Nebraska’s New Recruiting Resources and the Positions Matt Rhule Must Address

Nebraska football is 7-3, its best record through 10 games since 2016. The Huskers have certainly not been perfect this season, but the team is making strides in its long climb from the swamp to the stars. The final two games plus the bowl game will go a long way toward informing how fans feel about whether or not Matt Rhule’s rebuilding project is on track.

This week on the Common Fan Podcast, we talked to Mitch Sherman of The Athletic and the Locked on Nebraska Podcast. Mitch provided some fantastic insights into Matt Rhule’s comments about increased resources for recruiting and retention, and what positions the Huskers might target on the recruiting trail.

NOTE: The responses below have been lightly edited for purposes of clarity and brevity.

CF: During his bye week press conference, Matt Rhule said something to the effect of, Nebraska has the resources now to compete with anybody in the country. We have the resources to go get anybody we want. Can you tell us what he's talking about when he talks about that sort of thing?

MS: Well, there was some language in his contract…that is somewhat vague, but it requires Nebraska to remain competitive, in that area specifically of resources that are made available for recruiting and the portal and retention. Retention is a big piece that you don't want to overlook. It's going to be essential in this offseason for Nebraska not to lose players who are on track to help this program a lot, whether they've done it already in the past year or two, or it's just someone that they see as a valuable piece down the road. Those players can command big money in the portal too. You know, amazingly, word gets out that a third string wide receiver is in line, or a, you know, a redshirting defensive lineman is in line to be able to help a Big Ten team in the year ahead. And so it's not just the players who made the contributions on the field here in 2025 that are going to require an investment. It can be players who are down on the depth chart but hold a lot of promise. So that part of it is huge as far as what Rhule was promised in terms of resources to keep Nebraska competitive.

And then he spelled it out on Monday of the bye week, talking very bluntly about how Nebraska has what it needs to go out and get the best players in the country. I think it’s a little bit oversimplified to just say it like that, because sometimes even the best offer doesn't get you the player that you desire, just like you might see in free agency in professional sports. Players pick schools and colleges for reasons that go beyond just the dollar figure. We saw plenty of cases in the portal last year where Nebraska was more than competitive for players that it was trying to get. And those players chose to go somewhere where they felt they had a better chance to win a national championship in 2025. But the fact that the money is there and that it's in the hands of Nebraska's collective, and this is being discussed here in November, is promising for what Nebraska can do.

CF: On the timing of the transfer portal going into the new year:

MS: It's all going to be in January this year. We've gotten accustomed in the last couple of years to this stuff happening in December. There'll still be announcements in December from players and their agents and from the media that, this player intends to go into the portal, but the portal doesn't open this year until January 2nd, and it's a short window. It's only two weeks, January 2nd to the 16th, when those players can go in and then exit the portal to their new school. So it's going to be a whirlwind with just a ton of activity, that goes on in a two-week period right after the new year.

CF: When we're talking about more resources for players, what does that mean exactly? Are we talking businesses that are chipping in to help fund this? Is the university doing something where they're giving money? Or is it something completely different from that? Can you explain that a little bit?

MS: It's only been one year that the revenue sharing has been in effect. But the revenue sharing is the internal payments (from the University directly to players). It's $20.5 million. You're going to see that go up over the years to come, I think incrementally. So maybe next year it's in the $21 to $22 million range, and the football program is going to get somewhere around 70% of that $20-some million to use as an internal salary cap. And every school in the Big Ten and the SEC is going to max that out. So you don't necessarily get an advantage. Nothing changed for Nebraska with its revenue-share resources here in this season, as Matt Rhule made this public push to get more of a commitment from fans and donors.

It changed in the traditional NIL sense, which is the money that, a lot of it goes through the 1890 collective. And as he mentioned on Monday of the bye week, the Peed family, which created 1890 and has largely funded 1890 through its existence, has stood in the gap here and has allowed Nebraska to remain competitive. Well, Nebraska needed more than that as an institution. Whether it's businesses or individuals, it needed the money to come into the collective. And it's not just that. There are other ways that NIL can be a resource and can impact Nebraska's ability to retain and recruit. You're seeing more of these corporate deals that are coming down that don't necessarily need the direct involvement of the collective to facilitate. In an extreme example, you have Adidas that's a sponsor for Dylan Raiola, for Harper Murray on the volleyball team. Those are the two premier athletes at Nebraska who are getting money from Adidas. Stuff like that will continue to impact Nebraska's ability here to do all of the things that Matt Rhule wants to do.

But for the most part, yeah, it's going to be deals that are done through the collective, through 1890. We don't get those numbers…it's not something where you can file a Freedom of Information Act and say, you know, hey, does Nebraska have a $30 million roster here coming in 2026? You have to just understand what the market value of an offensive tackle is or of a quarterback, or, you know, a lockdown corner in the portal. And then you can kind of get a sense of what Nebraska might have to pay to get, for example, 10 impact transfers in the next cycle. It's not cheap, I can tell you that. And the price is only going up.

CF: What positions do you think are most important for this coaching staff to target in the transfer portal and on the recruiting trail?

MS: To me, it’s the defensive line. Spend all the money that you have to, go above what even makes sense in spending to get a big, run-stopping, space-eating defensive lineman who can dictate the way that offenses are able to use the running game against Nebraska. We've seen that be a problem. And while it's been the quarterbacks who have done a lot of damage, I think where you start is in the middle of that defensive line. It's a great place to start in bulking up your run defense. You need a Ty Robinson there in the middle as an anchor. I think they're in pretty good shape on the edges of the defensive line. I think another year of development for Williams Nwaneri and Keona Davis is going to turn those players into difference makers. They've already shown flashes of that, but I think they can be difference makers next year. So I don't think Nebraska needs to hit the edge rusher spot extremely hard in the portal this offseason. They have promising players there. They have to keep those players, but they have promising players there in the system. So that's a big bonus for Nebraska because those are expensive players to go get in the portal, which frees up more money to be able to spend on the interior of the defensive line.

And then the other spot to look at…well, there's two other spots that are obvious to me. One is offensive tackle. We’ve seen the issues that Nebraska’s had with offensive tackles and pass protection this year in Nebraska’s losses: 17 sacks and one season-ending injury to Dylan Raiola because of breakdowns in pass protection.

And then running back, because we don't know what's going to happen with Emmett Johnson. And even if Emmett Johnson were to come back, I would say go get another running back and allow him to share the load because I think what he's done this year has been a little bit of an anomaly. I don't know that you can count on that kind of durability from any back in 2026 with the schedule that Nebraska is set to face.

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