Shall we play a game?

You get 40 confidence points to assign across Nebraska's 8 position groups. Have fun.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Nebraska is through two weeks of fall camp with two more to go before game week. Even though this has been the case all offseason, it’s still jarring to watch previously talkative Matt Rhule keep things squarely on cliché highway, hands at 10 and 2.¹ Defensive coordinator Rob Aurich is still new enough that he can get away with saying most anything, and offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen has still been doing this long enough—and is still Holgo enough—that he can keep saying whatever’s on his mind.

It’s an interesting mix. I wondered all summer when this strange offseason would flip and feel more typical. Still not there yet following the Huskers’ first big scrimmage of August.

So, to pass the time that typically moves more quickly, let’s play a level-setting game for 2026 Nebraska football. You’ve got 40 confidence points to assign to the following eight position groups: quarterback, running back, offensive line, wide receivers and tight ends, defensive line, linebackers, secondary and special teams. If you feel the same level of confidence in every group, that’s a 5 across the board.² That’s your starting point.

Here’s where I landed, in descending order, after tinkering with this all weekend.

LB – 7

In its base 4-2-5 alignment, there are only two of these guys on the field at a time. Maybe that’s part of why I have this group at the top. It’s also because I’ve purchased all the Owen Chambliss stock I can and I’ve held on to all the Vincent Shavers Jr. stock I purchased after his freshman season. Add to that Oregon State transfer Dexter Foster, a healthy Dawson Merritt and a wildcard like walk-on Derek Wacker and you have a nice blend of production plus upside. I also believe Rob Dvoracek is one of the more underappreciated assistants on the staff, and Aurich, a former college linebacker, seems to be part of the fan club, too. I’ll be shocked if Nebraska doesn’t get great linebacker play this season.

WR/TE – 6

The Huskers return their top two receivers in Nyziah Hunter and Jacory Barney Jr., and the top three seems mostly set with the addition of UCLA transfer Kwazi Gilmer, the Bruins’ leading pass catcher in 2026. Sophomore Quinn Clark is one of buzziest players of the offseason, and I still have high expectations for sophomore Cortez Mills Jr. It might have put this group a point higher if Holgorsen didn’t say the tight ends didn’t have a very good summer, but beyond Luke Lindenmeyer there’s not a lot that’s proven, so I also considered bumping this group down. A breakout from freshman Luke Sorensen would be a big deal, and Holgorsen does still love him some Janiran Bonner, a wide receiver on the roster who can play big or small.

QB – 6

UNLV transfer Anthony Colandrea comes with some risk, but I’m confident Nebraska will get more upside than downside with last year’s Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year. Given the attention on the program, it takes extreme confidence to succeed at Nebraska at any position. Double that for quarterback. It’s what makes Colandrea’s swashbuckling style so intriguing. And if that swashbuckling style—via bumps, bruises or a risk reassessment—forces the Huskers to turn to the bench³ for a game or two, NU has two QBs, TJ Lateef and Daniel Kaelin, who have at least started games before.

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Interlude

The above are the three groups I assigned a number greater than 5. This is all relative to the rest of the team, but I think an important question still emerges: Can you win, say, 8 games playing a Big Ten schedule with strong linebackers, receivers and a quarterback? Anything’s possible, but it feels volatile.

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DBs – 5

I might have this group a notch too low. Nebraska got a “quarterback” for this group with safety Dwayne McDougle III, who played for Aurich at Idaho and San Diego State. Cornerback Andrew Marshall also has familiarity with the new DC. Then you’ve got a fleet of high-upside options like Jamir Conn, Rex Guthrie, Jeremiah Charles and Donovan Jones. Get a big breakout from one of those, plus the expected steady play from McDougle and Marshall and I’ll regret not putting this group higher.

ST – 5

Mike Ekeler set a pretty high bar last year, and the question is if Brett Maher can maintain it despite having a completely different personality type. But Maher has some nice pieces here. Kicker Kyle Cunnan was top 30 nationally with an 84.7% make rate on field goals. Jacory Barney Jr. was an all-conference punt returner. For all of the excitement⁴ around punter Archie Wilson, Nebraska ranked 127^th at 39.43 yards per punt, though maybe the point of finding this type of punter was ranking 13^th nationally by allowing 3.8 yards per punt return, an improvement of 8.5 yards over 2024. It would be nice to have Kenneth Williams back returning kicks, but instead Nebraska will face him, and Michigan State, in the conference opener. Overall, I’m not expecting a serious dropoff from this unit, but there’s not a ton of room to go up.

OL – 4

On the one hand, I think this is the best this group has looked on paper since maybe the Bo Pelini era. On the other hand, it’s more “on paper” than it’s been talked about this offseason. NU is banking on a new position coach to pull together a strong unit from center Justin Evans and likely, four transfers with P4 starting experience. That includes left tackle Elijah Pritchett, who arrived from Alabama last year and isn’t completely “new,” guards Brendan Black (Iowa State) and Paul Mubenga (LSU) and potential⁵ right tackle Tree Babalade (South Carolina). Collectively, it’s a group that’s played a lot of high-level football. It’s also a group that doesn’t have an all-conference award despite playing a lot of high-level football. I’d make Evans the favorite to earn such an honor in 2026, but if Nebraska wants to get where it’s going it probably needs two All-Big Ten caliber lineman. If new position coaches Geep Wade and Lonnie Teasley can tease that out of this room, things will have gone about as well as they can in their first years on campus.

RB – 4

It’s the most talked about position battle of the summer. So much so that Rhule tried to get out ahead of questions about the running backs on Saturday by just offering a fairly general statement on the group. (He needs to watch the tape.) Between Mekhi Nelson, Isaiah Mozee and freshman Jamal Rule, I think Nebraska has enough in the backfield to be fine. It’s trying to replicate, however, a season that earned Emmett Johnson Big Ten Running Back of the Year. Is it fair to expect this group to collectively have a season like Johnson did individually? Maybe, but I can’t go higher than “maybe.”

DL – 3

It would be a mild surprise if this group wasn’t the lowest in any such rankings, which makes me concerned I’m being too conventional to be interesting but here we are. Nebraska is pinning a lot on a coordinator change plus two new position coaches to produce a unit that actually troubles Big Ten opponents. There’s still plenty of upside with a lot of players up front. Riley Van Poppel, Kade Pietrzak, Williams Nwaneri and Pitt transfer Jashear Whittington would be at the top of my list. It’s also the unit where Nebraska has a converted wide receiver (Jeremiah Jones) and tight end (Mac Markway).

There’s my 40 points assigned. Feel free to share yours below.

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Coda⁶

I’m trying to stay out of the uniform game for reasons more completely explained here, but Nebraska revealed its blackout uniforms for the Washington game on Oct. 31. They’re not for me, which is fine, but they did help me arrive at a unifying theory of why the Husker alternates are always so inconsistent. There have been good ones, but they’re not the majority.

Here’s part of what Rhule said about them Saturday, when they were revealed: “I think the process here is just to do one alternate uniform a year, being black and having a blackout, and then having our iconic uniforms—red and white, white and red—every other game.”

I think this is actually the problem. There are still some programs that are basically alternate-free. Auburn, USC, Texas and Alabama come immediately to mind. Many others are all the way on the other end of the spectrum. But Nebraska is in this middle ground, willing to leave that stuff to others 95% of the time.

And this is why the other 5% of the time, fans often get everything, everywhere, all at once. That’s how I’d describe the new black uniform. It has Nebraska across the chest for, I believe, the first time since the 1974 Cotton Bowl (and maybe only the second time ever). All of the red accents on the jersey are metallic, as is the Huskers script⁷ on the side of helmet. There’s a red N on the back of the jersey, but also a perforated N, cleverly referencing the drone shows that have become a fixture of home night games. The latter looks cool, but why the same logo twice? Why is there almost never any editing⁸ with Nebraska’s alternates?*

It’s too much. Nebraska spends most of its time not being an alternate program. But when it does go there, it’s like a rumspringa for every design idea that has ever existed and good design is more often about restraint.

So is good writing, which clearly, I’m still working on by adding this coda.

But that’s why I think most people never like whatever is unveiled.

1. I reviewed the tape of Rhule’s 13 minute 30 second Saturday press conference, and he said some version of “I’ll have to watch the tape” five times. That’s once every 162 seconds, but only if you don’t remove the time reporters were asking questions. No real complaint here. It fits the entire tone of this offseason. But since we’re trapped on cliché highway, it is night and day different for the head coach.

2. And no fun.

3. As has been the case for basically the past decade in Lincoln.

4. I bought my tickets to the Audly Ausome Australian Kickabout the minute they were released, and I’ll see the sequel the day it comes out.

5. Don’t count out Gunnar Gottula here.

6. This has nothing to with the above. You can eject if you don’t want a short bit about uniforms.

7. I know I’m in the minority here, but I’ve never liked this logo and once made a university official mad enough to email about it when I wrote as much.

8. Last year’s blackout uniforms being a notable and handsome exception. It was just the uniform, but black and white.