3 predictions for 2025 Nebraska football
You might not like some of them, but, trust me, this is going to be a fun season.
We’ll find out something real about Nebraska football in three days. Until then, we’ve got a few more days to consider what all of the offseason updates might mean when Nebraska and Cincinnati kickoff Thursday night. They range from major to minute—roster and staff additions, a pro-style front office structure, glorious grass to practice on, red end zones, rugby kicks, minimalist alternate uniforms, a new podcast from the head coach launching a week before the start of the season.
But the change that’s intrigued me most is what happened with the indoor practice facility. It’s the same facility, just with a facelift. The Hawks Championship Center used to have markers of the Huskers’ storied past everywhere you looked—46 Conference Championships, 53 Bowl Appearances, the national championship years—on banners that were 30 or 40 yards long.
Most all of that stuff is off the walls now, though the national title seasons were just moved. Previous Husker teams working toward the north end zone in the facility saw a glowing 70, 71, 94, 95 and 97 staring back at them. This year’s team sees six words from the Husker prayer: “Can’t Be Beat, Won’t Be Beat.”
It’s completely possible, I’m making too much of this, but it sent me back to something former AD Trev Alberts said the day he fired Scott Frost: “We’ll stop talking about championships. We’ll stop talking about things we used to do.” In 2025, Nebraska took those things off the walls.
Of course, I referenced that Alberts quote this time last year, too, in a season preview column. I think that’s a fitting summation of 2024. The Huskers took a slight step forward, no doubt, but it didn’t show the ghosts of Nebraska’s past were fully in the past. “Getting back to being Nebraska again” and simply playing winning football are treated as equivalent, the same quest.
As evidence has accumulated in Lincoln over two decades, I’m not even sure the two ideas are related anymore. In fact, I’ve become mostly convinced that viewing “Nebraska football” and “winning football” as the same thing might be the biggest hurdle, the final boss, for this program.
Are the 2025 Huskers ready for that challenge? I think they’re getting closer, but we’ll get our first look Thursday.
That leaves just enough time to get in three predictions for the season ahead.
Prediction 1: 8-4
I undertook the exercise again this year of just jotting down a win probability off the top of my head between 0 (loss) and 1 (win) for each game on Nebraska’s schedule. You sum those 12 numbers and you’ve got a win total. I did this in about 30 seconds on purpose, trying to get to what my gut says.
My total came out at 7.8, which puts me at an 8-4 regular season. That might be a problematic number for some, an in-between number, a number that’s only one bigger than last year’s, but I feel good about it.
The wins: Cincinnati, Akron, Houston Christian, Michigan, Maryland, Northwestern, UCLA and Penn State. The losses: Michigan State, Minnesota, USC and Iowa.
Prediction 2: Relevance
“We have to win on the field,” Matt Rhule said last week when asked about adding podcasting to his plate. “We all get that, right? We have to be relevant on the field.”
Yes, everyone’s got it, and I think the Huskers will be relevant for much of the season, even at 8-4. First, there’s the 4-0 start, which is the part of this I feel least confident about. Nebraska will have to play well to beat Cincinnati, and Michigan’s still more talented top to bottom, but 4-0 isn’t unthinkable. If the Huskers get there, they’re ranked in the top 25 going into their first bye week and the sky’s the limit.
And then the sky falls a bit against Michigan State, which might have some of the best receivers in the Big Ten. (Any time a team has that, it has a chance against most teams.) The Maryland game isn’t fun, but NU gets through it only to have a frustrating Friday on a short week in Minneapolis. Goodbye ranking, but at 5-2 everything is still possible.
It stays that way for a week with a win over Northwestern, but the Huskers lose what looks like the pivotal game of the season to USC, which has even better receivers than MSU. Nebraska is 3-3 in conference play and the season seems destined to be labeled “more of the same.”
But it doesn’t feel that way when Nebraska wins at Penn State. Rhule’s done it before, beating his alma mater while the head coach at Temple in 2015 (though that game was in Philly). The 2015 Lions were not preseason national title favorites the way this 2025 team is, but Nebraska nearly beat Ohio State on the road last year. There’s a lot to like about Penn State this season, but do I think they’ll be better than 2024 Ohio State? I do not?
If that upset happens, relevance rushes back to Lincoln. NU is in the CFP rankings, and if it gets to 9-3 with a Black Friday win over Iowa, Rhule and everyone else who owns a Nebraska shirt are ready to make the case for a playoff bid.
Nebraska does not get to 9-3 with a Black Friday win over Iowa, which is “more of the same” against that opponent, but with the context of the other 11 games it puts the season in “what might’ve been” territory.
This sucks in December. “What might’ve been” seasons are often less satisfying than totally lost seasons.
But that feeling will change.
Prediction 3: This will be a “true” season
Nebraska hasn’t had many true seasons of late, 2021 being the all-time example but 2015, 2016 and 2018 come quickly to mind as well. A team with any record can have a true season, being truly as bad as it looked at 2-10 or as good at 10-2.
This will, finally, be the long-term view of Nebraska’s 2025 because as one season transitions to the next ,what could’ve been loses value against what actually was. The Huskers will go 3-3 in one-score games. They will finish the regular season +8 in turnover margin, a good-but-reasonable number that doesn’t suggest non-replicable results. This will be NU’s first positive turnover margin season since 2016 and its best since going +23 in 2003. Nebraska will have a typical amount and severity of injuries.
This will all be freeing, even at 8-4—a problematic number for some, an in-between number, a number that’s only one bigger than last year’s—because it means we’ll stop talking about close-game and turnovers luck. We’ll stop talking about what Nebraska did to itself and focus on what it did to others.
When this all happens, exactly like this, Rhule will have no choice but to have me on his podcast to ask how I knew.
And I’ll ask him who redesigned the walls at the practice facility.
I might be reading too much into this, but this is an extremely well-crafted article. Leaving an open-ended story (when will Brandon be on Rhules podcast) with enough substance to make us return to it over the next 100 days. I concur with the majority(8-4). Though, I will pick nits with the outcomes of Penn State and Michigan State, because I like the thick part of a bell curve. I also think that there might be something to having 3 DBs with single digit jerseys get elected pernament (sic) captains. I will go +11 on turnover margin, because, by gosh and by golly, we deserve double digits. Thank you. After this weekends games I am excited for Erin's article tomorrow also. It's a great week to be a Counter Read subscriber.