Checking Out the Huskers’ Biggest Trap Games of 2025

Trap games in college football are inevitable. Trap games should be marked as such on the schedule, in big, bold type signaling danger.

Beware! This is the game that could seriously put a dent into your season. This is a game you better not overlook. But football players and coaches are human. They know how to read. They can follow a schedule.

They can read their emotions.

More than the players, coaches are the main vaccine to combating Trap Game-itis. Always thought these are the games when coaches truly earned their salaries.

Coaches have to tutor the X’s and O’s but also have to ensure the team is in a good place mentally and emotionally. Teams don’t get ready for a trap game with a fiery pregame speech, no matter how good and how fiery.

Preparation begins minutes after the previous game ends and the celebration cools off. Preparation carries on through the practice week. Because losing trap games can be devastating.

Huskers’ potentially great start

Let’s imagine the Huskers are off to a 4-0 start, punctuated by a big victory over national power Michigan at Memorial Stadium on Sept. 20.

Huskers fans everywhere are thrilled. We’re back, baby, the fans correctly, but maybe prematurely, proclaim. This is the season fans had hoped for — for years, of course, but with even more intensity since January.

Dylan Raiola is off to a spectacular start, having made a huge leap from last year. The running attack is clicking. The defense took advantage of Michigan freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood, who was making his fourth collegiate start, harassing the nation’s top recruit into judgment errors and turnovers.

Remember these old feelings? They’re back, Huskers fans. That’s what 4-0 gives you, that special feeling missing for too long.

A bowl game is a definite, the optimists say. Heck, even the pessimists agree. With four victories under their belt, the Huskers only need two more wins to be bowl eligible. Two more wins with eight more to play.

Trap game No. 1

On the horizon would be win No. 5, hand-delivered to Memorial Stadium after Nebraska comes off a bye week.

It’s Michigan State.

It’s the perpetually underrated Spartans, always capable of shocking anyone. At this point in the season, Sparty is only 2-2 and on a bye week, too. Michigan State is trying to recover from a devastating road loss at USC.

Man, this is the trap game of the century.

Michigan State is always a solid football team that plays with intensity and passion. Sparty is trying to join the Huskers in rebounding into Big Ten relevance. A second consecutive loss wouldn’t be the way to recapture the MSU fans. Sparty might be fighting for its season against Nebraska.

Every game on the schedule is important. Some games, even more so.

Two more potential trap games

Beware of Northwestern, always looking to pull a Big Ten upset. The Wildcats are the eighth game on Nebraska’s schedule. They fit in between a Huskers game at Minnesota and USC’s visit to Memorial Stadium.

Nebraska is always going to be sky-high for Minnesota and USC, no matter the circumstances or team records. Northwestern? Probably not so much.

A road game at UCLA lurks as a potential trap game in Week 10, the week after the USC game and the week before the Huskers visit Penn State.

What should help the Huskers is revenge for the 2024 UCLA game in Memorial Stadium, a stunning 27-20 Bruins victory. That loss gave the Huskers three consecutive losses. It was UCLA’s third win in eight games, en route to a blah, 5-7 season.

That loss stung the Huskers and the faithful. Those memories should be enough to overcome a classic trap game.

At least that’s the plan.