Nebraska
Four Questions for Nebraska Football Heading Into Spring Ball
Spring football is upon us, Common Fans! Practice begins this coming week and will last until April 26. And while nothing can replace the actual football season in the fall, it always feels like an accomplishment to get to this point in the year. We’ve made it through the doldrums of January and February. The team is transitioning from winter conditioning to playing and practicing real, actual football. We’ll get some glimpses of some exciting newcomers, and see what kind of progress the veterans have made.
2025 is a huge year for Husker Head Coach Matt Rhule. This season has the potential to define his entire tenure at Nebraska–for good or bad. With that in mind, here are four questions to ponder as Nebraska heads into spring practice.
How much improvement will we see from Dylan Raiola in year 2?
Raiola had a solid true freshman season. He threw for 2,819 yards, completing more than 67% of his passes. He threw 13 touchdown passes against 11 interceptions. At times, he made some major “wow” plays, showcasing the talent that made him a highly coveted 5 star recruit. Other times, he made some freshman mistakes: things like holding the ball too long, missing open receivers at key moments, and sliding short of the first down marker. That type of thing is to be expected from a true freshman. I believe the upside for Raiola remains sky high. How much improvement can we expect to see in 2025? Having a full offseason with new(ish) Offensive Coordinator Dana Holgorsen should help. Holgorsen is considered one of the best offensive minds in the game, and hopefully he will be able to put Raiola–and by extension, the entire offense–in a position to succeed. The completely revamped wide receiver room, filled with multiple big name transfers and high profile recruits, should also help. Can Dylan cut down on some of the mistakes we saw in 2024? After two years of being carried by the defense, can Nebraska have the kind of offense that can win them some games? A lot rides on Dana Holgorsen’s brain and Dylan Raiola’s arm in 2025.
Can the offensive line go from good to dominant?
I found this post from Husker super fan Jim in MN to be particularly intriguing (note: the original post mentions Dominic Raiola as Nebraska’s offensive line coach. The correct name is Donovan Raiola, which Jim corrected in a follow-up post):
It’s yr 4 now for Dominic Raiola and Aaron Coeling coaching the Nebraska OL. They’ve stockpiled a ton of good highly rated talent and added in some million dollar transfers.
It’s time to be become a dominant OL. It just is.
— Jim in MN (@HuskersMN) March 15, 2025
How does the average Common Fan measure offensive line play? Nebraska had the 100th ranked rushing offense in the country in 2022. That jumped to 39th in 2023 (largely due to having rushing quarterback Heinrich Haarberg start the majority of games that season), then fell back to 96th in 2024. The Huskers gave up 72 tackles for loss (ranking 74th nationally) and allowed 28 sacks (ranked 78th) in 2024 alone. Do these stats tell the entire story of the offensive line? Of course not. That said, none of these numbers is suggestive of a dominant offensive line.
Husker fans of a certain age know good offensive line play when they see it. I would argue the Nebraska offensive line has shown tangible improvement in the Rhule era, but it would be hard to make the case that they have been dominant. As Jim’s post implies, the O line has been good, but not great. Can they take the next step under fourth year offensive line coach Donovan Raiola? Can we restore the pipeline of days gone by? Considering that possibility will have Husker Nation frothing at the mouth all spring.
Can the defense avoid a steep falloff?
The biggest bright spot of the Rhule era to date is undoubtedly the defense. Immediately upon his arrival in Lincoln, the defense got tougher, more physical, and tackled better. They passed the eye test, and the numbers back it up. After ranking 100th in the country in total defense in 2022, the Huskers jumped to 11th in that category in 2023 and 18th in 2024. Similarly, the Blackshirts went from 77th nationally in scoring defense in 2022 to 13th in 2023 and 17th in 2024. In virtually every category–rushing defense, passing defense, sacks, turnovers and more–the Nebraska defense showed drastic improvement as soon as Matt Rhule and (former) Defensive Coordinator Tony White showed up in Lincoln.
It’s been an offseason of major change for the Blackshirts. White left for the same job at Florida State, and took defensive line coach Terrance Knighton with him. The Huskers have new assistants coaching the defensive line, outside linebackers, and the secondary. Major, multi-year contributors on Nebraska’s defense–including Ty Robinson, Nash Hutmacher, Isaac Gifford, John Bullock, and Jimari Butler to name a few–either graduated or transferred. Enter new defensive coordinator John Butler, most recently Nebraska’s defensive backs coach, now serving in a coordinator role for the first time since he did it at Penn State more than a decade ago. Also new to the picture is Phil Snow, who served as Rhule’s Defensive Coordinator at every one of his previous head coaching stops, and is now Associate Head Coach. With all this change, can the defense continue the high level production we saw in Rhule’s first two years? Can they continue to be the backbone of this football team? If Nebraska is going to get where they want to go in year three under Rhule, they need the D to avoid a dropoff.
What record would constitute a successful season for Nebraska football in 2025?
Friend of the Common Fan Brandon Vogel had a fantastic article about this very topic at The Counter Read not too long ago (by the way, if you haven’t subscribed at www.counterread.com yet, I highly recommend it. Brandon puts out some of the best Husker content you can find, all year long). This is a really intriguing question for a proud fan base at a program with a boatload of historical success, but some really painful recent seasons. We had an extended discussion about it on the most recent Common Fan Podcast episode.
There are several factors at play here. Rhule’s teams took big leaps in his third year at both Temple and Baylor. The schedule lines up well for the Huskers this year (although recent experience has taught us that Nebraska shouldn’t be taking any teams for granted). Dylan Raiola has a full year under his belt. There are a lot of reasons for optimism going into the 2025 season. So, what would fans view as a success this season? I certainly don’t think 6-6 will cut it again. I tend to think 8-4 is the baseline, minimum expectation among Husker fans. Get to 8-4, and most fans will be happy with the improvement but not through the roof. Worse than 8-4? We’re looking at a long offseason. 9-3 or better? At that point, the boys in red are potentially on the periphery of the playoff conversation, and at the very least going to their best bowl game in more than a decade. 9-3 or better and most Common Fans are dancing in the streets in Lincoln.
What do you think, fellow Common Fan? Send us an email at commonfangbr@gmail.com to let us know your thoughts on what record would constitute success for Nebraska in 2025.
As always, GBR for LIFE.
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Emma Bullerman is spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she’s thrilled about it. It’s not just for fun, either — she’s interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve Nebraska grasslands.
“Prairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,” Bullerman said. “My dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.”
Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad’s work to restore native prairies.
“A lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across Nebraska to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,” she said. “Basically, I’m just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.”
As a teen, Bullerman thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad’s footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown.
“In high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave Nebraska and do something totally different from my dad,” she said. “I tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn’t passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.”
It didn’t take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, she is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science. Her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied food science at NU as well.
Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Bullerman realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field.
“Being out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I want to do.’ Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.”
Working with her dad, she’s is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in Nebraska.
“Doing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state,” she said. “I used to be someone who was like, ‘I want to get out of here after I graduate.’ Restoring prairies and traveling all over Nebraska has helped me see that it’s so beautiful here, I just didn’t take the time to see it before.”
The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.
The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.
Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.
“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.
The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.
“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.
Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.
“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.
At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”
“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Hundreds of people are without power in southeast Nebraska after a severe storm passed through Thursday morning.
The Lincoln Electric System outage map showed 115 customers without power across the city at 11:36 a.m.
Norris Public Power District’s outage map also shows 45 customers affected by the storm. As of 11:36 a.m., there were nine active outages.
According to the Nebraska Public Power District outage map, 657 customers were affected by the storm. Most of the affected customers were near Plattsmouth in southeast Nebraska. As of 11:37 a.m., 27 customers remain without power.
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