Marist
Liufau.
Marist
Liufau.
Notre Dame· 6'2"· 234 lb· 4.64s 40
"A movement linebacker who plays like a missile: elite closing speed and real violence on contact, with the block-shedding and eye discipline of a player still catching up on reps after a lost season."Pre-draft read
Liufau plays a downhill, chase-and-collide brand of linebacker. He lines up mostly at the will spot in a four-man front, reads run keys with his eyes on the guard, and triggers with a decisive first step. The get-off is the trait: once the key confirms, he eats ground in a hurry and finishes with real strike, punching at the ball through contact.
The secondary trait is range in space. He carries crossers, matches backs on angle routes and times up delayed A-gap pressures with enough burst to threaten the pocket. Against the run he is cleaner working on the perimeter than stacked over a guard, where blockers can wall him. The signature is speed to the football, blitzing or chasing, and the violence he brings when he gets there.
Attacking one-gap four-man front that lets him run and shoot gaps instead of stacking blockers, or a 3-4 that uses him as a movement rusher.
Year 1: core-four special teamer and sub-package will who blitzes on passing downs. Ceiling: three-down will in an attacking front, or a stand-up rusher with 40-plus pressures.
A two-gap read-and-react front that parks him over a guard on early downs and asks him to take on pullers square before flowing.
His value curve rises with every snap he spends moving forward rather than reading and holding.
Notre Dame LB Marist Liufau Highlights
Full college reel: downhill triggers, blitz timing and open-field chase range at Notre Dame.
Marist Liufau :: Official Senior Highlights
2023 Butkus semifinalist season cutup, including the sacks and tackles for loss.
Cowboys LB Marist Liufau Is A DYNAMIC Playmaker | Film Review
NFL film breakdown of his rookie-year blitz reps and forced fumbles in Dallas.
This is a movement linebacker, not a stack-and-shed one. The team buying him is buying acceleration, tackle radius and special-teams value on day one, with the plan of growing him into a nickel-package will who can run with backs and pressure off the second level. He is a striker who plays angry, and the ball-disruption habit is real rather than incidental.
The context matters more than the raw production. He lost the entire 2021 season to a right ankle injury suffered in August camp, came back to start all thirteen games in 2022, then turned in a Butkus Award semifinalist year in 2023 with six tackles for loss and three sacks in twelve games. That is a player still catching up on reps, and the arrow in his last two Novembers pointed up.
The flags are the flags of an ascending but unfinished player. He takes false steps against multi-back looks, gets swallowed when he tries to take on pullers square, and his tackle attempts in tight quarters run hot and reckless. Boards had him in the late second to fourth-round band as a nickel linebacker with core-four upside, and Dallas took him at 87 to add speed next to a veteran room.
- 01
Trigger downhill
Once his guard key declares, he plants and accelerates without a wasted step, arriving at the point of attack before the second-level blocker can fit him up.
- 02
Closing speed
Ran 4.64 at 234 pounds and it shows on tape as chase range; he runs down perimeter runs from the backside and catches receivers from behind after the catch.
- 03
Contact violence
He does not tackle to slow ball carriers down, he tackles to stop them, and the punch-out habit produced forced fumbles and a takeaway culture around him.
- 04
Blitz timing
Feels the snap and the void on delayed pressures, threading interior gaps with a low pad level and converting speed to a real rush threat off the second level.
- 05
Space coverage
Fluid enough to carry crossers and match backs out of the backfield, with the recovery burst to make up for a step lost on the initial route stem.
- 01
Take-on strength
He struggles to hold ground when a guard or fullback squares him up, and his shed clock is slow enough that the ball can cut back behind him.
- 02
Eye discipline
Multi-back and misdirection looks pull his first step the wrong way, and against schemed action he can leave the gap he is responsible for.
- 03
Tackle control
The same aggression that produces knockouts also produces misses when he arrives out of control in the box or in the open field.
- 04
Reps banked
A lost 2021 and a bench role early meant he entered the league with only two seasons of full starter volume and the polish gaps that come with it.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.64sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Notre Dame | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Notre Dame | 10 | 22 | 0.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Notre Dame | 13 | 51 | 0.5 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2023 | Notre Dame | 12 | 44 | 3 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| Career | — | 39 | 117 | 4 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
Official Notre Dame season splits. Missed all of 2021 with a right ankle injury suffered in August camp, so no 2021 season row exists. No individual splits were published for his four-game 2019 freshman year; those cells are left blank rather than zero-filled.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A dependable core special teamer and sub-package linebacker who plays every week without owning the defensive snap count.
The version where the blitz timing and closing speed turn into a full-time role and 100-plus tackles.
Kicking-unit specialist whose defensive role never grows past emergency and matchup snaps.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Dallas got what the tape promised: a special-teams asset who could survive on defense. He appeared in all seventeen games as a rookie in 2024, finished with fifty tackles, a sack and a half and two forced fumbles, and flashed as a blitzer while the defense cycled through injuries around him. In 2025 the arrow flattened. Under Matt Eberflus he logged only about eighteen percent of the defensive snaps, ending the year with thirty tackles, one sack and one forced fumble, and his value stayed concentrated on the kicking units. He has not missed a regular-season game through three seasons, which is its own kind of answer to the durability question that trailed him out of Notre Dame.
In hindsight the evaluation was right about the athlete and optimistic about the fit. He was always a specialist trait set — speed, strike, blitz timing — dropped into a role that asked him to stack blocks and diagnose, which was the weakest part of his profile. That is why the 2026 change is interesting: with Christian Parker installing a 3-4, Dallas added weight to him and moved him to outside linebacker to rush more, which is closer to what he actually is. A third-round pick who becomes a good core-four player and a situational rusher is not a miss, but it is not the starting linebacker the pick implied either.
Data note: Official Notre Dame season splits. Missed all of 2021 with a right ankle injury suffered in August camp, so no 2021 season row exists. No individual splits were published for his four-game 2019 freshman year; those cells are left blank rather than zero-filled.