What Can Dylan Raiola Be In Year Two At Nebraska?

On this week's Saturday Morning Coffee Show, Jack Mitchell and Josh Peterson were finally ready to start thinking about the 2025 Nebraska football season and it all starts with the quarterback, Dylan Raiola.

When looking ahead to what could happen, they are reminded of how good things looked in September before things derailed him and the offense. How did that happen? And what could it mean for 2025?

Below is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation on the podcast.

Nebraska Cornhuskers quarterback Dylan Raiola (15) looks on before the game against the Boston College Eagles. — Dec 28, 2024; Bronx, NY, USA; Nebraska Cornhuskers quarterback Dylan Raiola (15) looks on before the game against the Boston College Eagles at Yankee Stadium. | Vincent Carchietta-Imagn Images

Josh: He was injured, he was legitimately banged up. That is not excuse making. We talked about it on the pod. I was hearing a variety of things. He had multiple injuries. So, the question that I continue to ask going into year two is how much of the back half of the season was him being hurt versus how much of it was defenses catching up with them, Satterfield's play calling, the offense in general, no run game, like all of these things? How big of an impact could having Dana Holgersen as his OC for a whole year and a whole off season; How big of a factor could that play into his improvement in your team?

Jack: I don't know, man. He just made some throws that did not look right. I even remember when Heinrich Haarberg came in when he got hurt against UCLA. I was like, Haarberg throws it in a way that looks better and more confident than Dylan Raiola right now. That’s a heck of a sentence, right? For a guy who's switching to be a tight end.

But you make a great point that I think people, at least me, I forget that at halftime of the Illinois game, I think I had some kind of a tweet that said, look, I don't know how the rest of the season goes, but I know Nebraska is going to be in every game because of Dylan Raiola. He threw that touchdown before halftime. And I was like, they're never going to be out of this game. They're never going to be out of any game because he's going to be a magician. That’s what we thought!

Josh: Early second half, Nebraska's deep in their own territory, and he just layers it over the Illinois guys. And it is a tremendous reminder of, in September, there were faults with the team, but he didn't seem like one of them, right? We thought he would make freshman mistakes, but we did not see the collapse coming like it did.

I got a text from somebody at halftime of that game, kinda like what you're talking about, Jack, where it was like, how many Big Ten quarterbacks would you draft over Dylan Raiola right now? And the question didn't seem insane in that moment.

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