More drives? At these prices?

Previewing Nebraska-Northwestern with three keys to a Husker win in the pivot game of the season.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

The stakes for Nebraska’s game against Northwestern Saturday are as follows based on three potential outcomes.

Option A: Nebraska wins convincingly (10+ points). The story is of the Huskers’ response to what otherwise might go down as “The Entitlement Error” against Minnesota. This is a back-on-track sort of win against a Northwestern team that’s 5-2.

Option B: Nebraska wins close. This might be the most probable outcome. Functionally, it’s no different than Option A but it offers little of the emotional lift. NU would finish October 3-1. There was plenty of talk of 4-0 this month, but 3-1 was probably more reasonable and the Huskers would be in a fitting place entering the final third—“reasonably good” with a chance to prove something more over the final four games.

Option C: Northwestern wins and it doesn’t really matter if it’s close or not. Matt Rhule drops to 8-14 in Big Ten play two-thirds of the way through his third season in Lincoln. Depending upon how the final line shakes out, it might be his fourth loss as a touchdown-plus favorite since the start of 2024 (21 games). All of the sudden, 7-5 seems like a reasonable—maybe even ambitious—record for 2025, which is not how 2025 was supposed to go.

Kind of a lot for 11 a.m. on a Saturday, but for teams still trying to prove something the pivotal game of a season doesn’t come in primetime or one of the premium afternoon slots. It happens at 11 a.m.

“We will show up,” Rhule said Monday after 20 minutes trying to explain how the loss to the Gophers happened.

Nebraska has to show up, or things get pretty uncomfortable in a way that wasn’t part of the plan this season.

Here’s what “showing up” might need to look like.