”Get old and stay old.“
It’s one of college sports’, and especially college football’s, main tropes when it comes to success. And one which the Huskers did not follow, for the most part, in Matt Rhule’s first three seasons. No more.
After three years in which Nebraska rosters were heavy on youth, the pendulum has swung the other way in Year 4. It now sits at 72% underclassmen and has gotten there with a combination of prioritizing experience through the transfer portal, going with smaller recruiting
classes and, likely most importantly, keeping and developing the players they have and letting those younger rosters age naturally.
Take a look at the starters on the depth chart (including all -OR- designations at the #1 spots). On offense, starting roles are held by 11 upperclassmen and two underclassmen (Jamal Rule and Isaiah Mozee and no one’s arguing that’s because of a lack of depth in the running back room). On defense?
14 upperclassmen.
Let’s take a peek at quarterback to start. In Rhule’s first three seasons, inexperience was a flashing red light over the position. In 2023, Heinrich Haarberg was a redshirt sophomore – which would be simply classified as a junior today – and WAS in his 3rd year in the program. However, not only had he never started or played in a game at quarterback in his first two seasons – he had never appeared in a game period.
In 2024, he was replaced by true freshman Dylan Raiola, and just think about that for a moment.
Rhule began both of his first two seasons with starting QB’s who had never played in a college football game, let alone had ever started a game at quarterback. True, Raiola was much improved in 2025 up until his injury, but he still looked utterly lost and unsure of himself when it came time to escape pockets. He often took the Shedeur Sanders route of trying run backwards and circle out of the pocket, but, like Sanders, lacked the speed make this a viable strategy.
This season, the Huskers began with senior Anthony Colandrea who had compiled 33 games of action at Virginia and UNLV with 31 total starts. He has much faster decision-making skills in finding open receivers, knowing when to bail out and then finding the seams to make positive yards. He simply looks more composed, while playing the game at a much faster pace.
Experience.
And it’s not lost on Rhule, who one can tell, almost thinks of him as a co-worker rather than his player.
“And so for me, Anthony, he’s fun. I pull my headset down and talk to him on the sideline. I talk about the coaches and how I can’t stand some of them and how they don’t listen to me and legitimately…I mean, he texts me like he’s a grown man.”
When I followed up on this and asked what some of the specific advantages of having an older roster are, Rhule had plenty to say – and it just makes 100% sense.
“On great teams, there’s no coaches and players in my mind. There’s just people all trying to work together. When you have an immature team, you’ve got to be the coach all the time. ‘Hey, do this, do that.‘ Not with not with Ant(hony) (Colandrea) and a lot of guys like that. Kwazi Gilmer’s a lot like that.”
He did point out it wasn’t all youth over experience those first three seasons, specifically the 2024 defensive side of the ball, which was just as much, if not more responsible for breaking the bowl drought than the upgrade of Raiola at quarterback.
“…our defense in 2024, those were a bunch of grown men here. That was Johnny Bullock, Isaac Gifford, Ty (Robinson), Nash (Hutmacher), MJ (Sherman), Jamari Butler. Those were a bunch of veteran players. The DeShons (Singleton), Ceyair (Wright), Malcolm Hartz(og). Those were older guys, and so I could treat them that way.”
And Rhule definitely feels he has guys like that all over the field now.
“When I say something and like the guys laugh at me – I’m yelling, screaming in the practice, and they’re laughing at me, I know it’s an older team, like (Jahsear) Whittington, Ant(hony) Jones. Those guys are older players. They kind of (say), ‘all right, coach, got it,’ and they just keep going on about their business, right?”
“Justin Evans is as good a leader as I’ve ever been around. So you have you have him and then you have guys like Jacory (Barney) and Isaiah (Mozee) and Kwazi (Gilmer) who love to block, and it’s just been a lot of fun.”
And while granted, the competition thus far has been miles from the Big 10 level of play, the improvement is already visible. Anthony Colandrea’s composure was already mentioned. There doesn’t seem to be near as many of the mental errors, penalties in the opener aside.
Think of this – the past few seasons, timeouts called due to confusion prior to the snap on both sides of the ball had become an accepted part of Nebraska games. This has yet to rear its head in 2026. Again, an experienced quarterback and five starting offensive lineman who are 4th year seniors or older? There’s a lot of calmness among those guys when questions arise, and they’ve played enough football to let bad plays roll off their back. Says Rhule?
“Well, they’ve played a lot of football. I think the biggest difference between an older player and younger player is an older player knows he’s a good player or knows what he is. A younger player is trying to still figure out ‘What am I going to become?’ So when an older player has a bad play, it just makes them mad, like obviously a bad play, and they get upset and they come back. Whereas a younger player, (it) shakes them a little bit, right?”
As I suggested in Part 4 of my 2025-2026 Review/Preview, this could be the secret weapon the Huskers will load this season against a Big 10 schedule which looks like a bear and will likely required multiple victories against ranked teams if they are to make the jump that this team – and head coach – so desperately want to make this fall, especially in November.
But with this squad, desperation is much less likely to be the emotion when their combined experience is brought to bear. “Urgency” is probably a better way to describe how they will react when confronted with adversity. And, according to Rhule, belief is something which comes with that age and experience.
“So, I do think there’s a lot of belief when you’re an older player. You’ve been through a lot of wars. A lot of these guys have played a lot of football.”
