The path to a playoff team
And how long it might be for Nebraska in 2026.
Nebraska holds its football practices in the afternoon now. This is a departure from the first three seasons of the Matt Rhule era and breaks a trend that started under Scott Frost. Rhule said the Huskers were “chasing sleep,” and he probably mentions the value of sleep more than any football coach I remember.
In what was definitely a postscript to the “chasing sleep” reasoning, Rhule also mentioned NU had evaluated when the teams to make the playoff practiced and found it to be about half morning, half afternoon. This makes sense. Of course, teams aren’t making the playoff based on when they practiced, but you never know until you bother to look, right?
The Huskers seem to be looking all the time. Just off the top of my head, Rhule has mentioned evaluating playoff teams in reference to travel, practice time and a handful of statistical categories over the past two seasons. It’s a simple approach, but a completely reasonable one. If the playoff is where NU wants to be, why not look at what playoff1 teams have done?
That’s what we’ll be doing over a series of offseason newsletters starting today. How far away is Nebraska?
