Syracuse’s season has been uneven, but one part of the team has held up its end of the bargain: the pass rush.
That’s a big shift from last year, when the Orange tied for the third-fewest sacks in the ACC with 20. Now, with three games left, Syracuse has 26 sacks and sits tied for fourth in the league. The turnaround has been driven by two transfer edge rushers who have turned into a problem for opposing offenses from opposite sides of the formation: Keyshawn Johnson and Tunmise Adeleye.
Johnson has seven sacks, Adeleye has six, and both have already topped Kevin Jobity Jr.’s team-leading total of five from last season. Together, they’ve given Syracuse the kind of edge pressure Fran Brown wanted when he went into the portal looking for help.
“It’s a blessing to have somebody on the other side,” Adeleye said.
Brown said he noticed the same thing in both players when he evaluated them in the offseason: toughness. He spoke with each player and their fathers, and both sides came away aligned on what Syracuse wanted and what the players were looking for. In Adeleye’s case, Brown made it clear he wanted him to be dominant off the edge the way Fadil Diggs was in 2024, and he framed the move as a path toward the NFL.
“We had literally the same conversation just at a different time,” Brown said. “They matched up with what we got here.”
Johnson arrived from UT-Martin after posting 13.5 sacks and 20 tackles for loss in 2025. Before that, he spent 2023 at Grambling State, where he had five sacks in eight games. Co-defensive coordinator John Scott Jr. said Syracuse studied Johnson’s film and saw a player who could overwhelm bigger linemen with both power and burst.
Scott pointed to a game against Oklahoma State, where Johnson had one sack and two tackles for loss while “creating problems for the big tackles” at 6-foot-3.
This season, Johnson has been even more disruptive. He leads Syracuse in sacks with seven and has added 9.5 tackles for loss and 33 tackles.
Over the last two games, he’s piled up four tackles for loss and three sacks, including two sacks in the Orange’s upset of then-No. 19 SMU, when Syracuse dropped quarterback Kevin Jennings six times.
Adeleye has been just as important on the other side. Syracuse is his fifth school in five years, after stops at Texas A&M, Michigan State, Texas State and UNLV. He redshirted at Texas A&M and played only nine games over his first two years, but his career picked up at UNLV in 2025, when he finished with six sacks in 13 games.
Former defensive coordinator Elijah Robinson, who coached Adeleye at Texas A&M, helped bring him to Syracuse. Adeleye also spoke with Diggs, who told him he could “dominate” in the ACC.
Adeleye understands the skepticism that comes with bouncing around, but he doesn’t dwell on it.
“The age of the transfer portal, it just is what it is,” Adeleye said. “At the end of the day, you gotta strap up and you gotta go and play football.”
He has already matched his career-high sack total through nine games with Syracuse, and his game has evolved along the way. Early in college, he tried to win by bending around the edge.
That approach didn’t stick. Now he describes himself as a “speed-to-power rusher,” and Syracuse’s staff has helped him sharpen his “long-arm rushes,” using one arm to drive into an offensive lineman’s chest.
The result is a pairing that makes life miserable for quarterbacks. If one rusher doesn’t get there, the other often does.
“If I’m not getting there, he’s gonna get there, and if I get doubled, he’s gonna get there,” Johnson said.
The help hasn’t come only from the edge. Syracuse has also rotated several interior linemen, including Nissi Ogbebor, Rashard Perry and Dillan Fontus. Brown sees that group as a deep part of the defense.
Ogbebor, a 6-foot-6, 300-pound sophomore, has quietly put together 271 pressures, which is tied for the 12th-most in the country among defensive tackles this season. Johnson said Ogbebor sometimes gets off the line even faster than he does, and that has sparked a practice competition between the two as they race to the quarterback.
“I love how Nissi plays,” Johnson said. “He’s really big to be moving that fast.”
Even with Syracuse’s offense struggling, the defense has kept the Orange in games. All but two of SU’s contests have been decided by one score, with the exceptions being a Week 1 win over New Hampshire and a Week 3 loss to Pitt. Last week against Clemson, Syracuse didn’t allow an offensive touchdown but still lost by five.
Now the Orange are in a must-win stretch. They need two more victories to become bowl eligible, and the final three games include a matchup with No. 3 Notre Dame.
For Syracuse to keep its season alive, the pass rush will have to keep doing what it’s done all year: get home.
“We get better every week,” Brown said of the unit. “Their relentless approach, you see that week in and week out with those guys.”
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