Veteran Husker DL Casey Rogers entering NCAA transfer portal | Football

Nebraska’s depth on the defensive line is already a question mark and now one of its most productive players is testing the transfer market.

Senior Casey Rogers entered his name into the NCAA’s transfer portal on Wednesday afternoon, multiple sources confirmed to the Journal Star.

Reached by the Journal Star on Wednesday afternoon, Rogers declined to elaborate on his decision. 

The 6-foot-5, 295-pounder was expected to be one of the Huskers’ stalwarts on the defensive interior alongside Ty Robinson this fall. He missed the first five games of the 2021 season with a knee injury suffered in preseason camp and then aggravated that same knee on one of the final snaps of the season against Iowa. That caused Rogers to miss spring ball, but he was tracking toward being healthy this summer and a starting role in the fall.

It’s easily the most surprising portal entry of the offseason for Nebraska.

A native of Syracuse, New York, Rogers has played in 19 games over the past three years for the Huskers. He played in four games in the 2019 season as a redshirt freshman, then appeared in all eight during the shortened 2020 campaign.

He enters the portal with 42 tackles (6½ for loss) and 1½ sacks to his name to go along with a pair of passes defensed.

He is the fifth defensive lineman who played for the Huskers in 2021 that will no longer be in the fold for the coming fall, joining Ben Stille, who exhausted his eligibility, Damion Daniels and Deontre Thomas, who decided against returning for sixth collegiate seasons, and Jordon Riley, who transferred to Oregon earlier in the offseason.

In Rogers’ absence, the top three interior defensive linemen for Nebraska this spring were Robinson, a fourth-year sophomore, along with Nash Hutmacher and walk-on Colton Feist, and then a host of young, inexperienced players.

Nebraska was already likely to attempt to add two defensive linemen via the transfer portal this summer, including current top target Ochaun Mathis out of TCU. Now, the Huskers will almost certainly try to add multiple players to the position group that is now coached by Mike Dawson after Tony Tuioti left for Oregon around Christmas.

Rogers, a sports media and communications major, is set to graduate in May and will have up to two years of eligibility remaining. 

While it is not unheard of for a player to enter his name into the transfer portal and then decide to return to his original school, it has not happened often at Nebraska. Pheldarius Payne did that earlier this offseason, only to reenter the transfer market shortly after withdrawing his name and eventually moving to Virginia Tech.

One other less surprising personnel note: Reserve defensive lineman Tate Wildeman is no longer playing football. The former four-star recruit from Parker, Colorado, battled injuries for much of his career and appeared in only four games over his four years in the program. Wildeman graduated with a degree in sports media and communication in December and wasn’t a spring ball participant this year.