Nebraska Cornhuskers 2026 Season Preview

Rhule's Underrated Ledger

The bowl blowout against Utah aside, the deeper numbers say Nebraska was better than 7-6 suggests. Against league opponents, Nebraska actually won at a 44.4% clip despite a yardage margin that projects to a 58.2% win rate, the kind of gap that points toward more Big Ten wins in year four under Matt Rhule. The counterweight is a 4-2 mark in one-score games, a trend that rarely repeats, so the record and the process should converge in 2026 rather than the record climbing on its own.

Colandrea Inherits a Leaky Pocket

Anthony Colandrea arrives from UNLV carrying 3459 passing yards and 23 touchdowns against 9 interceptions, a real upgrade in ball security and volume for a Nebraska passing game that ranked 68th in yards per game. But he's stepping behind a line that allowed 33 sacks (114th nationally), the exact problem that will determine whether his efficiency translates or gets erased before he can throw. The offense already found success moving the chains, 27th in third down rate and offensive success rate, so if Colandrea gets time the ceiling is real; if the protection issues from 2025 carry over, none of that matters.

Nebraska is swapping Dylan Raiola's 2,000 yards and 18 touchdowns for Anthony Colandrea's arrival from UNLV, where he threw for 3,459 yards and 23 scores last season. That production jump matters for an offense that ranked 134th in explosiveness, since Colandrea's track record of pushing the ball downfield is exactly the missing piece behind a line that allowed 33 sacks. TJ Lateef, who managed 904 yards and 5 touchdowns in relief work, and Daniel Kaelin give Rhule depth, but this offense is built around what Colandrea can add vertically that last year's group could not.

Emmett Johnson's 1,451 yards and 12 touchdowns walk out the door, and nobody left on the roster sniffed that kind of workload in 2025. Mekhi Nelson (147 yards, 2 TD) and Kwinten Ives (133 yards, 2 TD) split modest change-of-pace snaps last fall and now have to scale up fast, with Penn State transfer Tikey Hayes adding another body to the room. The passing-down piece is Isaiah Mozee, whose 14 catches for 155 yards give this backfield its only proven receiving threat as Nebraska tries to keep last year's 148 rushing yards per game from sliding further.

Nebraska loses Dane Key's 452 yards but keeps its top two producers in Nyziah Hunter (617 yards, 5 TD) and Jacory Barney Jr. (45 catches, 5 TD), then adds UCLA transfer Kwazi Gilmer, who caught 50 passes for 535 yards last season. That gives Rhule three proven pass-catchers rather than one, a real answer for an offense that ranked just 134th in explosiveness a year ago. The high school trio of Nalin Scott, Larry Miles and Maurice Purify II arrives with no stats yet, but the immediate burden falls on Hunter, Barney and Gilmer to turn Nebraska's efficient, 27th-ranked success rate into the big plays this group has been missing.

Luke Lindenmeyer already produced 29 catches for 312 yards, and with Heinrich Haarberg gone, he inherits the room outright rather than splitting targets. Carter Nelson returns with just 2 catches on the season but plenty of runway to expand his role, while Cayden Echternach, Eric Ingwerson and Danny King add depth without a stat line yet to their names. The offense's real problem isn't personnel here, it's explosiveness, ranked 134th nationally, so this group needs Lindenmeyer to turn short catches into the chunk plays this attack has been missing.

Nebraska allowed 33 sacks last season, a number that says plenty about why Matt Rhule went shopping up front rather than trusting internal continuity. Eight linemen are out the door, including senior Teddy Prochazka and Rocco Spindler, and the fixes came largely via the portal, with Brendan Black arriving from Iowa State, Tree Babalade transferring in from South Carolina, and four-star tackle Claude Mpouma joining from the high school ranks to reset the tackle spots. With no clear returning starters to lean on among names like Justin Evans and Gunnar Gottula, this group's identity gets built fresh in 2026, and cutting down on pressure allowed will matter more than any rushing or scoring number on the card.

Nebraska brings back its entire edge rotation, but Williams Nwaneri, Cameron Lenhardt, Kade Pietrzak and Anthony Jones Jr. combined for just 8 sacks a year ago on a line that finished 117th stopping the run at the point of attack. None of the three incoming linemen, including 4-star Dylan Berymon, arrives with the profile of an immediate difference-maker up front, so the answer to Nebraska's run-defense problem has to come from the same faces that couldn't fix it in 2025. The pass defense already ranks 3rd nationally in yards allowed per game, which only sharpens the question of why a defensive front with this much returning experience still can't get consistent penetration.

Vincent Shavers Jr. is the one proven piece left in the middle after Nebraska's run defense bled 177 yards a game (104th) and the position lost Javin Wright's 86 tackles among seven departures. Owen Chambliss arrives from San Diego State off a 90-tackle, 8.5-TFL season and projects as an immediate front-line replacement, with Dexter Foster's 52 tackles from Oregon State adding another experienced body behind him. That imported production matters more than raw need, because a defense already thin on disruption at 100th in havoc rate and 117th in run-stuff rate cannot afford another year of learning on the job at linebacker.

Nebraska's secondary was elite against the pass a year ago, 3rd nationally in passing yards allowed, and the group returns largely intact with Rex Guthrie (63 tackles), Donovan Jones (59 tackles) and Andrew Marshall (4 TFL) all back. The bigger question is whether this unit can help fix a run defense that ranked 104th in rushing yards allowed, and newcomers Danny Odem III and Victor Evans III, who posted 41 tackles at Florida International, add depth without solving that front-seven problem by themselves. Expect the pass defense to stay a strength while the 24.6 points allowed per game only improves if the rush numbers move.

Kyle Cunanan made 16 of 19 field goals with a long of 52 last season, and that accuracy makes Nebraska's kicking competition less urgent than the two new arrivals suggest. Michael Sarikizis arrives from ProKick Australia and John Hohl returns without game stats, but Cunanan's track record gives Matt Rhule an established option rather than an open battle. The bigger swing factor is the flip at long snapper, where Jack Wills steps in for the departed Kevin Gallic and Aidan Flege, pairing with punter Archie Wilson, who averaged 39.4 yards on 37 attempts.

New Arm, New Backfield Hole

Nebraska didn't just swap quarterbacks, it swapped its entire identity on offense. Dylan Raiola and Emmett Johnson, who combined to account for 2000 passing yards and 1451 rushing yards a season ago, are both gone, and Anthony Colandrea arrives from UNLV with a much bigger arm and a much messier track record, 3459 yards and 23 touchdowns against 9 interceptions. The bigger swing may be defensive, where Owen Chambliss (90 tackles, 4 sacks at San Diego State) has to replace the disruption Javin Wright and Keona Davis provided up front, a 17-in, 19-out roster turned over enough that the answer arrives from the portal, not the returning room.

Anthony Colandrea

Nebraska handed its offense to Anthony Colandrea, who threw for 3459 yards and 23 touchdowns at UNLV, while TJ Lateef, who threw for 904 yards last season, waits in reserve. Colandrea now has to replace Emmett Johnson's 1451 rushing yards on the ground almost entirely through the air, leaning on Nyziah Hunter and Jacory Barney Jr. as his top targets, which makes his adjustment to Big Ten defenses the swing factor for the whole season.

Nebraska Bettors Beware

Matt Rhule's fourth year comes with a warning label for anyone betting the number: Nebraska covered just 33% of its spreads overall, and conference road games were where the market punished believers most, a 2-6-1 mark against the number in Big Ten play. Straight up 7-6 sounds like a program trending up, but the 1-3-1 record against the spread the week after a loss shows a team that bookmakers consistently overrated coming off adversity. The one bright spot was as a home favorite, covering 67% of the time, suggesting Rhule's group is live at home when expected to win, but everywhere else the number has been a trap.