Come halftime, the Huskers had battled back from an early deficit to take a 14-13 lead, but you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to know what was waiting on social media.
And apologies to Jashear Whittington who might not yet be aware his cleansing of excess Gatorade made him a Twitter star around lunchtime.
Not all the first half grousings were as kind or funny.
The first quarter was not pretty and, I mean right from the jump.
After a fair catch on the kickoff, Ohio’s Nick Poulos found Riley Neer streaking by a stationary Jeremiah Charles and drilled him on target after which Neer took off untouched until Andrew Marshall ran him down at the Husker 7. Charles recovered to play a solid game after earning his first Blackshirt, but he looked a little starry eyed on play number one.
Marshall’s hustle went for naught as Ohio quickly found the end zone for a 7-0 lead. The Huskers matched it when Jamar Rule took it in from a yard out after a 75-yard drive, but the Bobcats would prove pesky and drive back into field goal range on their next possession to take a 10-7 lead into the 2nd quarter. They outgained the Huskers 138-84 yards in the first.
The Huskers actually flipped it on Ohio 139-52 in the second and began to take control although the scoreboard wasn’t quite showing it yet. After that 1st quarter, Nebraska held a 439-167 advantage to make it a 523-303 yardage win for the game.
After a second Ohio field goal put them up 13-7, Nyziah Hunter decided to take a run with a kickoff right on the goal line, much to the dismay of the 411th consecutive sellout crowd. The dismay only deepened when he took it left to about the 20, then decided try and dip back about 12 yards in an effort to wheel it back around all the way to the right.
This strategy proved highly ineffective as he appeared to run out gas a bit, and yada-yada-yada, the Huskers found themselves starting from their own 8 as Husker Nation’s Twitter fingers started loosening up as they braced for the worst.
Instead, Anthony Colandrea led the Huskers 92 yards in 7 plays going 3-4 for 68 yards with 24-yard TD pass to Rule. He also had completions of over 20 yards to Kwazi Gilmer and another to Rule on the drive. They almost tacked on another touchdown when Nyziah Hunter took a short pass and roared 57 yards for an apparent touchdown.
Except some more of the selective refereeing which has become so commonplace struck again as Jacory Barney was whistled for a shoulder to shoulder nudge deemed too far behind the play and 15 yards were deducted from the point of contact and the score remained 14-13.
The opening of the second half did not inspire confidence as the Huskers chose to lose 21 yards in two plays, including an 18-yard sack of Colanadrea, to flip the field position battle squarely in the Bobcats favor. They moved into field goal range and lined up to take the lead – and missed.
No one could truly know it at the time, but Ohio had just squandered their last chance to keep the back and forth going and how.
What Nebraska did was proceed to go over, around and through the Bobcats for the remainder of the game. They had five more drives and finished every one of them in the end zone. They went for 73, 69, 75, 70 and 17 yards respectively. The reason for the short pop at the end was Rex Guthrie snagging a tipped pass from the Bobcat backup QB and bringing it back 34 yards.
Colandrea, Mekhi Nelson (twice!), Rule (a third time!) and Kwazi Gilmer all notched scores as the Big Red tallied 35 second half points to pull away and cover a spread which was looking pretty safe on the Ohio side of things for awhile. The Bobcats managed one 2nd half touchdown, but it was the only score they could in their last 8 tries after finding points on their first three.
An opening game is very seldom high quality and, of course, there was good and bad in the Huskers’ Saturday effort.
500+ yards was a fine start and this Husker offense truly felt like it was from the Dana Holgorsen construct. Colandrea was 18-32 for 275 yards and no picks with 3 touchdowns through the air. He added another on the ground while carrying it 8 times for 48 yards at 6.0 per clip (sack adjusted). His ability to scramble from trouble to positive yards was a skill probably not lost on the Husker faithful.
Jacory Barney Jr and Kwazi Gilmer were Anthony’s favorite targets with 5 grabs each, but, to be fair, the passing numbers should have been better. Along with questionable penalty on Barney, there were several drops, something which must be cleaned up quickly.
On the rushing side, the backs gained 270 yards on 40 carries (sack-adjusted), a sparkling 6.8 YPC. Mekhi Nelson carried 10 times for 64 yards and added 65 yards receiving on 2 grabs for 129 total yards. You already know about his 2 touchdowns.
But the story today was probably true freshman Jamal Rule who rushed 15-122 yards at 8.1 YPC and hauled in a pair of catches himself for 47 more yards. His 169 total yards led the team as did his 3 scores. A 3-star recruit from Salisbury, NC, he looks like the odds-on favorite from his class to be one of the bigger steals of the 2026 group.
Not that I want to go too crazy or too quickly or anything. The coaches had told us since the spring he was special and doubled down on him this fall saying he would be right there with the top backs then putting him out there and letting him rip.
Last year’s Achilles heel, the defensive line, held their own. Poulos found some scrambling room for 70 yards but the other back were held to 69 yards on 23 totes. They only managed 2 sacks, but were close several other times. We didn’t need to see an instant turnaround in their fortunes in the opener, just signs of improvement and we may have gotten that.
Jamir Conn led everyone with 8 tackles, 4 solo. Riley van Poppel got one of the sacks. You heard about Guthrie’s pick, and he looked FAST while he was running that sucker back. Donovan Jones also ran at blaze level and broke up two passes. Dexter Foster, who surprised some earning a co-#1 at LB, laid the smack down with 3 QB hits. And his partner, Vincent V9 Shavers grabbed 5 tackles of his own along with Guthrie.
After the shaky start, the Blackshirts wore the ebony proudly and the offense rewarded them by lighting up the scoreboard and the fans who had sweltered for a few hours. One had to imaging their gratitude after Nebraska opened the margin up enough to allow faithful to escape burn-off from the field surface which reportedly broke 150F.
The Huskers take on Bowling Green next weekend and the best news about that is a 6pm kickoff.
See ya’ there.
