Postmortem in Lincoln: Six Thoughts on the Huskers' 2025 Season

A season that once held so much promise ended with a thud last Wednesday, a familiar, acrimonious end note to a once-promising year.

This time it’s a bit harder to swallow. Because there was more hope than usual this season. The Huskers fancied themselves dark horse playoff contenders that could rap on the doorstep of 10 wins. Instead, they limped to another 7-6 record with blowout losses in their last three tries while failing to net any big wins.

This is not — with a highly compensated 5-star quarterback, a top-10 offensive mind, and an 8-million-dollar coach — what Nebraska paid for.

The Huskers made tangible progress in Rhule’s first year of 2023, the defense especially, and should’ve made a bowl. Last year, the Huskers were buoyed by the Wisconsin win and the promise of their first bowl game since 2016.

This year, there is no silver lining. Here are my thoughts after another disappointing year.

A Season That Went to Script

What was so strange about the 2025 season was how predictable it was, at least until November.

Before the year, many publications predicted an 8-4 season with losses to Michigan, USC, Penn State, and a trap game at Minnesota. It all went to script until the Iowa blowout at home and the subsequent routing in Las Vegas.

What’s more, preseason concerns about position groups came to pass. Fans fussed over a rebuilt defensive line that would be without Ty Robinson and Nash Hutmacher and, true to form, the run defense cratered. The running back room looked bare if you glanced past Emmett Johnson. That too was confirmed, with Johnson producing 76% of the total rushing yards in 2025, a staggering share.

But one thing that wasn’t predicted was the offensive line’s struggles. It first came to bear against Michigan. Despite the close final score, the game showed the Huskers were not championship caliber when it counted.

The nine sacks forfeited to Minnesota were almost laughable. Against Utah, Penn State, and Iowa, Nebraska was dominated in the trenches.

The Nebraska offensive line readies for a snap against Northwestern on Oct. 25, 2025. | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

The Huskers Have an Identity Crisis

Which leads me to my next thought.

Forget all the big-name receivers and five-star passers. You cannot win in the Big Ten without a strong foundation up front. Nebraska will not return to prominence until the “bamboo” on the lines develops.

Much will be made about how well new Defensive Coordinator Rob Aurich does in his first season. Count me among those who are optimistic about what he can do in one off-season.

But is Dana Holgorsen the right fit? Defenses knew how to play him: man coverage against the receivers while applying pressure to the Huskers’ suspect tackles - let Dylan or TJ do what they want underneath and wait for them to allow a sack or throw a pick. Holgorsen’s first drive was regularly a thing of beauty. But once defenses adjusted, Dana didn’t.

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule and offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen before the 2025 Cincinnati game — Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule and offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen converse before the 2025 Cincinnati game | Kenny Larabee, KLIN

Part of the issue is that the Husker attack completely lacks an identity. Who do they want to be? This cross-pollination of classic Holgorsen Air Raid and Matt Rhule’s guardrails has created an impotent shell of an attack.

The irony is that Matt Rhule had it right upon his hire. The Huskers’ identity should be about defense and smashmouth football. He just picked the wrong guy to lead his offense in ’23.

I’ll bang the table that Nebraska needs to be a run-focused team until I’m blue in the face. Yes, you need elite pass catchers and throwers to win championships. But learn to walk – err, run – before you pass.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

The honeymoon is over. The gloves are off. The benefit of the doubt is gone.

The Matt Rhule Year Three plan didn’t yield the corresponding increase in wins that his track record portended. Nor did it bring an end to this interminable losing streak to ranked teams. For perspective, Wisconsin, the laughingstock of the Big Ten for much of the year, had two ranked wins while going 4-8, its worst win percentage since 1990.

Many Huskers fans will carry their bitterness into the offseason. They’ll wear it as a shield against another letdown. Have they seen a reason not to in the last ten years?

But Rhule’s saving grace might be that every year there’s a collective amnesia among the fanbase. We’ll look at Geep Wade’s metrics while at Georgia Tech and fantasize about what he’ll do at Nebraska but forget that he won’t have Keylan Rutledge here. We’ll talk about Rob Aurich’s defensive prowess at San Diego State and disregard that the Mountain West is not the Big Ten. The aches of a disappointing November fade away. By spring, we see visions of an autumn run. By fall camp, we see Playoffs. Rinse and repeat.

It’s a familiar cycle.

Time is a Flat Circle

It’s part of a broader cycle Nebraska has seen play out among its head coaches for twenty years. Head-coach-disappoints-and-fires-assistants was the latest benchmark reached. Now comes the phase where excuses creep in.

“The program was dead for 10 years.”

“At the end of the day, we faced three top 15 teams.”

We’re given reasons why the team struggled, implied reassurances that we know the issues and can manage the fix.

“The defense didn’t even know the calls.”

“They didn’t play with enough physicality and motivation in November.”

Rhule also alluded to some vague systemic issues that he inherited. Surely, there were deeply embedded problems following the Scott Frost era. But this was Year Three, the team Matt Rhule was waiting for.

Personalities grate when you lose. Bo’s abrasiveness wore thin when his teams kept losing big games in horrific fashion. No one wanted a nice guy when Riley was fielding tissue-soft defenses. Frost’s excuses painted him as childish and incompetent. Fans now mock Rhule for his podcasts and his backwards hats.

Should Rhule fail to turn the ship around, he’ll become just the latest in a long line of coaches to fleece the university and skip town as a pariah.

Matt Rhule grouses — Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule during the Las Vegas Bowl loss to Utah. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Football Players Wanted

Do you know why Nebraska can’t beat Minnesota or Iowa, or even Wisconsin pre-Fickell? Because their former Big Ten West brethren recruit football players. Guys who love the sport, whether it’s game day or offseason mat drills, and play with a chip on their shoulder. The kind of lunch-pail, blue-collar football players that thrive in the wet and cold of November in the Big Ten.

This season aside, Nebraska routinely mops the floor with its former Big Ten West compatriots in the recruiting rankings. They get the guys that can win in warm-weather Pasadena or Kansas City against Big 12/Pac 12-type teams. But come November, in the Big Ten, they’re not the tougher team.

Rhule defends his recruiting decisions by pointing out that he needs guys who can beat Ohio State and Michigan. He’s right. Ask Bo Pelini what can happen when you consistently beat the middle class of the conference and lose to the upper crust. The problem is that Rhule can’t even consistently beat the middle class. He has zero wins over Iowa, USC, and Minnesota. He’s 1-1 against Maryland, Michigan State, and UCLA.

I’m reminded of Bill Busch – who was on several Husker coaching staffs, including Tom Osborne’s – when he appeared on Rob Zatechka’s podcast in 2023 and discussed why some players succeed while others don’t. “The [players] that don’t make it – they don’t like football. They don’t like what goes on the other nine months of the year. The grit part,” Busch explained. “If you want a tough, competitive team, recruit ‘em. You only change them about 10%.”

Some guys are wired differently. Think of how many games Nebraska won because of Rex Burkhead and Ameer Abdullah willing them to victory.

Nebraska needs to ignore the glitzy rankings and find guys that fit that mold. Focus on vanquishing the middle tier of the conference before you set your sights on the Ohio States of the world.

Now is The Winter of Our Discontent

With the Portal, the right acquisition can flip a team overnight. Trouble is, not many trust Rhule to make that happen at this point.

The Huskers lose Dylan Raiola and Emmett Johnson on offense, Deshon Singleton and Ceyair Wright on defense. Incoming Portal transfers will add excitement and intrigue but without significant changes, it’ll take a Herculean effort to do better than 6-6 in 2026. Husker fans will have to sit with this dour feeling during a long off-season.

This winter won’t be fun for Rhule, either. You can see the Nebraska fishbowl is starting to get to him. You see it in how he defensively responds to questions, points out his modest accomplishments, and calls queries about program resetting “ridiculous.” You hope the pressure doesn’t douse his fire like it did other Husker head coaches.

Either way, now we’ll see who Rhule really is. Will he reflect and grow, or wilt in the Lincoln spotlight? If he’s the coach we hope he is, a little feet-to-the-fire will be just the motivation he needs to produce his best work yet.

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