A level-setting loss
Forget about record, it only complicates things. What has Nebraska actually shown in nearly 3 years under Matt Rhule?
It’s never good when a loss sends you to the past in search of context, but that’s how I spent most of the second half of Nebraska’s 37-10 loss to Penn State. The Huskers had a chance to all but guarantee the perception of progress with a win. Despite being a touchdown underdog to a 4-6 team with an interim head coach, I liked the matchup. Not from a personnel perspective—NU still has work to do there—but from a numbers perspective both teams had their advantages and maybe the motivation angle was more red than blue, too.
In theory, you’d hope that a team with a mostly pleasant present and settled future would have some sort of edge over a team getting ready to put down a stack of chips at the coaching-carousel craps table.
But that’s not how it looked Saturday night as the Nittany Lions scored on seven-of-eight drives before kneeling the game out on the final possession. What the opposing offense does won’t usually matter when the defense can’t get more than two stops.
It was the sort of loss that forces you to consider all a program hasn’t accomplished yet instead of what it has, and things get dangerous in that space. The scale of what puts a program in that space is unique, but it’s treacherous everywhere. It’s why James Franklin wasn’t coaching against Nebraska.
So, we have no choice but to consider…
…the Big Ten teams Nebraska has beaten to this point under Matt Rhule: Illinois, Maryland, Michigan State, Northwestern (x2), Purdue (x2), Rutgers, UCLA and Wisconsin. You can add Cincinnati and Colorado to the list as power-conference wins.
…the Big Ten teams Nebraska has lost to under Rhule: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa (x2), Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota (x2), Ohio State, Penn State, UCLA, USC (x2) and Wisconsin. You can add Colorado to the list as a power-conference loss. The Huskers also have at least one destruction-level loss in each of the past three seasons: 45-7 to Michigan in 2023, 56-7 to Indiana in 2024 and now Penn State. Michigan would finish 2023 No. 1, Indiana landed at No. 10 in 2024 and Penn State won’t be ranked in 2025. The impact of such losses increases the deeper you get into a tenure,1 while the quality of the purveyor, in Nebraska’s case at least, has slid from national champion to top-10 team to preseason top-10 team.
…since 2023, Nebraska is 15-17-4 against the spread (.469). This is usually the first number I look at when trying to assess coaches and, like everything in football, it’s not a magic bullet, but it does offer a quick way to learn how often a team is at, below or above expectation. I don’t turn there because I care if a coach might be uniquely good at winning someone a bet the majority of the time, but because it’s valuable data. The line is a data-driven projection from for-profit businesses with a bottom line determined by those projections’ accuracy and then it gets stress tested by the public (wisdom of crowds) hammering it into shape each week. The number is so solid that the best coaches only get to around 55% ATS and the worst don’t fall much below 45% if they somehow stick around for more than three years. Given that scale, you can already determine where Rhule falls on the list, but the more difficult context is Nebraska was 26-30 ATS (.464) under Scott Frost. If the marker of quality coaching is the ability to get a team to meet or exceed expectations the most often—and I think it is—all we can say with direct evidence to this point is NU is 0.5 percentage points better at meeting/exceeding expectations than it was under the previous staff.
…to use another profit-driven-plus-wisdom-of-crowds number that’s easier to visualize we can look at regular-season win totals. In 2023, Nebraska was projected to win 6 and won 5 (-1). In 2024, it was projected to win 7.5 and won 6 (-1.5). In 2025, it was projected again at 7.5. The Huskers have 7 wins already but were a 4.5-point home2 underdog against Iowa on Friday. If they win, they go over by half a game to put the Rhule era at -2. If they lose, it’s under yet again (-2.5). For reference, Nebraska was a 3-point underdog3 at Iowa last year.
All of which is to say that the “progress” angle is becoming more difficult for Nebraska, and I don’t think a win over Iowa—as milestone-y as that might feel—really changes that.
The Huskers are good at drawing attention right now, from Rhule’s podcast to his weekly Pat McAfee appearances to NU’s Heisman push for Emmett Johnson last week. Those are smart decisions in my mind, a potential value-add and recruiting advantage for NU, but only if Nebraska actually does something that make the average, non-Nebraska fan sit up and take notice.
With one game left in the third year of the Rhule era, we’re still waiting for that moment.
For example, you could chalk the 2023 Michigan loss up to “well, it was Year 1” and that only applies for one year.
That means the general view is that Iowa is 7-ish points better than Nebraska on a neutral field.
That means 2024 Iowa and Nebraska were viewed as almost equal on a neutral field.
If I were anointed as Matt Rhules' Guardian Apologist, I would go to the turnover of all 3 Coordinator positions and loss of my (his) Supervisors before asking for a Mulligan Year on my Triennial Evaluation. In a similar vein, as said supervisor (and as a Husker fan I feel entitled to said position) before abrogating the results, I would use the relative attractiveness of the program to the Jimmies and Joes who will, long-term, make or break the program. The speed of recruitment and relative nudeness of the portal and NIL leads be to look at the third year of HIS message setting. This is the class of 2027. It looks better than average, RIGHT NOW, let's see what it looks like after the Spring Husker Game Carnival.