The four most important people for Nebraska football in 2026

None of them have a recruit or transfer portal rating.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

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.

Or, rather, let me make my case.

Every offseason I like to determine where the Huskers are projected in the Big Ten, compile a rough approximation of talent on hand by position group and see where the gaps are. We can reasonably estimate, via early title odds and power rankings, that NU is somewhere between the eighth- and 10^th-best team in the conference. Does the talent potentially on hand align with that? Which positions are better than that? Which are worse?

This spot check is intended to be quick and not comprehensive. We’re just trying to get a snapshot of the league as a whole. To do this I grabbed the average recruit rating¹ by position in the 2023–26 classes and folded in the transfer ratings for the most recent classes. That’s not capturing every player on a roster, but it captures most of them and realistically a team is probably relying on its 50 or 60 best players from a 105-man roster.

And that’s how I came to the theory that the most important people for Nebraska this season don’t have a recruiting or transfer rating. They’re four of the new assistants Matt Rhule brought in during the winter. You’ll (perhaps) see what I mean.

Here are the average player² ratings by position group for Nebraska in relation to the talent on hand elsewhere in the Big Ten.

At first glance, Nebraska’s preseason projection to be middle of the pack might seem reasonable enough as the raw materials are similarly mid. The Huskers only rank in the top-third of the league at the offensive skill positions, but they don’t rank lower than eighth at any position. It’s a collection of talent that says, “ninth-best sounds about right.”

But if ninth-best is where NU ends 2026, things are going to get tense around here quickly. Yes, even after this offseason of doom and/or indifference because another 7-6 year would only support the validity of those feeling. So, the key question becomes how the Huskers outperform what might be a completely reasonable consensus?

That is, I hope, the value in doing this by position. Which groups should lead the way? Which have to perform beyond expectation?

Let’s start with the good. By my method of talent approximation, the Huskers have the sixth-best receiver corps (including tight ends) in the conference. It might not win you games on its own, but you can work with that. The running backs also come in sixth, and the interesting thing there is I compiled only recruiting ratings first, leaving out the transfers. Based on talent acquired the traditional way NU ranked ninth in the league, but when you added the transfers all the other teams took at running back Nebraska moved up to sixth. Not saying this proves Rhule was right not to take a transfer running back, but interesting.

The placement of NU’s quarterbacks surprised me a bit, but TJ Lateef and Daniel Kaelin were both 4-star prospects and Anthony Colandrea, the presumed starter, was the Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year in 2025. QB is an interesting position because it’s possible—or at least every team hopes—only the talent at the top matters. Put it this way, if Colandrea or either of the other two is the fourth-best quarterback in the Big Ten come December, the Huskers almost certainly had a pretty good season.

The defensive line and linebackers are almost right where they should be given the preseason projections, though I do think the linebackers have the potential to be better.

It’s the lines that give me pause. Eighth-best on offense and defense is in line with where the Huskers are projected overall, but remember the goal is to be better than projected.³ How far can you really go if you’re simply average in the trenches?

Nebraska made a lot of coaching changes this offseason to avoid finding the answer to that question. Can Wade make this offensive line, where NU devoted a ton of transfer money, something more than what it looks like on paper? The good news is it already looks better on paper than it could have. With the 2026 transfers in the mix, Nebraska ranked eighth in the Big Ten on the offensive line. That was up from 10^th based just on the high school talent recruited over the past four cycles.

On the defensive line—where Brown will coach the interior, Manning the edges—the high school talent ranked 11^th, the lowest of any position group. After portal, where NU added two power-conference veterans, it climbed to eighth, which should give you an idea of some of the key questions facing Aurich, the architect of the 2026 defense, this fall.

That’s a lot riding on four new assistant coaches. You could argue the three new position coaches might have the least⁴ to work with and thus need to do the most with it. Aurich’s overall hand in the defense—and the hiring of these assistants—plays the biggest role on that side of the ball.

I’m intrigued by some of the players Nebraska added to the roster, same as anyone else. But if median-ish talent is what the Huskers are working with in 75% of the games they’ll play this fall, more than median-ish results could come down to a few highly paid, hand selected people coaxing something more out of those groups.

Welcome to Lincoln, in alphabetical order, Aurich, Brown, Manning and Wade.

Odds & Ends

• Nebraska softball made winning the Big Ten Tournament look easy with a 7-2 win over UCLA Saturday. The Huskers earned the fourth overall seed in the NCAA Tournament and will host this week’s Regional and, should they advance, next week’s Super Regional. Nebraska opens tournament play Friday against South Dakota State at 5:30 p.m. CT (ESPN+). Louisville and Grand Canyon are the other two teams in Lincoln.

• Baseball got a momentum-reversing sweep of Iowa over the weekend after losing three at Ohio State the previous weekend. By Warren Nolan’s real-time RPI, the three wins pushed the Huskers up three spots to No. 15 with results not yet final across the country. That’s back on the cusp of being a Regional host. NU faces Creighton in Omaha Tuesday with a three-game swing at Minnesota to follow to close out the regular season.

1. From 247 Sports.

2. Just to reiterate, that’s the last four recruiting classes plus the most recent transfer class.

3. For the first time in what would feel like forever.

4. To be clear, this is a literal definition using the chosen method. Do I think the difference between the sixth-best receivers and the eighth-best defensive linemen in the conference is vast? I do not. But I still like to use the offseason to better understand the biggest bets Nebraska is making. Hopefully this newsletter at least adds to that discussion.