Nebraska’s under the radar offseason effectively ends this week with the kickoff of Big Ten Media Days in Chicago.1 It’s only people talking at podiums—and I don’t expect a bunch of big-ticket news items involving Nebraska—but from here you go from podiums to practicing to playing games. We haven’t quite reached the end of our nine-month waiting period, but similar to how most of December feels like “the holidays,” this last month goes quick.
I can’t make the offseason shorter, but one of the goals I have for most football content I do here between January and August is to help fans have better context around what’s ahead. We’ve had some new people sign up2 as football feels closer, so here’s what we’re doing today: This is going to serve as an offseason recap of some of the big picture things I’ve already written about Nebraska football in 2026, but it’s going to be the director’s cut with a few spare ideas that didn’t make it into the original stories.
New readers may see something they missed earlier. Long-time readers get a little something new. And I get to imagine I’m sitting in a director’s chair, holding a megaphone and wearing a cravat.
Action.
The Equation
The premise behind this now-annual series is simple: Figure out what a reasonably good season is for Nebraska in the current season and then try to figure out what it will take to get there. The official currency of this series is points, but, as you can read below, we get into finer details as things go.
The equation for Nebraska football in 2026
How low can Aurich and the Blackshirts go?
NU’s offense is close, can it get there?
I look at 2026 as a 30/20 year for the Huskers, meaning I think they’ll need to average about 30 points on offense and allow about 20 on defense. I get into why and how in The Equation pieces, but one thing I didn’t squeeze into any of them was a chart simply showing you Nebraska’s progression (and regression) through three years of the Matt Rhule era alongside this year’s targets.
Having seen the most basic of visuals using the most basic number, do the 2026 targets seem possible to you? On the one hand, the offense has improved its output very slightly each season. On the other, the defense has done the opposite on a similar scale, which is why the Huskers are throwing a handful of new coaches at the problem on that side of the ball.
The four most important people for Nebraska football in 2026
The four most important people for Nebraska football in 2026 are, in alphabetical order, Rob Aurich, Corey Brown, Roy Manning and Geep Wade. Convince me otherwise.
NU’s points differential has grown a bit each season. Now it just needs to double last year’s Rhule-era high of 4.7 points.
The Schedule
People are tired at this stage of talking about Nebraska’s tough draw. I get it. Last year’s schedule was comparatively easy and the Huskers went 7-5. This year’s is hard and the pressure to improve on seven wins has only increased. Them’s the stakes.
Each summer, I find it useful to break the regular season into thirds, looking at what’s realistic and what’s needed in each “act” of the regular season. Those two things don’t always align. Here are those breakdowns in case you missed them:
Act I: The least-interesting, most-important stretch of the season
Act II: Hoosiers and Ducks and Huskies, oh my!
Act III: The only way outta this is upward
The release of ESPN’s Football Power Index a few weeks ago3 marked the arrival of one of the strength of schedule rankings I trust. The Huskers’ slate came in 21st, fifth toughest in the Big Ten. So what? We already knew it was tough.
More interesting is the range of schedules we see in the 18-team Big Ten compared to its primary nemesis, the 16-team SEC. Both now play nine conference games.
Per FPI, the seven toughest schedules in the country are in the SEC, then there’s Ohio State and then the next seven are SEC teams, too. Georgia has the “easiest” schedule, and it ranks 20th nationally, so the conference spread is from 1 to 20.
The Big Ten’s spread—and it does include two more teams—is from 8 to 62. Penn State has the best road based on this measure, ranking right behind Houston, Kansas and California, and right ahead of Utah and UCF. To put it another way, Matt Campbell is basically bringing his Iowa State team to State College this season, and good news for him, he’s basically got a Big 12 schedule in terms of projected difficulty. It would be the fifth most favorable in Campbell’s old conference. Ohio State, which plays Texas in nonconference play, basically plays the average SEC schedule based on these rankings.
Is this disparity a problem for the Big Ten? It could be if we’re not headed for an expanded playoff with automatic bids in the future. I actually prefer that format. Let’s compare the conference teams against themselves first and then, if we need to have a conference strength debate, we can let the Playoff sort that out. Right now, choosing teams by committee, some level of conference-strength consideration is almost baked into the process and if it’s being argued at that level, it doesn’t favor the Big Ten right now. There’s too big of a gap between the top and bottom.
Is there anything the conference could do about it? Can you make Rutgers, Maryland—heck, Nebraska—better by just wanting it to be?4 No. Maybe the Big Ten could schedule more strategically, which means less in advance, but even that’s complicated by all the brass pigs, oak buckets and big axes floating around this league.
I guess that’s the good news about the Huskers’ schedule. Should they win enough games, their schedule isn’t keeping them out of the playoff.
Also, the conference slate is at least balanced within the Big Ten. In a more perfect world, NU’s 2026 schedule is close to what the league should want all of its teams to have with most of the variation in a strength of schedule rating coming from which teams get five home games that year.
What if NU's schedule isn't as bad as we think?
Nebraska’s 2026 football schedule is tough. You already know that, but just in case you need a reminder: The Huskers will face all three playoff qualifiers from the Big Ten in 2025 and six of the nine conference teams ranked ahead of them in the recently released SP+ ratings
Odds & Ends
A few more offseason pieces that should still have some relevance until the games begin:
The event, returning to the hotel from The Fugitive, runs July 28–30. The Husker contingent doesn’t have their time until Thursday. BTN, of course, will have full coverage during all three days.
Thank you! Glad you’re here.
It was a minor news cycle in Nebraska when FPI hit and included win probabilities for each game. I will just note that if you’re a Counter Read reader, using our house method for interpolating power rankings, you would’ve had a pretty good idea where those probabilities were going to land in March.
Rutgers and Maryland have only ever had sporadic success, but imagine telling Big Ten officials in 2011, still glowing after having added NEBRASKA FOOTBALL to the portfolio, that the Huskers would be 57-73 in conference play after 15 years. This is the same winning percentage Iowa State has over that same span in the Big 12.
As I think about the wayang Nebraska will perform in Chicago a couple things come to mind. First, the cube isn't there because he's too likely to improvise. Second, all good wayangs restore the cosmic order; but real life is more... colorful, than a wayang. Third, and saddest, even stories as foundational as The Odyssey, when actually viewed neutrally and ignoring the hype, aren't that great in the end.