Nebraska needed most of a half to shake off a scare from a MAC visitor, then buried the Bobcats under 42 unanswered points at a packed Memorial Stadium.
This was the first look at the post-Dylan Raiola era in Lincoln, with Anthony Colandrea — a 31-game starter between Virginia and UNLV — taking over as Matt Rhule's quarterback in year 4 of the rebuild. On the other sideline, Frank Solich, the Nebraska legend who became the winningest coach in MAC history at Ohio, brought a Bobcats team that had never played the Huskers before into a building that knows his name well.
+freshman Jamal Rule broke out for 122 yards, 3 TDs
+411 straight sellout crowd at Memorial Stadium
−let a MAC team lead 13-7 in the first half
−defense had real lapses before settling in
−brand-new QB-OC pairing still finding rhythm early
Ohio wasted no time making it interesting, going 75 yards in 3 plays for a Nick Poulos-to-Riley Neer touchdown to open the scoring, then adding two field goals to lead 13-7 at one point. Colandrea answered by spreading the ball around en route to 275 yards and 3 touchdown passes, and he added a rushing score himself. Freshman running back Jamal Rule was the breakout story, hammering out 122 yards and 3 touchdowns on the ground in his first game in a Husker uniform.
Once Nebraska found its footing, the gap in talent and depth took over. The Huskers reeled off 42 unanswered points, saving the biggest surge for last with 4 straight touchdown drives in the fourth quarter alone in 89-degree heat. It was the 411th consecutive sellout at Memorial Stadium, and the building got what it wanted eventually, even if the opening 15 minutes gave Bobcats fans a reason to believe.
Nebraska heads home next week for Bowling Green, and the final score will read as a comfortable season-opening win. But the tape shows a defense that let a Group of Six team hang around into the second quarter, and a brand-new quarterback-and-coordinator pairing that had to work through some rust before the track meet started. Both things can be true — Colandrea and Rule looked like real building blocks, and there's still cleanup to do defensively before Big Ten play gets harder.
