In which BracketCat counts down the 45th day until the 2025 kickoff with a profile of Kansas State linebacker Austin Romaine.

#45 Austin Romaine

True Junior | 6-2 | 245 lbs. | Hillsboro, Missouri

Position: Linebacker
Previous College: None
Projection: Starter
Status: On Scholarship

Austin “Big Salad” Romaine (b. Sept. 3, 2004) is a tough young linebacker who is majoring in business administration and displays good tackling, awareness, and pursuit skills.

Romaine enters 2025 as a member of the Preseason All-Big 12 second team at linebacker.

I predicted him to redshirt in 2023, but due to a combination of unexpected promise and rampant injuries at the middle linebacker position, I was entirely wrong about that.

As a true freshman, Romaine played in 12 games in 2023 with five starts as he earned votes from the league’s coaches for the Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year award.

His five starts were the most by a K-State true freshman defender since cornerback Duke Shelley started seven games in 2015 and the most by a K-State true freshman linebacker since at least 1988. He totaled 22 tackles, three tackles for loss and one sack on the season.

In relief of the injured Daniel Green, Romaine set a season high with six tackles at Oklahoma State, while he had four at Texas Tech and three each against both Troy and UCF. He had a tackle for loss in three straight games, which included his first career sack at Texas Tech.

Romaine tallied his first career tackle for loss against UCF in his first-ever career start, a game in which he became K-State’s first true freshman to start at linebacker since Tre Walker in 2010 (Missouri and Colorado), as well as the first in a home game since Reggie Blackwell in 1989 (North Texas). By season’s end, he was playing through a broken hand too!

Last season, Romaine played in every game with 12 starts, leading the team with 96 tackles to go along with 7.5 tackles for loss, two sacks, three forced fumbles and two pass breakups over his 621 defensive snaps en route to All-Big 12 second-team honors from both the league’s coaches and the Associated Press.

He tied for fifth in the Big 12 in forced fumbles and finished ninth in tackles after he recorded the most tackles in a season by a Wildcat since Jayd Kirby had 99 in 2017.

Romaine had at least five tackles in 11 of his 12 games, including a career-high 12 tackles each at West Virginia, Houston and Iowa State. His 12 tackles at West Virginia were the most by a Wildcat in a single game since Daniel Green had 13 at Baylor in 2020.

Romaine also produced nine tackles at BYU, eight tackles at Tulane, and seven apiece against Arizona, Oklahoma State and in the Rate Bowl against Rutgers.

He tallied a career-high two sacks at Tulane — tied for the second most by any Big 12 player in 2024 — while he had a career-high 2.5 tackles for loss at Houston.

Two of Romaine’s forced fumbles led directly to game-winning scores as one was returned 60 yards for a touchdown at Tulane in a seven-point win, while another led to a 51-yard field goal against Kansas in a two-point victory. He earned Academic All-District honors from the College Sports Communicators in addition to being an Academic All-Big 12 performer.

Romaine prepped under head coach Bill Sucharski at Hillsboro (Mo.) High School, where he was regarded as the 49th-best inside linebacker in the Class of 2023 by ESPN.

He earned first-team all-state honors as both a junior and senior from the Missouri Football Coaches Association, and was selected as his league’s most valuable player in 2022.

Romaine recorded 117 tackles and seven sacks as a high school senior, while he totaled 85 tackles, 19 tackles for loss and eight sacks as a junior. He also rushed for 3,196 yards and 45 touchdowns over his prep career for the Hawks, and competed in baseball as well.

Romaine selected K-State over offers from Air Force, Brown, Buffalo, Columbia, Harvard, Murray State, New Mexico State, Northern Iowa, Ohio, Penn, Rice, Samford, South Dakota, Southeast Missouri State, Southern Illinois, Tulane and Yale, plus interest from Arkansas.

His primary recruiter was his now-position coach, linebackers coach Steve Stanard.

Here’s what defensive coordinator Joe Klanderman had to say about Romaine’s chances to see the field in 2023 following spring practices (he was definitely right about Romaine!):

Just a side note on all these early enrollee kids — (Kam Sallis and Wesley Fair), Austin Romaine at linebacker and Chiddi Obiazor at defensive end, I wouldn’t be surprised to see any of those guys playing for us in the fall.

We just felt Austin Romaine has been tremendous, especially, he’s just a freshman. What he’s doing is incredible.

After last spring, Stanard had more glowing praise for his newest rising star:

Austin has really started to come into his own. He has heavy hands, but he’s learned to get off blocks. He’s starting to recognize formations and get ahead of the play instead of it being all reactionary. He’s starting to become the leader of his class, and he’s learning to communicate.

Klanderman said he also observed this growth in Romaine’s leadership during that spring:

We’re trying to get Austin Romaine to realize he’s not a young guy anymore and that he’s an older guy, and he’s done a great job with that.

Very early. I knew that (he could be special) right away.

Daniel Green had very high praise for this man in 2023 at Big 12 Media Days, which proved prescient. Even before Green’s injury, Romaine was set to not redshirt his freshman season.

Head coach Chris Klieman observed in spring that Romaine worked to overcome setbacks:

We talk about his freshman year where he got thrust into a role because of the injuries to Daniel Green and Beau Palmer. He got put into a place maybe prematurely. He started off hot and kind of petered off just because of the demands of a Big 12 schedule. You could tell through his preparation in the offseason last year that he wasn’t going to allow that to happen again. When he came out hot last year, I knew it was going to perpetuate for him.

Now he enters 2025 as one of the consensus best middle linebackers in the entire country:

“Without a doubt, he’s one of the top linebackers in the country right now,” Stanard said in April. “His stats show it. It seems like he’s been here a long time. He understands he has a lot of work to do to get to where he wants to be.”

“He has really good vision and instincts and good awareness in the passing game and really feels the routes around him. Austin got much better with his block destruction using his hands and became a better blitzer. That’s been his development, is how much better can he get getting off blocks both in the pass rush and in the run game. He’s just a really physical guy.”

Learn more about Romaine’s life story in this wonderful D. Scott Fritchen profile from May.