Maryland's defense just lost one of its building blocks before the season even starts. Zahir Mathis got hurt during preseason camp, and the school has told the Baltimore Sun he's expected to be out for all of 2026. 247Sports' Jeff Ermann broke the news first. No details on the injury itself have been released.
Mathis' rookie year made this one sting. As a true freshman, he racked up six sacks and 8.5 tackles for loss — team-best numbers, put up despite missing time to injury along the way — plus 31 pressures by Pro Football Focus' count, good enough for 11th in the Big Ten in sacks and a freshman All-America nod. It wasn't an entirely smooth path to get there. Head coach Mike Locksley said at Big Ten Media Day that both Mathis and fellow edge rusher Sidney Stewart "missed an extraordinary amount of time" as true freshmen "with high ankle sprains, lower leg injuries," and that the program lacked the depth behind them at the time to compensate.
Losing him now changes the math for a Maryland pass rush that looked like a real strength heading into the fall. He and Stewart were responsible for 13 of the team's 27 sacks a year ago, and the Terps were counting on that duo — plus a deep, more experienced front seven — as a centerpiece of a defense that returns 74% of last season's production, among the highest marks in the country. Stewart, who broke Maryland's freshman tackles-for-loss record last season with 10.5, posted about his teammate on Instagram this week: "Doing it for bro. All-American incoming / crazy stat line incoming."
Stewart now carries more of the load up front, and true freshman Zion Elee — the second-highest-rated recruit in program history — is likely to see the field right away as a result. DD Holmes and Nahsir Taylor are also candidates for a bigger role in defensive coordinator Ted Monachino's rotation.
Mathis originally signed with Maryland out of Philadelphia's Imhotep Charter, flipping his commitment from Ohio State late in the 2025 recruiting cycle and joining a lineage at that school that includes former Terps receiver DJ Moore.