Are you ready for the most anticipated punting season ever at NU?

Thoughts on Archie Wilson, Amy Williams' big commit and more.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Things are picking up around Lincoln. I know because when I was considering ideas for this Monday newsletter, I realized we had a ton of stuff just since Friday, so this will be a roundup-type of post of a few things that caught my eye over the weekend. Not volleyball, however. Not because volleyball didn’t, but because my colleague, Erin Sorensen, was at the matches Saturday and will have more on that Tuesday.

Are you ready for The Most Anticipated Season of Punting in the History of Nebraska Football? By the power vested in me (none), I’m just declaring it.

I first had the thought 2025 might be that after Nebraska’s first fall camp practice when Husker media members got their first look at Australian-import punter, Archie Wilson. Things tend to get out of hand with these observation periods, but even with that in mind, the early reviews of Wilson, launching punts with either foot, were tough to ignore.

Then Matt Rhule took the mic Saturday following the Huskers’ first scrimmage of camp.

“I’ve never enjoyed punt periods in my life, but it’s my favorite period in practice right now. I just could watch Archie punt all day. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like watching a YouTube short. The guy’s amazing.”

What is the head coach going to say, right? I get it. My fall camp shell of skepticism has grown thick over the years, but I’m finding so far that all talk of punting and Wilson is punching through. There are simply too many narrative and competitive angles to resist.

Let’s start with the story angle.

“Think about this, we’re going to go to Arrowhead Stadium and play at 8 o’clock at night with a kicker who can kick with both feet and kick all of the kicks,” Rhule said. “It’ll be the first football game he’s ever played in.

“He knows every player on the team’s name, he’s 18-years-old, he left his country, left his family, to play a sport he’s never played before. There’s not a guy on the team that doesn’t love him.”

Additionally, Wilson is quick-witted and confident enough to trade rhetorical jabs with the head coach, per Rhule, and, as the staff found out recently during one of their team talent shows, has a pretty good rendition of “Piano Man.”¹

The narrative and competitive converge at the point of my area of infatuation for the past few months—that there are athletes out there, on the other side of the world, playing a completely different sport than American football who happen to be a hack for punting an American football.

It’s not that the recent influx of Australian-rules football and rugby kickers are necessarily better than your standard American punter at booming the ball into the air. It’s that the sports the imports grew up playing require so much more than simply getting the ball away. They’re tough, physical games, like football, but they also require kicking with accuracy and finesse—left-footed, right-footed, banana balls, rollers, the whole bag.

The competition for the title of The Most Anticipated Season of Punting in the History of Nebraska Football, if I’m being honest, wasn’t all that competitive. We’re just not conditioned to think about punting with much awe because the act itself is a concession. “Punters are people, too” is a useful reminder, but it also reminds us that punters are often an afterthought.² No fan brags about the 5-star punter their team got because 5-star punters aren’t a thing.³

The closest competitor for “Most Anticipated” I could think of was when Darin Erstad joined the football team ahead of the 1994 season. I was around then but not paying attention, so I imagine that must’ve gone something like this: “Oh, you mean the freshman All-American outfielder who just hit .339 and had his friends make a tape of him punting to show the coaches is now going to play football, too?”

That’s a pretty good pitch for paying attention to punting back when you might’ve just walked out of a screening of “Forrest Gump.” That Erstad punted on a national championship team while on his way to becoming the first overall pick in the MLB Draft is one thing punters usually are not—cool.

But Wilson⁴ is also “one of the coolest dudes around,” according to Rhule. “He’s got so much juice.”

I buy it and I haven’t even seen the guy kick with either of his feet yet, but I’m looking forward to it.

Odds & Ends

• Just when you thought I was done talking specialists, Rhule also shared this Saturday, which piqued my interest. Because Wilson has “all the kicks,” Nebraska’s returners have been having to deal with them in fall camp. That group has included wide receiver Jacory Barney Jr., running back Isaiah Mozee and defensive backs Caleb Benning and Andrew Marshall.⁵ “Those guys are going to have to catch all those kicks,” Rhule said, “so I think we’re going to be way better.” As I wrote in March, punt return is an area where the Huskers have a lot of growth potential.

• Amy Williams had a nice weekend as the Huskers got a commitment from 5-star forward Ashlyn Koupal, the 12th-best player in the 2026 class by 247Sports. Nebraska also has top-100 recruit Ava Miles committed in this class.

• Regular readers know I keep tabs on power rankings entering the season—perhaps to an annoying degree—and two I like quite a bit have had recent releases. BCftoys.com, home of the FEI ratings, starts NU at No. 36 nationally. The good news? That’s ahead of offseason buzz factory Illinois. The bad news? It’s behind Washington, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and five other Big Ten teams. McIllece Sports also recently released its annual preview with the Huskers 41st overall. Both places project seven wins as the most likely outcome with FEI offering a 10% (rounded, as are all to follow) chance to reach nine wins, 20% at eight, 28% at seven and 24% at six. McIllece provides the same splits at 13%/15%/15%/13%. I value both rankings and have used them often in the past, but I also know neither can have accurately projected the difference Archie Wilson will make given he’s never played football before.

1. I would also note Archie Wilson is just an extremely strong, versatile name. Archie Wilson sounds like a great country artist from the 1950s and like a groundbreaking jazz pianist from the 1960s and like a renegade film director from the 1970s and like a whip-smart investor from the 1980s who beat Wall Street while wearing boots instead of wingtips. Even the guy’s name is overflowing with potential.

2. At least until they do something great or something awful, then they’re never forgotten. This is the burden all specialists must bear. Do you remember Nebraska’s first punt return of 2021? I bet you do. How about the Huskers’ only onside kick on foreign soil? Yep. Is the most famous play in Nebraska history a punt return? That one’s trickier, but the most famous radio call definitely is.

3. OK, so the kicking camps have started rating specialists on a 5-star scale, but you won’t find a 5-star long snapper on 247Sports. You know what I mean. Officially speaking, there’s no equivalent to a Dylan Raiola. Practically speaking, there is.

4. “The Ambipedal Aussie.” That have legs or is it too much? Why am I trying to give a guy a nickname after extolling the virtues of his given name?

5. Marshall was an excellent punt returner last year at Idaho.