The Unknowables 25: What can Dana do for Dylan?
It might not be that "unknowable" based on Nebraska OC Dana Holgorsen's history.
Dylan Raiola’s quiet offseason might come to a sort of official end this week in Las Vegas. He’s one of three Huskers representing Nebraska at Big Ten Media Days, and as the highest-profile player on team generally viewed as ascendant—even by opposing coaches—Raiola is sure to draw plenty of interest. Maybe more attention than he’s received for most of the offseason.
Nothing sells like the future in college football, and you could make a convincing case that expectations, at least nationally, were higher for Raiola as a 5-star true freshman who had yet to start a game than they are after he started 13 for a Big Ten team that produced its first bowl season in seven years because that season was, well, freshman-y. Last week, The Athletic published its ranking of all 136 projected FBS starters, a well-reported, thoroughly researched list that goes beyond your typical summer fodder. Raiola came in at No. 40, a fair ranking in my mind, but one that also helped illustrate the point.
When it comes to buzz, it can be better to be a highly-touted-but-relative unknown. Raiola came in behind four first-time, full-time (presumably) starters—Oregon’s Dante Moore, Ohio State’s Julian Sayin, Washington’s Demond Williams Jr. and Mississippi’s Austin Simmons.
None of this strikes me as detrimental for Raiola or Nebraska entering a pivotal third season under Matt Rhule. Gliding along just off the radar is perhaps preferable, and a place I don’t think Raiola will be again in his college career.
Nationally, people want to see Raiola make a Year 2 jump. Locally, Husker fans need it for Nebraska to reach its potential.
But what sort of jump are we talking about, and how realistic is it?
It seems rational to believe that a player improves with experience, particularly at quarterback where the mental load is likely heavier than whatever they’re asked to put up in the weight room. If there’s big-sample evidence1 for this sort of progression based on experience alone, I haven’t found it yet. As is often the case in football, there are too many factors to simply assume a second-year starter will be better than a first-year starter, etc., etc. Receivers, coaches, schedule, randomness, all that stuff could matter as much as experience.
So, when considering what Raiola’s 2025 could look like, I tend to place more bets on “The Field” than “Experience” in this factors horse race.
To set a baseline, Raiola’s 62.5 QBR—ESPN’s all-in-one quarterback metric—ranked 59th nationally and 10th in the Big Ten. He was blistering out of the gates, posting an 81.6 QBR against UTEP, 77.1 against Colorado and 91.8 against Northern Iowa. His season-low, 7.0, came on a windy win over Rutgers to start October and he had another rough outing in a November loss to UCLA (11.9), Dana Holgorsen’s first game as Nebraska’s offensive coordinator. After another tough one a week later at USC (47.0), Raiola finished strong with Holgorsen calling plays, posting an 84.4 QBR against Wisconsin, 72.0 against Iowa and 75.0 against Boston College.
My working theory on Nebraska’s 2025 offense is it’s a full season of Holgorsen, with an assist from an improved group of receivers, that offer the biggest potential boost to Raiola. The latter is tough to assess in July, be we definitely can look back at Holgorsen’s history with quarterbacks as an offensive coordinator and head coach.
It’s probably easier just to show you, so here’s the history starting with Holgorsen’s first year as the lone offensive coordinator at Texas Tech in 2007.
Some thoughts…
Intentionally or otherwise, Holgorsen certainly stepped into some good QB situations early in his career. Graham Harrell would become a Heisman finalist at Texas Tech, Case Keenum is entering his 14th season in the NFL after going undrafted and Geno Smith, a second-round pick in 2013, is entering his 13th season. Holgorsen also had Brandon Weeden as a first-year starter in Holgorsen’s lone season at Oklahoma State (2010), and Weeden was first-team All-Big 12. Not to draw too direct of a comparison to Raiola—those other guys did go on to accomplish quite a bit—but I would say stepping into a new role where the QB is the highest-rated recruit of the rankings era, and good enough to be a true freshman starter, qualifies as another “good QB situation.”
The charts get more interesting after Smith because Holgorsen isn’t stepping into an existing QB situation.2 His three multi-year starters at West Virginia may have started comparatively low in QBR in their first seasons as starters, but they all made gains by Year 2, posing top-35-or-better QBRs.
Former Houston quarterback Clayton Tune is the only multi-year starter under Holgorsen to show a second-year dip in QBR. That year was 2020*, which always come with an asterisk per the Counter Read stylebook because it was Bizarro World football. Tune went from a 62.2 QBR to a 61.7 before returning to the Normal World and posting a 71.5 in 2021 and 74.7 in 2022.
Holgorsen’s last starter at Houston, Donovan Smith, had a 62.9 QBR in 2023, above average with a first-year starter, but this was also the 4-8 season that got Holgorsen fired. Smith split time last year for the Cougars, now under the direction of Willie Fritz, posting a 42.7 QBR over seven games.
As the charts show, the trend for a quarterback in a Holgorsen-led offense has been decisively upward. More specifically, no multi-year starter in this group posted a QBR lower than 33rd nationally after his first season. Reaching that territory would mean a jump of nearly 30 spots for Raiola. What’s a top-35-ish QBR mean on the field? Tread lightly with this as there’s only one year of data to go on, but all 12 teams to make the Playoff in 2024 had their starter ranked in the top 35.
Point is, when it comes to considering Raiola as Nebraska’s starter for 2025, I tend to think more about his playcaller than the lessons he may have learned as a freshman dropped into the feeding frenzy that is major college football. Not to discount the latter. It’s just harder to objectively assess.
Nobody’s a savior until you see it with your own eyes, but now seven months into the offseason, having tried to explore things from every angle I can think of, I’m not sure Nebraska has made a bigger upgrade this offseason than what it could get from a full season under an offensive coordinator with an impressive track record.
Maybe Raiola will be asked about working with Holgorsen this week in Vegas. If he is, I’m guessing he’ll be savvy enough to say something like, “Not much has changed.”
But if this works, things could look a lot different. In a decisively upward way.
Anecdotally, in our Lincoln-centric universe, the two most recent comparisons offer an interesting idea to consider. Did production match whatever trend line you projected for either Taylor Martinez or Adrian Martinez after their debut seasons as freshmen starters at Nebraska? A discussion for another time.
Of note, Holgorsen was at Texas Tech as an assistant long before Harrell arrived, so he didn’t “inherit” him, but you have to start the list somewhere and I chose 2007.