Eighth in an 11-part series.
At first, Daiyan Henley didn’t even want to play linebacker. His defensive coordinator didn’t want him to, either.
It was August 2020, a few weeks before Nevada opened its season, and Henley had secured the starting nickel cornerback job. He was thrilled.
His career finally had some stability.
So when then-Wolf Pack defensive analyst Riccardo Stewart suggested to Henley he ask about a switch to linebacker, Henley avoided it.
Stewart thought Henley might start crying.
The junior wasn’t thrilled at all.
But Henley caved and posed the switch to defensive coordinator Brian Ward.
Ward said no. They preferred Henley at nickel.
A few days later, Stewart told Henley to ask again.
This time, Ward’s answer changed — the coaches had conversed, and Henley began studying both positions before eventually making linebacker his full-time role.
That shift served as the foundation for Henley’s rise through his final two seasons at Nevada and another at Washington State, approaching the cusp of an NFL career entering next week’s draft.
“That was probably the weirdest transition I ever had because I rejected it,” Henley told The Post.
Henley earned All-Pac-12 first-team honors during his lone season with the Cougars, recording 106 tackles and 12 tackles for loss.
Despite the redshirt senior’s inexperience at linebacker and just one offer coming out of high school, mock drafts have pegged him as a potential Day 2 pick — with athleticism and raw talent negating the position shuffling — and Washington State head coach Jake Dickert told The Post that the “best is yet to come” for Henley.
“At Nevada, he was an athlete playing defense,” Dickert said, “and I’m really proud of our time — we feel like we made him into an athletic linebacker, really, playing defense.”
But near the end of his first two seasons at Nevada, Henley thought his NFL dream had disappeared. He lost his love for the game.
Henley played six positions — quarterback, wide receiver, running back, cornerback, safety and the kicker for kickoffs — at Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles.
But he couldn’t make one of those work, even the wideout label he entered Nevada with in 2017.
Then, in 2019, he played four games as a reserve, took a redshirt and didn’t progress — at least through in-game reps — again.
“I’m like, ‘No way I get a shot [in the NFL],” Henley recalled.
But in practice, Henley started to alter that trajectory. The Nevada coaching staff in 2019 wanted Henley to learn the defense by serving as the scout team’s wide receiver. Then, Ward and Stewart arrived.
Stewart had roomed with former Ravens star Terrell Suggs at Arizona State and he experienced the curiosity surrounding Suggs’ arrival on campus with an “athlete” label.
Stewart also overlapped with Adam Archuleta, a collegiate linebacker drafted as a safety, and watching their paths unfold shaped Stewart’s approach as a future coach.
“In my mind, I’ve always thought, give me the best athlete and let’s put them at a position where they can just be athletic, smart and make plays,” Stewart told The Post. “I personally think that [Henley] probably still could’ve been an NFL player at safety. I really do. But I think that he does the most damage exactly where he’s at right now.”
Henley dove into the craft of the linebacker position.
He needed his eyes to slow down. His instincts needed sharpening.
Unlike a wideout, he didn’t know when the ball would be snapped and needed reactions to help “cheat the play,” Henley said.
He repeated drills to pick up keys, drills to work on cutbacks, drills to make sure that — in any scenario — Henley could diagnose a line of scrimmage, select his gap and burst through the opening before it slammed shut. Henley’s total tackles increased from 49 to 103 between 2020 and 2021 at Nevada, and he followed Ward to Washington State last season.
The downside of jumping around from position to position was that he could never “find yourself within the single position.”
He could never find consistency like his last two years. There wasn’t anything to master.
Henley always embraced the notion of being an athlete, of being a “guy just playing football,” because it allowed him to simplify football, explore different roles and experiment around the field.
But now, everything Henley does has a sharp focus. The latest — and, if everything works out, the last — position switch finally stuck.
“When I found myself becoming a linebacker, it was the best thing for me in my career — to find myself a position, like I said, where I could find a home and become something and I could master it,” Henley said.
