Rhule hands job to Colandrea for revenge date with Ohio
Matt Rhule's newly named starter opens his Husker career against the same Ohio defense that intercepted him in a bowl game 9 months ago, with 2 receivers hedged as questionable in the programs' first-ever meeting.
Colandrea's Husker debut is also revenge on Ohio
Matt Rhule made it official on August 22, naming Anthony Colandrea his starter, and this week's press conference showed a coach who has stopped hedging entirely: "Do you. Be the best version of you. Anthony's earned my respect and trust; go play," Rhule said, per SI.com, calling the UNLV transfer "a lion" and "a winner" who "wants to play, wants to win every play." Colandrea arrives with 31 career starts across 3 seasons at Virginia and UNLV and last year's Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year award, and Rhule went further at his Monday availability, comparing Colandrea's edge to Baker Mayfield's refusal to make excuses during a rough stretch in Carolina — "good play, bad play, play the next play," per On3's rundown of the presser.
The opener hands him something sharper than a clean slate: revenge. Colandrea's last snap at UNLV came in a 17-10 loss to Ohio in the Frisco Bowl, and Saturday puts the same program back on his schedule less than 9 months later — a connection Rhule brought up unprompted, saying "[Colandrea] certainly remembers that game," per On3. Ohio safety DJ Walker, back for his senior year, intercepted Colandrea in that game, one of his 2 picks in 2025, so Nebraska's new starter opens his Husker career against a defender who has already beaten him once.
It isn't a clean bill of health around him, either. Wideouts D. Bell (knee) and L. Miles (foot) are both listed questionable for Saturday, per Covers' injury tracker — hedged rather than ruled out on either, the kind of uncertainty that puts even more on Colandrea to make his skill players matter less.
Last season closed with a 44-22 loss at Utah
Nebraska finished last season on the road, falling 44-22 to Utah on December 31 to close out a stretch that saw the Huskers lose 4 of their final 5. That finish ran through a 37-10 loss at Penn State on November 23 and a 40-16 loss to Iowa on November 28, sandwiched around the one bright spot of the run — a 28-21 win at UCLA on November 9 that showed last year's team could win on the road, just not often enough down the stretch.
That collapse is exactly why a settled quarterback room matters walking into this one. Last season's Nebraska leaned on defense and special teams to survive, and stalled out whenever the offense had to finish a drive on its own — the loss to Iowa and the finish at Utah were both games decided by the unit that's now been handed to Colandrea. A quarterback locked in before September, rather than sorted out in October, is the difference between repeating that finish and looking like a different team by November.
Solich ties both sidelines in a game these programs have never played before
First-year Ohio coach John Hauser settled his own quarterback question the same week Rhule did, handing the job August 22 to Nick Poulos, a 6-foot-6, 243-pound dual threat with one career start in 2 seasons and a 45% completion mark last year, per The Post Athens. Even so, Hauser spent his own media session talking about Nebraska's front seven: "Nebraska's front seven is basically back. They're big. They're physical," he said, per Yahoo Sports, before flagging the Huskers' tight ends, receivers and running backs as threats that "stretch the field with the running game."
Poulos's raw numbers undersell him, but his legs are the real worry, since Nebraska's defense struggled against mobile quarterbacks throughout last season, per SI.com's know-your-foe series. New coordinator Rob Aurich is installing a 4-2-5 to fix exactly that, and Ohio running back Duncan Brune, a team captain who carried it 120 times for 585 yards and 8 touchdowns last year as a backup and is now the clear centerpiece of Ohio's backfield, is the first live test of whether it works — Nebraska's run defense finished 96th nationally a season ago, per SI.com's opponent preview.
The two sidelines also share a name neither fan base needs explained, and there's no head-to-head history to fall back on instead: this is the first-ever meeting between the 2 programs. Frank Solich coached Nebraska from 1998 to 2003 and then Ohio from 2005 to 2020, and he's back at Memorial Stadium Saturday to collect the Nebraska Football Hall of Fame's Legend Award and work the pregame coin toss. Rhule brought him up without being asked this week — "I don't think you can talk about a Nebraska-Ohio football game without talking about Coach Solich," he said, per Yahoo Sports — a rare kickoff where both benches show up to the same ceremony first.
Huskers open as 23.5-point favorites in a low total for a home opener
Nebraska opened as a 23.5-point favorite over Ohio, with the total set at 47.5 — a number that reads low for a home opener and says as much about how little anyone trusts either offense in Week 1 as it does about the talent gap between the programs. This is Ohio's first game against a Power 4 opponent since that Frisco Bowl loss to UNLV, and it's Colandrea's first as a Husker; Saturday will tell you more about both quarterbacks than any preseason quote could.
Kickoff is this morning vs. Ohio, and after that Nebraska doesn't have to leave Lincoln: Bowling Green comes to Memorial Stadium on September 12 as another lopsided favorite, Nebraska opening at -25.5. For a program that lost 4 of its last 5 last season, 2 home games to find its footing before anything harder shows up is exactly the schedule Rhule needed.