krc1995
Heisman Trophy Winner
I thought Rhule was the head coach. My bad
Dylan Raiola
- Thread starter 87skers
- Start date
twofittyonred
Special Teams Player
Soooo... you would have been okay with Rhule letting Donavan go yr 1 and passing on Raiola..? Doubt it... Some people are mad even when they get too many sprinkles on their sundae...
DefenderAO
All-Conference
Rhule is accountable for all Raiola decisions. The net yield was Donnie was awful as a coach/developer and Dylan didn't live up to expectations many had. As a Raiola collective, it was less successful than I anticipated...by a wide margin.
Rhule is accountable for that outcome. The frustration is the penance he's paying for that decisions (keep Donnie, get Dylan) and other confounding decisions at player and coaching levels is a contract extension.
The more I watch Rhule operate the more I'm convinced he is not detailed-oriented nor even an average X & O guy. He needs elite position coaches and player development, on top of recruiting, to carry his motivational speeches and podcast tours.
twofittyonred
Special Teams Player
Guy Chamberlin
Heisman Trophy Winner
The problem is that the truth lies in the middle, and that's really hard for armchair haters to work with.
Nebraska is a 7-5 team.
Nebraska is a 7-5 team.
Undone
All-American
Well let's zoom out even further than that.
Who was Rhule's portal grab at QB for year 1? Jeff Sims. A player that was arguably the worst starting Nebraska QB in 50 years. He was at least up there with some of the worst we've ever rolled out.
So in that context, Dylan was a huge upgrade. We needed "huge upgrade," regardless of what the fine-grain specifics were. Because Haarberg really wasn't serviceable as a starter either heading into year 2.
Bringing in the Raiola's was absolutely the right decision at the time and I don't think it's even a conversation. Using hindsight analysis under the banner of "he wasn't as good as I thought he was going to be" is kind of a completely separate conversation altogether, IMO.
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Hilltop
All-Conference
I agree with you but the DR injury was bad luck. I think we finish with 8 or 9 wins if he didn't get hurt. Still the same team with the same issues, but it would feel a bit different.
Hilltop
All-Conference
MR gets persecuted for the Jeff Sims debacle but at the time he was the best we could get. Short notice and Nebraska was a dumpster fire. I also will point out that other teams saw the same in Jeff - hence why he was still on a major roster this year.
DefenderAO
All-Conference
Rhule is accountable for the Sims decision. Rhule is accountable for the Raiola decisions. Dylan Raiola was a huge upgrade, yes. The Raiola combo outcomes was not great and missed expectations.
What is relevant is the guy who is accountable for these decisions, and a decision to hire Satterfield, and retain him, and a 23 year old WR coach...just got extended to CEO Nebraska football.
Undone
All-American
And I wasn't specifically trying to persecute Rhule with what I wrote in that post. I was just pointing out a larger context to work from.
It was short notice, agreed there. But I do think it's at least some kind of data point for the kind of QB that Rhule generally wants to bring in. And I'm really not a fan of the run-first guys because I think it drastically lowers our ceiling on offense. It makes us so one-dimensional.
krc1995
Heisman Trophy Winner
I agree. The major, major problem was not having any depth at QB. I think HH did the best he could, but he was not a P4 QB.
Nebraska as a brand is in a much better place as it stands right now then we were pre Raiola debacle. That was move that you have to make if you are Rhule imo. If it works, everybody is happy. If it doesn't work, you are still ahead of where you would have been trying to make do with the Jeff Sims and Haarbergs of the world. The portal and NIL was in a much different place 2.5 years ago, so there was no way of predicting that we would be in a place in 2026 where some 85+% of quality QB's are portal jumpers no matter what. Rhule started as wanting to be a developer. Then he moved with the times toward trying to stick to his core "developer" principals but mixing in the necessary "portal slut" attitude. Now, the cards are all on the table and he seems to be all in on us joining the portal slut era. He worked to get a competitive budget, is ditching "development" coaches, pushing in like a pro imo. Nobody has the code cracked on all of the ways to win in the days of portal magic, but at least we have a guy who seems to be willing to try to adapt to it. The alternative is to fire him and go hire another guy with no clue how to do it. I think every programs should to be in a wait an see mode for at least a year or two. I hope Rhule figures it out sooner than later, but its a moving target with a constantly shuffling deck atm.
Guy Chamberlin
Heisman Trophy Winner
Yeah. I want to say we win a couple more games with Dylan, but prior to the injury it was feeling a lot like last season. I thought we'd get one win against either USC, Penn State or Iowa, and going into a bowl game 8-5 would feel like a modest but welcome improvement. I honestly thought TJ could get us one of those wins, too.
Undone
All-American
Yep, I think we actually win that USC game if he hadn't gotten hurt. That injury sucked so bad for him and all of us.
Against Penn State & Iowa though, our defense's major problems against the run was fully exposed. I'm not sure any QB in the country could have helped us win either of those games, tbh.
admo
Heisman Trophy Winner
NU just had big momentum from Marshall's interception. It was USC's first drive of the 2nd half. And Huskers leading.
It was Dylan that held the ball, and fumble/sacked. So DR was the reason we did not get points on that drive, and gave the momentum back to USC. And they started moving the ball and scoring.
His super arm could have launched the ball away before the sack happened if he was more aware of situational football.