Nebraska Football Preview 2025: And Now The Cornhuskers Take the Next Step

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Offense | Defense
Keys to Season, Best Players, Top Transfer
Season Prediction, Win Total  

It’s impossible to understate just how consistently amazing Nebraska used to be at football. It was among the all-time Don't Fix What's Not Broken programs.

The model of reliable greatness, Nebraska failed to win at least nine games just twice - 1967 and 1968 - from 1962 to 2001. Over those 39 years, the Big Red Machine won five national titles, was in the mix for a whole lot more, and then came the slip.

Nebraska was still fantastic after changing offensive styles away from its powerhouse rushing attack - it won nine games or more ten times from 2002 to 2016 - but it lost its national championship-level mojo.

But you knew all of that.

The Nebraska-Was-Great thing has been done, but in 2025, there’s a whole new generation of sports fans who don’t know a time when the Huskers were relevant.

For a program that used to consider a nine-win campaign a disaster, going seven straight seasons without coming up with a winning record is impossible. This is NEBRASKA FOOTBALL. It falls into the too-big-to-fail category, and it did.

So you can understand why going 7-6 with a win in the Pinstripe Bowl was such a big, hairy deal to an entire region of the country.

No, 2024 Nebraska wasn’t great, and no, it shouldn’t be that heavy a lift to have the most minor of successes in football, but it was a step.

Nebraska invented new and creative ways to gack games and seasons away, and last year, finally, it pulled up out of the nosedive, beat Wisconsin - who, by the way, is currently the top DON’T MESS WITH WHAT WORKED program - and got bowl eligible for the first time since 2016.

And now it’s time for head coach Matt Rhule to make Nebraska football take one giant leap forward.

Rhule has a rising superstar at quarterback. He pulled in a fantastic recruiting class, there's talent across the starting 22, and he's doing what he's done in the past with other college programs.

At Temple, he went from two wins, to six, to ten, and then ten again. At Baylor, he went from one win, to seven, to 11.

It’s Year Three in Lincoln. The reasonable expectation from the stunningly patient fan base is to go from five wins to seven, to …

The University of Nebraska football program is supposed to be national title great. And it’s getting closer.

Offense | Defense  
Keys to Season, Best Players, Top Transfer 
Season Prediction, Win Total