Marshawn
Kneeland.
Marshawn
Kneeland.
Western Michigan· 6'3"· 267 lb· 4.75s 40
"A lightly recruited Michigan kid who turned into the MAC's most physical edge by winning the run game first, and whose pass rush was always about pressure volume rather than the sack column."Pre-draft read
Kneeland played a heavy, physical brand of edge play at Western Michigan, lining up mostly as a five-technique and wide-five in an even front and reducing to three-tech on passing downs. His best trait was hand strength married to a violent first punch: he attacked the outside half of the tackle, locked out, and controlled the block long enough to find the ball instead of getting washed.
As a rusher he won with power and persistence rather than bend. The long-arm and the bull-to-swipe were his money moves, and his second and third efforts created pressure after the pocket had broken down. He tested as a real athlete at 267 pounds, but the signature was run defense: few edges in the class set a firmer edge against down blocks and pullers.
Attacking one-gap four-man front that lets a base end play the strong side on early downs and slide inside to three-tech in NASCAR packages.
Year 1: strong-side base end on run downs plus interior rusher in sub packages. Ceiling: every-down LDE who wins with length and pressure volume.
A two-gap 3-4 that asks him to read-and-react from a head-up alignment, or a defense that only values edge speed off the ball.
Build the front around forcing the ball back inside and let him rush from a reduced alignment on third down.
Marshawn Kneeland 2023 Full Season Highlights | Western Michigan EDGE
Full 2023 season cut-up: edge setting, long-arm rush and pursuit effort at Western Michigan.
NFL Draft Film: Marshawn Kneeland vs Syracuse
Single-game film study against a Power Five tackle, the best test of his hand usage on tape.
Punt, Block, TD! Cowboys score on special teams play
His blocked-punt recovery in the end zone against Arizona on November 3, 2025 — his only NFL touchdown.
A four-year Western Michigan defender who arrived as a lightly recruited in-state kid and left as the most physically imposing player on the MAC's line of scrimmage. Kneeland is a base end first, a rusher second — a 6-foot-3, 267-pound edge with 34-and-a-half-inch arms who plays with his hands inside and his pads under the tackle's, and who never gave a snap away on tape.
The production curve is honest rather than explosive. He went from a five-game debut season in 2020 to 32 tackles and eight tackles for loss in 2021, then 40 and 11.5 in 2022, and finished with 57 tackles and 7.5 for loss as a 2023 second-team All-MAC pick, adding eight quarterback hurries. The sack column never popped — 14 in four years — and that is the flag: the pressure was constant, the finish was not. He also missed time in 2022, which cost him a chance to build a bigger junior-year number.
Boards had him as a clean Day 2 evaluation: a MAC-level producer with power-based rush traits and a defined run-defense floor, whose ceiling depended on adding a counter and a plan. Dallas took him at 56 as the second edge off their board, betting the effort and the length would translate into rotational snaps immediately and a starting role by year three.
- 01
Hand power
Lands a violent, accurate first punch, gets his hands inside the frame and locks out tackles rather than absorbing the block on his chest.
- 02
Edge setting
Sets a firm outside shoulder against down blocks and pullers, keeping his frame square and squeezing the run back into the pursuit.
- 03
Long-arm rush
Uses his 34-and-a-half-inch arms to stack and shed on the pass rush, converting speed into power and collapsing the tackle's outside track.
- 04
Motor and pursuit
Plays through the whistle every snap; a large share of his college pressure came on second and third effort after the initial rush failed.
- 05
Testing profile
At 267 pounds he ran 4.75 with a 35.5-inch vertical, a 9-foot-11 broad jump and a 7.02 three-cone, all above the bar for a base end.
- 01
Finishing production
Fourteen sacks in four seasons for a player who lived in the backfield; the pressure rate never converted into a real sack column.
- 02
Pass-rush plan
Wins with the same power sequence too often, and lacks a developed counter once a tackle sits on the long-arm and the bull.
- 03
Ankle flexion
Does not bend the top of the arc; he has to run the tackle over or through rather than around him, which caps his speed-rush ceiling.
- 04
Level of finish
MAC tackles let him win with raw force; against pro-level sets he needed a second move he had not yet built.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.75sp50
- Vertical
- 35.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 119inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.02sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.18sp50
- Bench
- 21repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Western Michigan | 5 | 23 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Western Michigan | 13 | 32 | 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Western Michigan | 9 | 40 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| 2023 | Western Michigan | 10 | 57 | 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 37 | 152 | 14 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
Verified season by season through the CollegeFootballData feed of official NCAA box scores; season totals sum exactly to the career line (37 games, 152 tackles, 29.0 TFL, 14.0 sacks). No 2019 season: he did not appear as a true freshman. Forced fumbles, fumble recoveries and interceptions are not verified in the source feed and are left blank rather than zero-filled. Second-team All-MAC in 2023.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- Second-team All-MAC (2023)
- Senior Bowl invitee (2024)
Rotational power end who earns snaps with length and effort and settles into six-to-eight sacks a year as a third-down piece.
Long, powerful base end who never became a double-digit sack man but started a decade by winning the run game and generating steady pressure.
Useful sub-package and special-teams body whose lack of a rush counter keeps him from ever locking down a starting job.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Dallas used him the way a second-round base end usually gets used. He played 11 games as a rookie in 2024 with 14 tackles, one fumble recovery and no sacks, working in a rotation behind the veterans and taking on real special-teams volume. The 2025 season was supposed to be the step up in snaps: he appeared in seven games with 12 tackles and his first career sack, then scored his first NFL touchdown on November 3 against Arizona on Monday Night Football, recovering Sam Williams' blocked punt in the end zone.
Kneeland died three days later, on November 6, 2025, in Frisco, Texas. He was 24. Authorities described the death as an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound; a later examination of his brain reported a diagnosis of CTE. The Cowboys wore a helmet decal for the remainder of the season and honored him before their first game back. Grading a career that was 18 games old when it ended is not the point — the fair evaluation is that the pick was doing what a second-round base end is drafted to do: hold up in the run game, chase every snap, and grow into the rush. The rest was never allowed to happen.
Data note: Verified season by season through the CollegeFootballData feed of official NCAA box scores; season totals sum exactly to the career line (37 games, 152 tackles, 29.0 TFL, 14.0 sacks). No 2019 season: he did not appear as a true freshman. Forced fumbles, fumble recoveries and interceptions are not verified in the source feed and are left blank rather than zero-filled. Second-team All-MAC in 2023.