The face of the Nebraska program went through a metamorphosis of nearly biblical proportions as the hours melted away on beautiful Maryland Saturday in October.

Dylan Raiola, who Matt Rhule famously proclaimed had “blood in his eye” against Michigan State a week earlier, lost his flinty-faced look and acquired the visage of jolly old Saint Nick as he almost singlehandedly gave away a 10-point lead.

But as the sunny afternoon faded to darkness, Raiola forsook his Santa Claus role, and reassumed the role of a coldhearted assassin when he absolutely had to, leading the Huskers on a pair of long scoring drives in the fourth quarter to rescue a 34-31 win for the Big Red.

Nebraska is 5-1 overall and 2-1 in the Big Ten at the midway point of the season, just as it was last season, and Raiola, who threw for four touchdowns in one of the most up-and-down-and-up games you’ll ever see, careened from extremely hot to disturbingly cold, with hardly enough time for anxious TV executives to fit in a station break in between.

Ahh, but those execs love the drama that the 6-foot-3, 230-pound sophomore can provide — for example, somehow delivering a win for Nebraska despite going minus-three in turnovers.

Drama was there in spades on Saturday, with Raiola covering both the highs (a prolonged rollout and 7-yard touchdown laser to Luke Lindenmeyer in the back corner of the end zone midway through the second quarter, or a clutch 33-yard pass to Nyziah Hunter which was delivered as he stumbled and fell backward) and the lows (which culminated in a hideous “cover-your-children’s-eyes” 64-yard pick-six by Dontay Joyner, giving the Terrapins a go-ahead touchdown with 6:40 remaining in the third quarter).

But eventually, Raiola got the blood back in his own eye. He completed six passes for 50 yards which, along with a jaw-dropping 50-yard run by junior Emmett Johnson, overcame a pair of holding penalties and set up Kyle Cunanan for his second field goal of the day, a 27-yarder, that cut Maryland’s lead to 31-27 with 7:47 left in the game.

And after forcing a Maryland punt, Nebraska took over at its own 19-yard line with 3:42 remaining. Then came Raiola’s unlikely B-film toss to Hunter, and a surgical 13-yard strike to Heinrich Haarberg to set up his game-winning 3-yard pass to Dane Key with 1:08 remaining.

And yet there was more — much more. Before delivering rapturous celebration, Raiola provided his share of wailing and gnashing of teeth to Husker Nation, as well. He doled out interceptions like candy at an Independence Day parade, eventually finishing with three for the day, including two in the second quarter where the Huskers led 24-14 and had the Terrapins on the ropes, ready for an early knockout.

Raiola was moving the Huskers downfield late in the first half with a chance to take a three-score lead, but he not only failed to deliver the knockout blow, he downright invited the Terrapins (4-2, 1-2) back into the game when he lapsed into his disconcerting habit of throwing off his back foot, not infrequently lowering his arm angle for good measure, even when he’s not under pressure, something he did twice against Maryland. The first only resulted in an incompletion, but the second — a lazy wounded duck that wobbled far from any Husker receiver and directly into the arms of Maryland defensive back Jamare Glasker along the sideline.

Part of the charm and drama that is Dylan Raiola is that he gets some unlikely completions when he drops his arm angle to deliver throws under pressure. This one was nothing but bad news, and totally avoidable if he had simply set his back foot and thrown the ball with normal mechanics. And it ended a promising drive, allowing the Terps to move from their own 15-yard line to the Husker 19, kicking a 37-yard field goal made it a one-score game at the half.

That’s part of what you get with Raiola. But you also get leadership that can transform a team from almost winning games against beatable teams, to actually winning those games on the regular.

After the game, Matt Rhule summarized the change in his team since last season when he said, “They love each other, they play for each other, they don’t panic and they fight the whole way. No one was panicked on the sidelines. Our guys are very, very comfortable in the fourth quarter.”

A year ago at the midway point, Raiola had nine touchdown passes and three interceptions. This year he has 16 TDs and five picks. Last year, Raiola added only four more touchdowns and threw six more interceptions in the back half of the season. What does Raiola have in store over the remainder of 2025?

It will no doubt be packed with adversity. Wise Husker fans have learned not to look beyond the next game. But it could also be prodigious if Raiola can count on a Nebraska running game that perked up against Maryland. Johnson carried the ball 21 times for 176 yards, the most for a Nebraska player in a Big Ten game in five seasons. Freshman Isaiah Mozee added 24 yards on five carries and the Huskers as a team netted 193 yards on the ground, by far their best showing of the season.

That goes double if the Blackshirts can hold up as they did late in the game. Led by freshman quarterback Malik Washington, who gave the Husker pass defense its biggest test of the season so far, Maryland piled up 379 total yards. But after the pick-six, the Blackshirts held firm, giving up only 89 yards and no points over the final 21 minutes.

As they head to Minnesota Friday to play P.J. Fleck’s Gophers on a short week, the Huskers have a new face to show the world, one replacing the narrative that said the Huskers are fated to lose every one-score game they come up against. That’s just what Raiola came to Lincoln to do.

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