Measuring Dylan Raiola Against His Peers

With all the criticism, he must be behind his fellow five-star peers, right?

Seventeen former five-star quarterbacks have any stats so far in 2025. None of them has more passing yards than Raiola’s 607 yards, which ranks 15th in the nation. His passing touchdown mark, six, is tied for the lead among the active five-star quarterbacks with Dante Moore.

Only Husan Longstreet, the backup quarterback at USC, and Sayin have a higher completion percentage than Raiola’s 78.1%. However, both of these players have thrown significantly fewer passes than Raiola, with just 15 attempts for Longstreet and 39 for Sayin. Raiola’s 73 attempts are another category in which he leads these highly touted signal callers. His yards per attempt are good for fourth, even after he was mocked for taking the easy throws versus Cincinnati.

While there were moments to be disappointed by Raiola’s play during his freshman season, it’s essential to put into context how true freshmen typically perform. As a freshman, he finished 13th in yards and 9th in completion percentage among quarterbacks in the playoff era. The Huskers, as a team, exceeded expectations in 2024, given that they had a true freshman quarterback. Since 2014, teams with a true freshman throwing more than 150 passes in a season have only won 5.5 games on average.

If you expected that Dylan Raiola would be the next Trevor Lawrence, then you’re probably disappointed with his play so far. The situation that he walked into was far different from Clemson in 2018. The Tigers were already perennial championship contenders by the time Lawrence arrived on campus. There’s still plenty Raiola can improve in his game, and there might be no better coach in college football ready to help him with that than Dana Holgorsen. It’s a long season, and plenty could change once Nebraska hits conference play.

Dylan Raiola is living up to his recruiting rankings and is playing like one of the best quarterbacks in the nation.