The brief moments Will McDonald IV was a linebacker before he was setting sack records
AMES – It seems obvious now.
After record-smashing seasons and first-team All-America honors on his resume, and with a shot at immortality on the horizon, the idea of Will McDonald IV playing anywhere for Iowa State other than defensive end just feels preposterous.
There was a time, though, when it was reality.
McDonald, the best pass-rusher Iowa State and perhaps the Big 12 have ever seen, spent the early parts of his redshirt freshman season at linebacker.
“He was good,” four-year starting linebacker O’Rien Vance said as a smile spread across his face, recalling the memory. “Even when he played linebacker, Will has been his own character, his own being, and I feel like when it comes to what he does best, it’s play ball.”
In the spring of 2019 and for the first few weeks of that fall, McDonald was not a fearsome quarterback hunter but an inexperienced linebacker trying to get on the field.
“I would play any position they put me in,” McDonald said.
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The switch and the switch back
McDonald arrived at Iowa State with raw potential, talent and athleticism, but little in the way of football refinement. He didn’t take the sport up until the middle of his high school years and had little understanding of the game before starting to play it.
But that didn’t stop him from making an immediate impact, getting a strip sack in his second career game against TCU in 2018. He appeared in just four games that season along the defensive line (without recording another sack) and was able to maintain his redshirt.
That following spring, Iowa State moved him over to linebacker.
“He’s got great size, the ability to run, elusive,” Iowa State linebackers coach Tyson Veidt said, “which sometimes you think in your head, ‘That’s a linebacker.’”
So Iowa State gave it a shot.
“Find out what he can do,” defensive coordinator Jon Heacock recalled of the move.
The move asked a lot of McDonald as it required him to learn the nuances of a sport he’d only picked up just a few years earlier.
“It taught me a lot of things about the game of football,” he said. “From playing my junior year of high school, I didn’t really know too much – just go after the QB.
“When I did play linebacker, it taught me a whole new aspect of formations, routes that receivers run, how offensive lines move.”
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As the 2019 season progressed in its early weeks, McDonald wasn’t making much of an impact. He was unable to establish himself as a consistent performer at the strong-side linebacker spot, but Iowa State still knew it had a hugely talented player it wanted to be able to deploy.
“We were putting together some third-down stuff, and trying to get the best guys on the field simultaneously and figure out who that was,” Veidt said.
And while McDonald hadn’t mastered the intricacies of linebacking, he still had the ability to get after opposing quarterbacks. So midway through the 2019 season, Iowa State moved McDonald back closer to the ball where he had fewer responsibilities but a bigger chance to change football games.
“There’s not a lot of thinking involved or a lot of reads and keys,” Heacock said of the switch. “When the ball moves, you move and beat the guy across from you.
“(McDonald) has natural instincts to do that. To ask him to do a whole lot of other things didn’t make a lot of sense, but he is talented enough to do those things.”
It really came down to a simple thought for the Iowa State coaching staff.
“He’s got a knack to rush the passer,” Veidt said. “He’s going to do that more from the (defensive end) position than he would be doing at linebacker.”
McDonald responded to the switch and the simplicity by recording five sacks in the final three games of the regular season.
“As you learn and go, you find out what these guys’ best attributes are and where to use them,” Veidt said. “I think we found that spot for him.”
The emergence
The following season, his first playing a full year full-time at defensive end, McDonald set a school record by recording 10.5 sacks, tying for the most nationally. In 2021, he broke his own record by tallying 11.5 sacks.
His 29 career sacks are an Iowa State record and just four shy of Von Miller’s Big 12 mark.
Those numbers, the accolades he’s received and the massive physical frame he’s built would have made McDonald a significant NFL prospect heading into last year’s draft. Instead of pursuing that course, though, McDonald returned to Iowa State.
“It probably could have went either way,” Iowa State coach Matt Campbell said. “He had a real option and a real opportunity.”
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McDonald will become the first person in his family with a college degree when he graduates this fall, Campbell said, and that was a motivating factor. Along with the ability to improve his professional prospects even more.
"Just really consistently getting himself to be one of the best defensive linemen in the country,” Campbell said. "He felt like there was still room for growth and opportunity to grow in some of those areas.”
McDonald said it was all about further preparation for a professional future.
“I just felt like I had more to prove in football,” he said. “I felt like I wasn’t mature enough to go to the combine. It’s never too bad to take another year to learn more about football.
“I’ve got to live more professionally. I’m not saying my life is bad because it’s good. I just want to make sure I’m set to go to the League.”
So what will McDonald, already the best to ever do it at Iowa State, bring with another year of college?
“Hopefully an improved Will McDonald – bigger, faster, stronger and smarter,” Heacock said. “He’s what I consider a ‘go’ guy. When it’s time to go, he goes. I think that’s what everybody’s watching.
“We’ve got to do everything to help him. He’s going to have to play a few more reps than normally, but the expectations for me is that he’s gotten bigger, faster, stronger and smarter over the summer, spring and winter.
“We’ll have a new and improved Will.”
Which is really what Iowa State has had in McDonald every year he’s been on campus.
“Even when he played linebacker, there were times when I was like, ‘This kid...’” Vance said. “It’s wild with his build and his structure, but he has the fluidity of a linebacker and the footwork and hands of a d-lineman.”
Which leads McDonald’s teammates and coaches to believe that even if the switch back to defensive end wouldn’t have been made, he’d still be an impact player.
“Could probably play linebacker for us now,” Heacock said.
Said Veidt, “I think he would have been just fine there.”
Just fine, but perhaps not historic. And his future might not be as lucrative.
“It was a real good decision,” McDonald said.
Travis Hines covers Iowa State University sports for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him at @TravisHines21.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: How Will McDonald's position change and return unlocked his potential
