking advantage of the play-action bootleg shots Smith’s run-first offense wanted to engineer (though Neuheisel is certain to be a better developer than his previous QB coach, Danny Langsdorf, who has the bottom score of all working QB coaches in my algorithmic database).

Charlie wrote an excellent film study article assessing Chiles’ differential ability to hit deep throws; regardless of whether Northwestern takes his advice I should think Chiles’ athleticism, escapability, and short-ball accuracy are what really matter to Kelly, and Chiles has those in spades.

By coincidence, Charlie and I both happened to be writing Northwestern roster previews this week, he published his yesterday with sound logic throughout. We mostly came to similar conclusions though we differed a bit on some of the backups.

One of those differences is that I don’t think Marchiol will hold onto the backup QB job, and I think the Wildcats just took him as a March transfer freebie. I reviewed his snaps from my film library in the beginning of the 2025 season and RichRod couldn’t turn him into a running QB – most of his runs in the stat book are really scrambles, and the few designed read-option keeps went … poorly.

My bet would be on Boe, who I saw showing some athleticism as a backup and on some gadget plays last year, and behind him the developmental athlete Charlie brought up when I asked, Romain.

Northwestern’s offensive leap off the mat, from one of the worst ranked offenses in FBS in 2024 to a mid-tier offense in 2025, was almost exclusively due to their rushing attack getting back to decent efficiency numbers, while the passing game had minimal effects on their overall score. Charlie and I spent quite some time on the podcast discussing the chicken-or-the-egg question of whether this was because of the offensive line maturing or the surprising step up of the backup running backs.

At the beginning of 2025, the Wildcats suffered the unfortunate loss of their top running back for many years, Cam Porter, to a season-ending injury. In 2024, the two backups to Porter, #6 RB Himon and #5 RB Komolafe — mid 3-stars from the 2022 and 2023 cycle respectively — ran at eye-watering 30% per-carry success rates, compared to Porter’s 46.5% behind the same (pretty bad) offensive line. So I had figured that only Porter had the ability to be his own blocker, and when he went down Northwestern was in serious trouble.

But instead Himon and Komolafe both improved their per-carry success rates enormously in 2025, around 20 points each. Much of that growth has to be from the offensive line — the blocking graded out notably better, and it was more stable as well — but it was plain from tape that this was also more than the ordinary incremental growth from the backs. Both return in 2026.

Komolafe is the bigger of the two and he got the lion’s share of the carries. Himon is a smaller back and I agreed with Charlie that he still hasn’t been properly used yet – though we speculated that perhaps Kelly has a special carveout role for him in outside running plays or perhaps a split out receiver coming up in 2026. They’ve also added #27 RB Sawchuk, a former mid 4-star from the 2022 cycle who started at Oklahoma (I watched him as Dillon Gabriel’s RB in 2023) then transferred to Florida State. Sawchuk figures for the second of the primary backs with Komolafe.

For much of last year the back behind Komolafe and Himon was redshirt freshman Dashun Reeder, but when he got injured late in the year the staff decided to preserve the redshirt of 2025 high 3-star #22 RB Anderson and instead convert #41 TE Preckel — who’s also from the 2025 cycle, but had already burned his redshirt on special teams — into a power back, and due to some weird circumstances Preckel wound up playing almost the entirety of the rivalry game against Illinois in the snow by himself.

It’s an open question what happens with Anderson, Preckel, and the Bowling Green transfer #7 RB Porter. My best guess is that Anderson remains in the developmental group and is the third back in the traditional style while Himon takes on Kelly’s ‘special projects’ role, Preckel becomes something like a fullback or just goes back to the tight end room, and Porter based on his dimensions and previous stats was brought in to be a short-yardage specialist.

Preckel notwithstanding, the tight ends unit loses all of its receiving production from 2025 – the peripatetic Alex Lines finally ran out of eligibility after his fifth school, the converted longsnapper (who really should have been used more, his per-target numbers were some of the best on the team) Lawson Albright graduated, and Hunter Welcing transferred to Ohio State despite or perhaps because of his disappointing numbers as that program hasn’t been able to evaluate a tight end for five years.

The tight ends return their blocker, #83 TE Van Buren, though I doubt he’s in line for any pass catching as the only time I’ve ever seen him use his hands for something besides blocking in the last four years was a single tackle on a turnover. They also return #81 TE Petrucci, another 2022 recruit, but I haven’t seen him at all, as well as redshirt freshmen #48 TE Kielmeyer and #43 TE LaPorte, both mid 3-stars.

The two transfers in, and Charlie’s picks for the 1a / 1b for the unit, are #86 TE Honig from UConn and TCU before that, and #84 TE Dehnicke, who was one of the top Division-II pass catchers in 2025.

I’m certain from past film study on Kelly that he’d like at least one, preferably multiple tight ends or big Y receivers for his trademark Y-cross and giant decoy passing patterns. Those engineer an unmissable pass catcher wide open downfield for big yardage while the defense looks silly for having forgotten him.

Often these recipients are not particularly fast or even athletically gifted and can be walk-ons, so prior production and talent rating are no guide, though they need reliable hands and we have no indication which of these candidates (or the potential 6’4” receivers who might be converted from the WR room, as he’s done at UCLA) have them.

Dehnicke is the closest to a sure bet, and even with him my experience with stud D2 transfers is that it’s a coin flip whether they translate or not. But with more than a half-dozen possibilities, tall WRs included, NU has given Kelly enough bites at the apple that I wouldn’t bet against finding someone to fill the role.

In 2025, NU got the transfer of South Dakota State’s top wideout, #17 WR Wilde, and he was far and away Stone’s favorite target – indeed his target share (over 44% during meaningful play) was the highest of any FBS wide receiver in 2025. Considering how focused the passing game was on Wilde, his per-target numbers are incredible, 64.8% success rate and 8.20 adjusted YPT.

The second productive receiver, #8 WR Eligon, wasn’t really seriously used until October, though by the end of the year he finished with over 28% of meaningful targets and had essentially rendered obsolete the rest of the non-Wilde receivers whom NU was trying to throw the ball to earlier in the year. Eligon is taller than most of the room at 6’4” and was a real sideline threat, and it shows in his boom-or-bust per-target numbers: almost identical 8.22 adjusted YPT at Wilde, but at only 50/50 efficiency, so if he caught it then it was for a huge gain, but the connection itself was hit-or-miss.

Wilde and Eligon return, as does the entire WR corps. I’m sure the top two will keep their jobs, and fairly certain in similar use patterns as previously, though Kelly hasn’t shown much love for sideline receivers in his career. I don’t know about the rest of the group, and Charlie and I spent a some time on the podcast talking about the poor numbers here, why several of them haven’t been processed out, and if any might be re-purposed into different roles in Kelly’s offense or if they’ll just be jettisoned for the new wave of redshirt and true freshmen.

The slot man was former walk-on #19 WR Wagner, though they had two other shorter receivers in #87 WR Grove and Stanford transfer #20 WR Farrell. All of their per-target numbers were abysmal; Wagner led the trio with a 40.7% success rate and 3.96 adjusted YPT.

There were three tall receivers from the 2023 cycle, all mid 3-stars like most of Northwestern’s roster but slightly higher in talent rating than the rest of the skill players. They started the year throwing to #3 WR Covey a lot as they had in the previous season, but after the first week his targets vanished and Charlie told me it wasn’t injury related, they just moved on.

#10 WR Ahumaraeze had his couple of targets a game stretched out over the entire season, but there was some sort of communication problem and balls were constantly wildly off target to him – so far off, and so uniquely to him, that it had to be a route-running issue, not a QB one. Both Covey and Ahumaraeze had a terrible 33% success rate for under 4 YPT. The third receiver in this group was #18 WR Magee who didn’t play, he’s 6’5” and Charlie told me he’d converted from TE – which perked my ears up as he might be a candidate for Kelly’s Y-receiver role, even though I’ve never seen him.

The four freshmen are #80 WR Blueitt and #14 WR Enongene, who redshirted, and incoming #11 WR Reinke and Jaden McDuffie. The first three are mid 3-stars but McDuffie is a low 4-star and the highest rated of Northwestern’s 2026 class, and the true freshmen are a couple inchest taller. I’m torn here since Kelly’s idiosyncracies cut both ways – he likes a scrappy veteran inside receiver a lot, and NU has a lot of those, but they’ve been very unproductive; on the other hand the talent, size, and need for a refresh point towards playing younger receivers as Charlie suggested. I think we’re just going to have to wait and see how this unit plays out.

After watching several years of offensive line coach Bill O’Boyle for a variety of projects, I had begun to wonder if Northwestern was going to scuttle his career after a very disappointing 2024 season with pieces that should have been better and some puzzling choices, then a start to the 2025 season in which some good looking transfers were all passed over, a veteran got benched, injuries began to pile up, and a potential top draft pick whiffed badly on the first play of the year to give up a massive sack.

But to my surprise, the unit pulled together and turned in the best graded year for a Northwestern line I’ve charted in the five seasons I’ve been doing this project. One of good moves was managerial: they made a change at RT from what I felt was an underperformer to a good Minnesota transfer who’d been chased out by the Gophers’ OL coach who’d lost the plot.

They might have had some injury luck as well, both in the happy sense that the guys they went with as starters stayed healthy, and in the grimmer sense that the guys who did get hurt turned out to be affordable losses. But mostly I thought this was a developmental win for O’Boyle – long-playing upperclassmen finally maturing and blocking as well as they should have been and commensurate with the excellent frames NU tends to get.

But if that’s so, then 2026 is looking like quite a reset for the Wildcats’ o-line. O’Boyle has departed for San Diego State, and Kelly brought in OL coach Drevno with whom I’ve never been impressed (as I said to Charlie on the podcast, “Drevno has been fired from more jobs than you’re ever going to have”). Two of the starters on the line were drafted, LT Caleb Tiernan in the 3rd by the Vikings and RG Evan Beerntsen in the 7th by the Ravens, while two more graduated, the center Jackson Carsello and the Minnesota transfer RT who took over Martes Lewis.

They’ve also lost almost everyone else who had prior playing experience: guard Nick Herzog transferred out, and previous transfers Jack Bailey from Colorado, Talan Chandler from Mizzou, Xavior Gray from Liberty, and Matt Keeler from Texas Tech have all left.

The line does return #62 OL Oratokhai, who had a very rough 2024 at guard as a true freshman and I was concerned might have been burned by playing too early, but by the end of 2025 was looking pretty good and has an NFL frame at 6’4” and 310 lbs. Charlie told me he’s going to move over to center for 2026, though we haven’t seen him snapping the ball before. It is the one offensive position where we’ve got no clue who the backup is as well – there’s potentially an issue with snapping and communications if no one has experience at it.

They also return the original starter on the right side, #73 RT McGuire, a 2022 recruit and now a grad student, though he hadn’t played much before last year and I thought he was replaced for a reason. Charlie has him penciled in at RT again.

Two of the linemen I saw most consistently throughout garbage time (they actually made some recent tape during my transfer series as relevant to a defensive player) return and Charlie has figured for the guard spots, #71 OL Rahouski on the left and #64 OL Birsa on the right.

The three portal additions all look like tackle candidates: #61 OL Anchondo from Division-II, #75 OL Anugwom who redshirted at Ball State before transferring to Alabama but didn’t play there either, and #74 OL Seagren who was a Nebraska tight end, transferred to Oklahoma State and converted to right tackle.

Seagren took over at RT in 2025 after their starter was injured in the week 1 FCS opener and played the rest of the season, and Charlie said he has Seagren penciled in as the LT starter for Northwestern (he seemed enthused and mentioned Seagren didn’t give up a sack last year, or maybe just one … I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I have the Pokes charted for obvious reasons, and Seagren gave up two sacks and two consecutive pick-sixes to the Ducks’ backups in the 2nd half).

NU has clearly been restocking the o-line unit and continues to pursue a developmental strategy, and I think would like to put the grasping for portal-based linemen that may have come from the abrupt coaching changes in 2023-24 behind them. Beyond the linemen I’ve already mentioned, there are two 2024 recruits, two from 2025, and a whopping six in this most recent 2026 cycle – and the recruiting ratings have been ticking up steadily. Those ten developmental recruits have an average 24/7 composite rating of .8693, with the 2026 class headlined by two high 3-stars and a low 4-star Charlie went out of his way to flag.

Defense

When Braun became the head coach, he turned around and elevated the linebackers coach to his former position, and in Braun’s two-step purge of the Pat Fitzgerald staff over the succeeding offseasons, DC/LB coach McGarigle has been the only survivor on either side of the ball. So while the particulars at the front and back ends of the defense have gone through some changes, McGarigle’s connection back to his hiring in 2018 and the continuity of the 4-3 / 4-2-5 defense that he played in at his alma mater remains strong.

In 2025, the team is making one replacement, new DL coach Kolodziej who comes over from Stanford and Wisconsin before that — so he has an odd=surface background — but neither Charlie nor I are expecting any serious structural or philosophical changes.

That said, commentators and certain advanced statistical systems have been much more enamored with Northwestern’s defense in recent years than my charting-based algorithmic model has been. I can see absolutely no reason why F+ advanced statistics gave the Wildcats a 15-rank bump for the 2025 season compared to 2024; my model has them stuck in the 50s and if anything slightly lower on a worse explosive pass defense performance and surrendering more 3rd & long conversions (losing cornerback Theran Johnson to transfer was significant in this regard).

The Wildcats have also consistently been one of the bottom quartile teams in the Big Ten in 1st down defensive performance during the time that I have charted this conference; in 2025 they were underwater against both the run and the pass on 1st down by more than three percentage points in each aspect, and surrendered an average of 6.52 adjusted YPP on 1st & 10 during meaningful play. This set up cascading conversion chains since their short-yardage defensive success rates are under 40%, and 3rd & medium / long defensive success rates are at 35% and 53%, which are quite poor.

There’s only one situational area in which NU is successful at all, which is stopping 2nd & long rushing – a foolish offensive choice in the first place but which artificially inflates NU’s defensive metrics in the teeth of comically high 79% defense success rates. In short, the Wildcats are only a good defense when they play stupid offenses – this does happen a lot in the Big Ten, but intelligent commentators and advanced statistical formulas are supposed to alert fans of this, not conceal it.

As we went through each position unit in Northwestern’s defense, I felt a little bit like a broken record interviewing Charlie – every one had practically the same story: losing about three-quarters of their production, returning one prominent player from last year’s rotation, having a full pipeline of developmental youngings they’ve been working on behind the scenes but I haven’t gotten to see so Charlie had to fill me in on, plus a transfer or two to give the 2026 rotation a shot in the arm. Overall this remains a developmental program first and foremost, but they’re leaning somewhat harder into the portal on defense this year than they otherwise might, since it happens to be that at every position the big losses lined up to take place this cycle.

At defensive tackle, there was a three-man rotation for the two spots last year: Carmine Bastone, Najee Story, and #15 DT Flakes. There were three other guys we saw a bit of, any one of whom might have become the customary fourth guy in the rotation, but they wanted to keep the redshirt on freshman #95 DT Mayne so he only played four games, and both junior #54 DT Gant and Utah State transfer #88 DT M. Jackson suffered injuries.

Bastone and Story have graduated, while Flakes returns and certainly has a starting job. Mayne, Gant, and Jackson also return, and they took the transfer of #59 DT Stephen-Wangboje from the FCS ranks – he’s a junior and had a backup role last year. There’s also a true freshman and a three-year benchwarmer in the room, I give them low odds of breaking in. With Flakes a lock, they have four chances to find three playable guys to hit the standard rotational size – it could happen but it would require getting lucky. It’s more likely that they find themselves in an effective three-man rotation again.

At defensive end, the rotation last year was #47 DE Kilbane, Aidan Hubbard, Richie Hagarty, and Anto Saka. Kilbane returns (Charlie asserted that he played better than the more touted Saka, and I think I agree), while Hubbard and Hagarty graduated and Saka transferred out. There’s quite a developmental pipeline here – eight returning young players with very little playing time, plus four prep recruits this cycle.

Still, Charlie thinks that the other starting spot across from Kilbane will go to the UCF transfer #24 DE J. Johnson — I’m not sure what the excitement is, since his havoc generation is paltry in 12 games played, though cumulatively that’s true of the eight developmental returners as well I suppose — and he thinks one of the backup spots will go to the other transfer, redshirt sophomore and former bluechip #5 DE Kirks from Ohio State, although he hasn’t really seen the field before.

The last end spot should go to a developmental guy; Charlie favored sophomore #44 DE Campbell, but also said that when he talked to Kolodziej he mentioned freshmen #93 DE O’Rourke and #96 DE Hayes as up-and-coming talents.

In the long and unbroken chain of indistinguishable — in more ways than one — Northwestern linebackers, #33 LB Brus is the most recently forged link. I’ve liked his lateral agility and play diagnosis a little more than some recent entries upon whom BTN commentators, themselves suspiciously linebacker-like in thought and coiffure, have gushed praise. Brus won the starting WILL job last year next to the MIKE Mac Uihlein, while Purdue transfer Yanni Karlaftis played SAM before he got hurt.

Uihlein and Karlaftis have graduated, while Brus returns. Charlie thinks Brus will stay at the WILL spot while the Oklahoma grad transfer and former bluechip #2 LB McKinzie gets the MIKE, which makes sense given where everybody’s experience has been, though it poses an interesting question for who has the green dot – traditionally it goes to the MIKE, but Brus is much more experienced in this system than McKinzie, and there’s an argument for the top tackler and prominent free safety to have it instead – we’ll have to see.

The backup situation is also interesting – when Karlaftis was available, he was both the SAM and the backup inside backer when Brus or Uihlein stepped off, but when he got hurt, the rotations fragmented to four different backups … and then one of them got hurt. I think Charlie called this one correctly and this will go former Iowa State transfer #45 LB Sadowsky as the backup and former Ohio State transfer #42 LB Glover potentially as the dedicated SAM because of his bluechip speed.

At the nickel spot, redshirt senior #9 DB Turner returns and naturally has his job back; indeed he almost never left the field last year (on the podcast I erroneously said I’d never seen anyone else play the position, after we recorded I double checked my charting notes and found backup safety Dillon Tatum had taken a few reps behind Turner, although he’s transferred out so we’re back to square one). Charlie’s guess is that the cornerback he has penciled in as a backup, grad student #7 CB Adeyi, will have double duty as backup nickel in 2026.

At the free safety position, #6 DB Fitzgerald racked up 115 tackles over the course of the year, the Big Ten’s second leading tackler in raw stats behind Oregon’s Bryce Boettcher. He’s the aforementioned potential green dot candidate. Charlie told me that true sophomore #0 DB A. Jones should be behind him at the spot, he burned his redshirt playing backup there last year.

The strong safety position appears locked down too, and the 2025 injuries here — a bit perversely — probably explain why this is the only defensive unit without any transfers taken. As Charlie and I discussed last year, #21 DB Walters had the spot locked down and indeed looked like the most talented secondary player coming out of Fall camp, but he got hurt early in the year and was replaced by Garner Wallace.

I wasn’t particularly impressed by Wallace’s tape, but on a few reps on which Wallace was temporarily out, he in turn was replaced by then-true freshman #29 DB Stevens. I floated the proposition that Stevens take the job at the time and Charlie readily agreed, and when we talked again this week, Charlie told me that when Wallace left and Walters got healthy the strong safety position suddenly made sense again, with Walters in first and Stevens second.

The starting corners last year were Fred Davis, who signed a UDFA with the Commanders, and #13 CB Fussell, who’s had the job since he was thrown into the fire as a redshirt freshman in 2024 after a convoluted series of transfers (mostly for warmer climes, I think being a skinny guy and playing on the lake might not be fun). Fussell returns, as does Adeyi the longtime backup who gave me and my friend David Gold, Charlie’s old boss at InsideNU, some headaches a couple years ago.

Charlie figures that the two transfers taken here solve the puzzle neatly – the CMU transfer who played a strong individual performance against NU in last year’s bowl game, #3 CB Deasfernandes, goes in at the starting corner spot opposite Fussell, while FCS transfer #4 CB Pate goes in at the backup corner spot opposite Adeyi, and the two returners just stay where they were.