Louisville defensive lineman Rene Konga puts himself firmly on the 2025 NFL Draft radar with a ton of upside to rise
It has been a fascinating journey for Louisville defensive tackle Rene Konga, who is coming off the best game of his college career against Louisville last weekend. During that contest, the former Rutgers transfer recorded seven total tackles, a half tackle for loss, and two quarterback hurries. If you watched that 31-19 victory over Georgia […]
It has been a fascinating journey for Louisville defensive tackle Rene Konga, who is coming off the best game of his college career against Louisville last weekend. During that contest, the former Rutgers transfer recorded seven total tackles, a half tackle for loss, and two quarterback hurries. If you watched that 31-19 victory over Georgia Tech, that box score doesn’t tell nearly the story for how dominant Konga truly was.
So the question is going to come up, especially for a player who is a redshirt senior… Who the heck is Rene Konga? Originally a native of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, Konga was considered a three-star recruit coming out of high school. He actually reclassified to the 2020 recruiting class, eventually selecting the Rutgers Scarlet Knights over offers from Syracuse, Boise State, UConn, Toledo, and UMass.
While Konga now stands at 6-4 and 290 pounds, he was very undersized when coming to the States. When he signed with Rutgers, he was listed at just 240 pounds. Konga played his first season in the 260-pound range and has steadily put on weight over the past few seasons. Perhaps that is a part of the reason why Konga was never a major difference maker for Rutgers, ending his career with just 14 total tackles, three tackles for loss, and two sacks.
Konga had nearly half of that production in just the Georgia Tech game alone. That one-game sample size isn’t going to make a draft evaluation. Scouts, evaluators, and decision makers on the next level are going to want to see a lot more. The complicated aspect is that Konga wasn’t just good against Georgia Tech. He put together arguably the most dominant game of any interior defensive lineman in the 2025 NFL Draft class so far this season.
The film watching experience was an adventure. It went from, “Who is No. 90? He looked promising”, to, “Wait, he won’t stop making plays.” You just kept noticing Konga nonstop, making play after play.
From a body type perspective, Konga is a really clean 290 pounds. He even has a frame where he could easily hold over 300 pounds without any issue. Konga also possesses the length to play a variety of roles up front, and should be able to also play for either an even or odd front team. It’s a pretty easy evaluation from that perspective.
What makes Konga such an intriguing player is his movement skills. The quickness and explosiveness he possesses are impressive. This should allow him to make a bevy of plays behind the line of scrimmage, and in pursuit. Konga is definitely more toolsy than a finished product right now, but the upside is absolutely there.
It’s just one game, so as an evaluator, we have to keep ourselves from getting too hyperbolic with draft takes. Konga is going to have to stack similar performances like he did against Georgia Tech for this to be real, but the baseline has been created. If he can take this performance, and build on it, we could be looking at one of the rising stars in the 2025 NFL Draft class.
Konga was that good this week. Hopefully there is more to come.
