Pick your own perspective
The winless streak against ranked opponents remains long and embarrassing, but there was more to Nebraska-Michigan than that.
The impossible to miss context from Nebraska’s 30-27 loss to No. 21 Michigan is the context that has the least bearing on what happens from here—with the loss, the Huskers dropped their 28th consecutive game against a ranked opponent. It’s a damning, astounding fact, which is why every sports pundit, me included, mentioned it in the aftermath.
You can’t help but marvel at how NU hasn’t beaten a top-25 team since sneaking past Oregon in 2016 thanks to Mark Helfrich’s 2-point aggressiveness biting him in the end. You have to acknowledge that only Rutgers has a longer drought. You can wonder—as I did—what the Huskers’ mark against ranked teams was prior to that Oregon game, so you go back to 2003, the start of Team Ranking’s archive, and see NU was 10-17 before that 2016 victory over the Ducks. Not horrible, but certainly not good. You might then combine “not good” with winless since then and realize that, at 11-45 against ranked teams since 2003, Nebraska has the same record as Washington State and Oregon State. Y’know, the two Pac-12 teams the TV-powered vultures wouldn’t even touch.
Since you’re already waist deep and Nebraska’s on a bye week, you might keep digging and remember that the Michigan loss dropped Matt Rhule to 2-23 as an FBS head coach against top-25 teams. He went 0-11 at Baylor and is now 0-7 at Nebraska. Rhule’s two ranked wins were over No. 21 East Carolina in 2014 and No. 20 Navy in 2016, meaning he’s never beaten a ranked, power-conference opponent. In a moment of gallows humor, you might smirk here and think, “Well, at least program and coach are in this fight together.”
And, finally, you realize that losses from 2003 and 2013 and 2023, while painting an annoyingly accurate picture of a program’s inability to earn its own relevance, don’t really tell us anything about what might happen over the eight remaining games in 2025. Having just crawled through the 0-and-28 muck, this is what you decide to do
It’s a pick your own perspective week with the Huskers off until Oct. 4., so here are some forward-looking perspectives from the loss to the Wolverines.
Perspective 1: This game showed that NU’s lines aren’t close to top-25 caliber, much less that of a fringe playoff contender.
I mean, the evidence was pretty brutal for the Husker o-line. Quarterback Dylan Raiola took a career-high seven sacks and was probably pressured on at least half his dropbacks. For most of the game, it looked like Nebraska just didn’t have the guys to handle Michigan defenders like Derrick Moore and Jaishawn Barham. Starting left tackle Gunnar Gottula took a seat1 after two drives in favor of the previously out-of-favor Elijah Pritchett, a player with some lofty draft projections upon arrival in Lincoln who was brought in to be the sort of guy who handles other NFL guys. Things didn’t improve drastically, and it wasn’t going any better over on the right edge either.
In the run game, Nebraska averaged under 4 yards per carry when you remove the sacks.
This might just be NU’s reality in 2025 up front. Like most others, I put some stock in the Rhule of Year 32 entering the year, but if there was anything that gave me pause with that it was that when I looked at the roster, particularly the lines, I had a persistent feeling NU might be better set up for a serious push in 2026. Michigan made the Husker o-line look like “maybe a year away” was even ambitious if being a top-25 fixture and playoff contender is the standard. The coaches will have two weeks to scheme some things to try to account for what we saw Saturday, but the point will be NU is effectively working around its line, not through it and there probably wasn’t a bigger takeaway for me from the game.
Things were a bit better on the defensive line. Take away Michigan’s three long touchdown runs—I know, I know—and credit the Wolverines back the one sack they allowed, and Nebraska held Michigan to 126 yards on 29 carries (4.3), a decent day against a powerful rushing attack. The Huskers’ five tackles for loss, including a sack, were encouraging after this defense recorded just two in the opening win over Cincinnati.
The d-line also gets graded on a slight curve because it was reasonable to expect some growing pains given what NU had to replace. It’s a young group, and that inexperience makes me think things can continue to get better up front as the season progresses.
Overall, however, the message from the Michigan game was mostly, “oh, that’s how it’s supposed to look” on the lines. It looks like a limiter, for now, against the best teams on Nebraska’s schedule.
Perspective 2: This was Raiola’s best game against a team that mattered.
As I watched, listened to and read the local fallout from the loss, I was somewhat surprised by how mixed the response was to the game played by Nebraska’s quarterback. Given the seven sacks and almost endless pressure, I thought it was one of his best games.
Officially, Raiola threw for 308 yards (30-41, 73.2%) with three touchdowns and an interception. His QBR was 64.6, which is good-not-great. But what are the other games against an opponent like this in contention?
Colorado a year ago? The Buffs finished ranked, though weren’t in Week 2, and Raiola threw for 185 yards (23-30, 76.7%) with a touchdown and a 77.1 QBR. Against Illinois in 2023, he was sacked six times3 while throwing for 297 (24-35, 68.6%) with three touchdowns and an interception with a 59.0 QBR. Ohio State is the other one in the running where Raiola was 21-of-32 (65.6%) with no touchdowns and a game-sealing pick, while being sacked twice, for a 76.2 QBR.
The raw numbers from the Colorado or Ohio State games don’t blow you away, though his QBR was good. The closest comparison to me is probably the Illinois game, which Nebraska controlled for a half before losing in overtime. If you accept this premise, even temporarily, that would mean a) two of Raiola’s best games were one-score losses against ranked teams, and b) two of Raiola’s best games came when he was sacked six and seven times. Do with that what you will.
Even if you remove the 52-yard Hail Mary touchdown at the end of the first half, Raiola still would’ve finished with a solid 6.4 yards per attempt against a defense that felt like it could get to him any time it wanted to. Yeah, the interception, Raiola’s first on the season, was a bad read and decision.
Still, I saw more supporting evidence for future wins than losses with what I saw from Raiola against the Wolverines.
Perspective 3: Nebraska played almost exactly to the most objective expectation.
Michigan spent most of last week as about a 2.5-point favorite, though the line dropped to -1.5 shortly before kickoff. In that zoomed-out view, the game went basically “how it should’ve gone,” but the Huskers certainly took the long way to get there.
I didn’t have a problem with Rhule’s decision to go for the touchdown inside Michigan’s 10-yard line at the time. He cited “the analytics,” and I’m always here for that, but I also believe in the pressure any lead can mean in a game like this, so I could see kicking the field goal there, too. Practically speaking, it didn’t cost Nebraska much outside of opportunity lost as the Blackshirts forced a three-and-out and got the ball back to the offense on its side of the field…
…which resulted in a missed a field goal, compounding the opportunity lost feelings from the first drive. The Wolverines built a 10-0 lead from there, Nebraska forced a turnover—textbook definition—to get on the board and then kept clawing to tie it up at 17 with the miracle pass right before the half. If you want to conservatively give NU a -6 in terms of points left on the table for its first two drives (more aggressively, -10), they got 7 back on a low-probability play, only possible because Michigan, without its head coach, didn’t burn a timeout. I viewed the first half as mostly a wash when it came to errors of decision-making, and the Huskers had momentum going into the half.
But the Wolverines had what was actually happening on the field, which was physical domination in a few key areas. They owned the third quarter, building a 10-point lead, and Nebraska battled back again. On the Michigan drive that would prove the difference, the Blackshirts had three chances to get off the field and didn’t make the tackles to do it.
If Nebraska doesn’t put together a late touchdown drive, it’s a 10-point Michigan win instead of 30-27, but three points actually feels closer to how the game went. By collegefootballdata.com’s postgame win probability numbers, the Wolverines had a 64% win probability, which has typically meant about a 3-to-4 point win over the past 20-plus seasons.
Anyone’s particular frustration with a loss isn’t to be minimized or dismissed, but in terms of what happens next, Nebraska played Michigan, it was expected to lose by about 3, it did lose by about 3 and that made sense based on what both teams did in the game. Playing to expectation is still something, and I wasn’t surprised Sunday when ESPN’s FPI, a model meant to be predictive, only knocked the Huskers down four spots for the loss while SP+ actually moved NU up one.
That doesn’t make 0-for-28 against ranked teams feel or look any better, but the Michigan loss shouldn’t seriously damage Nebraska’s chance to “win the next one.” 4That’s not looking for moral victories, just how I actually look at it.
But it’s your off week, too. Pick your own perspective.
Gottula wasn’t done for the day. He returned.
That being, that Rhule-led teams always take a jump in Year 3.
Is this just a Week 4/conference opener thing?
Which is likely a couple of weeks away, maybe not until USC visits in November. That’s the context for the context—a team gets maybe three of these opportunities a year, even in a major conference, each year.