Previewing 2025 Big Ten Offensive Lines

Offensive line personnel for the 2025 season is essentially in place, as the portal dries up and teams look to develop their units. So who's looking the best? And who's looking the worst?

Going into 2025, roughly five offseasons into the open transfer portal era, college football is seeing much more movement among offensive linemen. While most high-value talent tends to stick where it was initially developed, there are certainly significant additions being made within units, and Indiana is part of that class of programs.

The chart below indicates which Big Ten teams own the most pre-2025 snaps along their lines going into 2025 Fall Camp season, as well as whether those snaps were spent with each lineman’s current team or elsewhere. What jumps out immediately is that the numbers between returning snaps and snaps from elsewhere are fairly even.

Here is a distribution chart to show a clearer comparison between where snaps were spent.

If snaps equaled the quality of an offensive line, we could just assume that Illinois, Northwestern, Rutgers, and Oregon will fill the top tier of offensive lines in 2025, but not all snaps are synonymous.

For example, there remains zero evidence to suggest a college football team can build its entire OL unit from the portal and play at a high level, so Northwestern and Oregon (don’t ask about Purdue) would be on watch due to the number of transfer snaps on the roster compared to returning snaps. And deeper still, not all transfer snaps are projected to start; Matt Bedford (2,722 snaps elsewhere – *cough* Indiana) is projected to continue his backup role in Eugene this season, while at Illinois, the Illini have 3,300+ transfer snaps projected to backup their tackle spots.

What snap counts can tell us right now is: who has the head start? Iowa, relatively speaking, does not have the most snaps overall but does own the 4th-most returning snaps in the conference, from a line that owned the highest average PFF grade among significant contributors (300+ snaps) in 2024. Three projected starters have played 1,000+ snaps in the program, and the other two in that unit have not only played some snaps at Iowa but were developed for these roles over time. Wisconsin, Rutgers, and Penn State are other programs in similar positions. Other programs will have to do more work to mold their units before kickoff, and they’ll do this to varying degrees of success, and others, like Illinois, will have experience (though with less upside) in case of injury, rather than throwing in a talented, yet undeveloped backup.

While transfer snaps are typically perceived as less valuable than returning snaps, returning snaps aren't always quality either. Michigan is rolling the dice on its returning OL this season, as its LG Giovani El-Hadi represents the Wolverines’ most experienced (1,200+ snaps) and highest graded (44th in the Big Ten) returning lineman in 2025. For reference, his PFF grade was lower than all Indiana starting offensive linemen last season. Even more concerning, at LT, Michigan is projected to roll with Evan Link, who ranked 90th among Big Ten linemen in 2024. The Michigan staff didn’t exactly prioritize OL in the portal this offseason, and not enough folks are talking about it.

If you watch football, you must be aware of offensive lines. Without a solid offensive line, an offense is extremely limited. Indiana fans saw this against the “big boys,” as Curt Cignetti noted to ESPN recently. The interior OL, in particular, left Indiana vulnerable despite Mike Shanahan’s industry-leading scheme. When Kalen DeBoer was OC in Bloomington, it was similar. This is why Kevin Wilson’s offenses were able to shine too; he prioritized the development of offensive linemen. And as Indiana builds up its defensive line, this also informs which teams might be able to hold up in the face of what is anticipated to be one of the most havoc-wreaking defenses in the country.

This is where Big Ten teams ranked by average PFF Offensive grade among their OL starters, as well as the distribution of those individual grades, at the end of the 2025 season:

Additionally, the chart below conveys each Big Ten team’s run-blocking versus pass-blocking grades, as well as the number of QB pressures each line allowed.

Offensive Line Profiles

Now, let’s dive deep into these units to determine which are most promising, which are least promising, and which are leaning on transfer talent or in-house development the most.