If Eagles rookie defensive tackle Ty Robinson didn’t make the NFL, he would have spent the next chapter of his life treating kids with illnesses and injuries.
Robinson, who majored in nutrition and health sciences at Nebraska, wants to enter pediatrics after he’s done playing in the league. According to people who know him best, he has a big and kind heart and loves helping children.
Robinson’s Higley (Arizona) High School football coach Eddy Zubey admired Robinson’s passion for reading to kindergarteners and assisting with field days, while Robinson’s mentor, Dwayne Millner, said kids “just flock to him because they think he is a big tree.”
While Zubey and Millner both described the 6-5, 288-pound Robinson as a “gentle giant,” the Eagles’ 2025 fourth-round pick’s personality is replaced by violence that makes him unrecognizable when he steps onto a football field.
“He goes from being just mild-mannered — like a professor — to he’s going to try to rip your face off,” former Nebraska defensive coordinator Tony White, who is currently Florida State’s DC, told NJ Advance Media recently. “He’s not a big rah-rah guy, but you can see the intensity.”
Robinson has been described as a defensive bully who overpowers offensive linemen and punishes ball carriers, physicality that is a perfect match for an Eagles defense that tackles hard and dominates the line of scrimmage. Couple that attitude with athleticism, football intelligence and work ethic, and Robinson has starting potential — if not the foundation for significant playing time in Year 1.
Here’s how Robinson developed the mindset — and skillset — to become one of the most unique line-of-scrimmage forces in the draft and one that the Eagles expect to torment offenses for years to come.
‘A different look on his face’
When Robinson played Pop Warner and middle-school football, he did not need to be aggressive because he towered over his peers and effortlessly knocked them to the ground. But against better talent and bigger opponents in high school, he had to change his ways.
“He was still really nice when he was younger,” Millner, who has trained Robinson since he was 9 years old for the Elev8 Sports Academy in Phoenix, told NJ Advance Media. “So, we told him this. ‘At some point, Ty, if you want to play defense, you’re going to have to get nastier. You’re going to have to get meaner. Defensive linemen must play with motor and tenacity.’”
Robinson took Millner’s criticism to heart. He assumed the enforcer role on Higley’s defense when he transferred in as a sophomore and was a game-wrecker for three years. Zubey still reminisces about one of the plays he made as a junior.
“The high school team we were playing ran a read-zone play. Ty is the read (zone) defensive end, and he just freaking tackles the quarterback and the running back at the same time with his arms out wide like an airplane,” Zubey told NJ Advance Media. “He just engulfed them both. That was something like where you are just like, ‘Wow.’”
During his six seasons at Nebraska, Robinson’s intensity earned the respect of two different coaching staffs.
He pushed Nebraska’s older defensive linemen for playing time at the end of his freshman season (2019), started seven games in 2020 and was one of the team’s best defensive players in the final two years of the Scott Frost era (2021-2022). Then, his new defensive line coach, Terrance Knighton, challenged him to be more dominant during the 2023 and 2024 seasons — and Robinson met those demands.
Robinson is Nebraska’s record holder for games played (60), and last season, he amassed seven sacks, earning him a second-team All-Big Ten selection and improving his draft stock.
“I mean, honestly, with Ty, when you got in the paint, it didn’t matter if it was an individual drill or a team drill, there was just a different look on his face,” Erik Chinander, Nebraska’s defensive coordinator from 2018-22, told NJ Advance Media. “It almost doesn’t look like the same guy. The guy that’s wearing his glasses, is always smiling and is well-spoken.”
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Former Nebraska defensive lineman Ty Robinson's toughness should help make the Eagles defense better. AP
‘This huge guy is beating everybody’
Before Robinson ran the fastest 40-yard dash (4.83 seconds) of any interior defensive linemen at this year’s NFL Combine, the 24-year-old told Millner that his athleticism was “going to shock” NFL teams — the same way it surprised college and high school coaches in the past.
Millner noticed that Robinson’s speed, agility and explosiveness were atypical for a defensive tackle when he saw him keep pace with his quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers during ladder and backpedal drills.
“I can remember when we took one of our visits to Stanford. As soon as we got there, Ty has on jeans and a sweatshirt — they gave him a flexibility test where he had to hold a pipe over his head, then he had to do a one-legged squat all the way down and back up,” Millner said. “He did it in jeans. I was like, ‘Wow.’ They were amazed that a kid that big had the flexibility to do that.”
During the summer, under sweltering heat, Robinson trained three times per week under Millner, practicing the 40-yard dash, the 10-yard split, footwork techniques and core strength exercises.
“It was in the summer (before his senior season) at an Arizona State camp. The Arizona State guys were deciding if they were going to offer him or not. So, they just started putting him through — they are putting everybody through them — these grueling exercises like bear crawls,” Zubey explained. “At that time, Ty was 6-4, like 280 or 285 (pounds). And to see him continually win against wide receivers and defensive backs, that’s when the ASU guys were like, ‘Holy, (expletive). We’re putting these guys through conditioning to see if they’re going to break, and this huge guy is beating everybody.’”
Robinson was a two-way player on Zubey’s team, splitting his snaps between defensive line and tight end.
Even though he was fast enough to play tight end in college, the four-star recruit didn’t receive any offers at that position. Instead, Nebraska utilized his quickness on defense, lining him up anywhere from the 0-technique to the 9-technique for any given play.
“It’s hard for a 300-pounder to get on the edge,” White said. “He’s on the edges of guys. Colorado couldn’t block him. UCLA couldn’t block him. Ohio State had a hard time blocking him. You see him on the edges of guys, beating them from all different kinds of angles. Straight up pass rush, movement rush, all different forms of rushes.”
Nebraska defensive tackle Ty Robinson runs the 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine
Nebraska defensive tackle Ty Robinson runs the 40-yard dash at the NFL Scouting Combine on Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis.(AP Photo/Michael Conroy)
‘A little more analytical’
From the classroom to the film room, Robinson is critical of his performances and looks for solutions.
Robinson, who made Nebraska’s scholar-athlete honor roll five times, easily grasps new concepts from meetings and quickly applies them to the field.
“Ty is a little more analytical,” Millner said. “In film sessions, oh my gosh. We did tons and tons of film sessions, particularly in the summers. … For the most part, that’s what Ty leans toward when he doesn’t win. It’s like ok, ‘Here are all the things that I assessed that happened during the game. Not just to me, but for our whole team.’
“Then, he starts to look inward. ‘Let me get to the film. I got to see this, and I got to see that.’ He can recall the plays. ‘On this play, this is what happened. This is what I was thinking.’ The frustration of losing turns into, ‘Hey, what can we do better to not have it happen?’”
Nate O’Neal, one of the NFL’s top pass-rush trainers and the defensive line coach for Exos Sports, trained Robinson during the pre-draft process. Like everybody else, he was enamored with Robinson’s combination of size and quickness, though, it was the aggression Robinson demonstrated in workouts and the extra effort he put in afterwards that convinced O’Neal that Robinson had a bright future.
“He’s a hardworking, blue-collar kid,” O’Neal told NJ Advance Media. “He’s going to bring his lunch pail with him. I think the people of Philly are going to really respond well to him.”
Over the next two years, Robinson projects to be the fourth defensive tackle on Philadelphia’s depth chart behind Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis and Moro Ojomo.
Robinson will have to wait for a bigger opportunity, but he has the mindset, talent and work ethic to play in the NFL for a long time, putting his dreams of becoming a doctor on hold.
“He wants to be better every single day,” O’Neal said. “There’s plenty of guys — even a couple I had in draft prep this year — that I told people, ‘Oh, this guy ain’t the truth. This guy ain’t the one. Stay the (expletive) away from him.’ And they did. I promise you in four years those guys will be working at Amazon. … Ty Robinson is not one of them.”
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