The season is here and you know what that means: Game Day guides are back for another season. You can expect to find these in your inbox every Saturday morning to get you ready for the day ahead.
Nebraska opens the 2026 season later this morning against Ohio, and there is plenty to sort through before kickoff: a new quarterback, a veteran roster, a familiar name connected to both programs and a very hot September morning at Memorial Stadium.
So grab water and maybe some sunscreen. Let’s get into it.
Nebraska vs. Ohio
When: Saturday, Sept. 5 | 11 a.m. CT
Where: Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Nebraska
TV: FS1
TV crew: Eric Collins, Spencer Tillman
Radio: Huskers Radio Network
Radio crew: Kyle Crooks, Jay Moore, Jessica Coody
Streaming audio: Huskers.com / Official Huskers App
Records: Nebraska 0-0; Ohio 0-0
2025 records: Nebraska 7-6; Ohio 9-4
Series: First meeting
Weather note: It’s going to be hot. Nebraska is allowing fans to bring one sealed bottle of water into Memorial Stadium and empty personal water bottles are still allowed for refill inside.
Setting the scene
Nebraska starts Year 4 under Matt Rhule with something it has not always had in recent years: experience.
The Huskers went 7-6 for the second straight season in 2025, but this roster looks more seasoned than the ones Rhule had earlier in his tenure. Nebraska has 115 players on the roster, and 83 of them are at least in their third season of college football. The Huskers return six starters on offense, six on defense, their punter and their place-kicker.
They also added 16 transfers, including 15 from FBS programs. That transfer group brings 200 career starts, with 188 at the FBS level and 112 at Power Four programs.
As for Ohio, the Bobcats are not showing up as some throwaway Week 1 opponent in Lincoln. They went 9-4 last season, won six of their final seven games and beat UNLV in the Frisco Bowl.
That UNLV part is relevant, of course, because Anthony Colandrea was on the other side of that game. Now Colandrea gets Ohio again, this time as Nebraska’s starting quarterback.
Rhule on the moment
On opening the season against Ohio and Frank Solich’s connection to both programs:
“I don’t think you can talk about a Nebraska vs. Ohio football game without talking about Coach (Frank) Solich. I think it was my first spring here when Trev (Alberts) and I talked to Coach and got him back into Memorial Stadium, into the fold.”
On what usually decides first games:
“In the first games, you have to focus more on yourself than the opponent and make sure that you’re doing the things. If you all watch college football this weekend, the first games are usually either won or lost in four areas. Usually in special teams blunders, usually in penalties, turnovers, and you see a lot of bad tackling out there.”
On leadership and captains:
“Leadership is not speeches, it’s quiet conversations in quiet moments. We have a lot of guys on our team. This is the most guys I’ve ever been around where I’ve been like, this guy can be a single-digit or this guy can be a captain. We aren’t doing captains. That might change, but we are going to go with game captains and give guys multiple chances to lead and let the tenure of the season let us see who is there.”
On the defense:
“It feels right, it looks right. I believe the defense is connected.”
Storylines to remember
Anthony Colandrea gets Ohio again
You really could not draw this up much cleaner if you tried.
Colandrea’s final game at UNLV was a 17-10 loss to Ohio in the Frisco Bowl. His first game at Nebraska is against that same Ohio program, only now he is in Memorial Stadium, in a Dana Holgorsen offense and leading a team with much bigger expectations.
Holgorsen said Nebraska went back and studied that bowl game.
“The last game he played was against Ohio, right?” Holgorsen said. “We went back and studied that game, and I see a different kid right now.”
That is probably the biggest thing to watch on Saturday. Colandrea has arm talent and he has confidence. Nebraska didn’t bring him in to play scared, but Holgorsen has also talked about reeling him in at times, making the routine play and not letting one wow throw turn into two dangerous ones.
For his part, Colandrea is not making the Ohio rematch too complicated.
“I would say I’m the same person, but quarterback-wise I’m playing with a whole new team in a way,” Colandrea said. “I’m just super excited to play them again.”
Ohio is not coming in scared
Nebraska should win this game, but Ohio is not some mystery program wandering into Memorial Stadium just happy to be there. The Bobcats played Power Four opponents last year, battled back at Rutgers1 and closed the season strong.
Holgorsen made sure to point that out this week.
“They’re gritty, they’re tough,” Holgorsen said. “They aren’t going to come in here scared. One of the most impressive things that I’ve seen from a Group of Five team going to a Power Four school was what they did at Rutgers last year. They were down 31-14 at halftime. Most Group of Five teams are going to quit. That group didn’t. Then they beat West Virginia the next week… We know they’re going to come in here and play their tail off.”
That should be enough to get Nebraska’s attention.
Season openers can get weird, if we’re being honest. There’s new personnel, new coordinators, new special teams units, first-game tackling, heat and nerves. All of it can show up on Saturday. Nebraska’s job is to keep the game boring in the right ways.
A veteran roster should look like one
The Huskers have 1,467 combined career games played and 494 starts on the roster. They return production. They added transfers who have already played real snaps elsewhere. That means that the offensive line has experience. The quarterback room does too. The defense has veteran additions at multiple levels.
That obviously does not guarantee anything but it does change the expectations a bit.
Nebraska should not look overwhelmed by Week 1 details. It should tackle well, protect the football and avoid turning special teams into an adventure. It should look like a team with enough older players to handle an opener cleanly.
Rhule said Nebraska is focusing heavily on the things it can control, which feels like the right approach in Week 1 and Week 12.
A new-look defense gets its first public test
Rob Aurich’s first game as Nebraska’s defensive coordinator comes with plenty of curiosity.
The Huskers were good defensively last season, ranking in the top 30 nationally in total defense for the third straight year. Now Aurich takes over with a standard to maintain and a roster that added experience through the portal.
Rhule’s description of the defense this week was less about scheme and more about connection. That will matter Saturday, especially early. First games are when pursuit angles get sloppy, communication breaks down and missed tackles can turn routine plays into problems.
Ohio will have some unknowns but Nebraska should still be able to set the tone physically. If the Blackshirts are connected, as Rhule said, it should show up quickly.
Run the backs and sort it out from there
Nebraska has multiple backs it believes can play and Rhule did not sound interested in narrowing the conversation too much before kickoff.
“Everything we do, we play to win,” he said. “This is a fantastic football program that we are going against; we have three backs that we feel like are all in that upper realm of playing, so we will play all of them.”
That will be worth watching, especially with Colandrea making his first start in a Nebraska uniform. A steady run game would help everyone. It gives the quarterback easier answers, lets the offensive line settle in and keeps Ohio from turning the day into a scramble.
The other part is simple: Nebraska needs to know what it has. Week 1 is not the time to get cute just for the sake of it, but it is a chance to see how the running back rotation looks when the lights come on.
Comes a blacking in my mind
July is a bad time to have to hire a football coach, but so it was at Ohio in 2021. Frank Solich, citing health concerns, stepped down two months ahead of the season opener. The Bobcats promoted offensive coordinator Tim Albin. He was sort of Solich’s Frank Solich, starting as a GA at Nebraska and then spending 16 seasons as an assistant in Athens. Albin did well, going 33-19 and winning a MAC title before making the odd decision
What the numbers say
2 — Nebraska has finished 7-6 in each of the last two seasons, giving the Huskers back-to-back winning seasons for the first time since 2013 and 2014.
10 — Nebraska is one of 10 teams to rank in the top 30 nationally in total defense each of the last three years.
16 — Nebraska added 16 first-year transfers this offseason, including 15 from FBS programs.
69% — According to the Big Ten Network, Nebraska ranks third in the FBS by returning 69 percent of its production from 2025.
105 — The temperature could feel close to triple digits by halftime, so the water-bottle exception is worth remembering if you’ll be in Lincoln.
173 — Frank Solich won 173 games as a college head coach, including 58 at Nebraska and 115 at Ohio.
Odds and ends
>> Gates 1, 6 and 8 will be closed throughout the 2026 season. Gates 18, 19 and 21 will close after kickoff. Gate 11 will be used only as an ADA and service entrance.
>> Nebraska Athletics and the City of Lincoln are encouraging fans to use Waze for traffic updates because of construction and changes around Memorial Stadium.
>> The Big Red Rebuild will not fully begin until after the 2026 season, but some walking paths, parking areas and gate entries may be affected this fall.
>> Nebraska has won 99 of its 136 season openers, including an 86-14-3 mark at home.
>> Ohio coach John Hauser is in his first full season leading the Bobcats after guiding them to a bowl win last year.
So, here we are. It’s officially the first Saturday of Nebraska’s football season. It’s the first chance to see Colandrea in a Nebraska uniform, as well as to see what a veteran roster actually looks like in practice.
It is going to be hot though, so maybe not football weather just yet but that’s OK. Football is still back regardless.
Drink water. Wear sunscreen. See you later.2
So, what happened to Rutgers Thursday night? Anyone want to talk about that in the comments?
As we do each season, we will have our game day chat available for paid subscribers later in the morning. Keep an eye on your inboxes. I will be in the car on the way to Chicago, but the chat will continue on.