Nebraska-Ohio: It’s Not About Winning. It’s About Looking Different.

Anthony Colandrea is in focus as the Huskers get set to open Matt Rhule's fourth season in Lincoln. Here's what the SMQ crew would like to see.

Game week has arrived for the Huskers and the Sunday Morning Quarterback crew. | Sunday Morning Quarterback

There are season openers you survive, season openers you win, and season openers that tell you something.

Nebraska’s Saturday morning date with Ohio needs to be the third kind.

The Huskers enter Matt Rhule’s fourth season as a 24½-point favorite, playing at Memorial Stadium against a good, disciplined MAC program that went 9-4 last year and has won seven straight bowl games. Yes, they return very few of their starters, but nobody should confuse Ohio with a sacrificial lamb.

But nobody should confuse this with a toss-up, either.

Nebraska has the better roster. More size. More depth. Home field. And, perhaps most importantly, a quarterback in Anthony Colandrea who gives offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen something Nebraska desperately needed last year: an escape hatch.

Colandrea arrives with 31 career starts, more than 7,500 passing yards, and another 1,151 on the ground. Last season at UNLV, he threw for 3,459 yards and ran for 649 more while accounting for 33 touchdowns.

That mobility matters. Nebraska allowed 33 sacks last season. The offensive line has been rebuilt with size and experience, but Saturday is our first opportunity to discover whether it has actually been fixed.

And that’s really the theme of this game.

Don’t tell me Nebraska is better. Show me.

Move Ohio off the football. Keep Colandrea upright. Make explosive plays. Get off the field on third down. Don't commit stupid penalties. And, for the love of Bob Devaney, can we please play one football game where special teams aren't part of the postgame conversation?

Ohio’s path to making this interesting is painfully familiar: Nebraska turnovers, protection breakdowns, missed assignments, and a couple of cheap plays that allow an inferior opponent to hang around.

That’s the old Nebraska. Saturday needs to introduce us to something different.

I don’t particularly care whether Nebraska wins by 22, 32, or 42. I want to see a fourth-year football program that understands how to put an inferior opponent away.

My prediction: Nebraska 35, Ohio 13.

More important than the score? By the fourth quarter, I want this game to feel inevitable.

Because if Nebraska is really ready to take the next step under Matt Rhule, this is exactly the kind of game that should be boring by halftime.

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