Indiana just won a national championship going 16-0, and somehow the defense is walking into 2026 even better than the one that closed out Miami in the title game. That's the read from On3's Pete Nakos, who reported that the additions of EDGE Stephen Daley and linebacker Kellan Wyatt have pushed an already-loaded unit into another tier entirely.
The word "additions" undersells it a little, because both guys were already Hoosiers who got hurt at the worst possible times last season. Daley, who transferred in from Kent State, led the entire Big Ten with 19 tackles for loss in 2025 before an injury after the Big Ten Championship Game knocked him out of Indiana's College Football Playoff run entirely. He never got to play in the games that mattered most.
Wyatt's story is just as brutal. He came over from Maryland, started Indiana's first 7 games, and was rolling with 28 tackles and 2.5 sacks before a knee injury against Michigan State ended his season and, for a while, looked like it might end his Indiana career too.
Both guys are only walking back into that Bloomington locker room because of a district court ruling out of Colorado that opened the door to extra eligibility for players like them. That's a legal technicality most fans won't ever think twice about, but for Indiana it means a defense that finished the year as a national champion gets to run it back with two starters who barely got to play the second half of last season.
Curt Cignetti has already made clear he isn't treating 2026 as a victory lap — he's called it 'stalking complacency' rather than defending a trophy. But getting Daley and Wyatt back healthy, alongside whatever else Bryant Haines' defense already had rostered, is exactly the kind of quiet roster luck that turns a good team into a scary one before a single snap of the season.
Nobody circles preseason NFL-room comparisons for units that are just okay. If Daley and Wyatt are both full-go, Indiana isn't just chasing back-to-back titles, it's doing it with a front 7 that looks built for Sundays, not just Saturdays.