It’s the third quarter. Raiola is closing in on 250 yards and has zero interceptions. What happens next tells me everything I need to know about the Nebraska standard.
The men who don’t usually see the field are being put in. The game isn’t quite out of reach, but Rhule is putting them in to put it away. In comes Haarberg, the backup quarterback. The crowd cheered so loud for this decision, Rhule could barely communicate the play. What happens next is a message to the college football nation. He goes 5 for 5 and throws an absolute rocket to Alex, another Nebraska kid. Nebraskas second string offense puts together a perfect scoring drive, punctuated by the 4th string running back.
Then the defense takes the field. The second string defense looked just as dominant. We didn’t just see depth, we seen heart. Early in the game, UTEP would go tempo and find a hole in the Nebraska defense, scoring their only touchdown. Nebraska turned it over and its looking like the struggles of last year carried over. Until….
Safety! Then a touchdown! And another and then Nebraska goes up 30-7 on a last second play before the half.
It was 37-7 when Raiola came out of the game. Rhule could have kept Dylan in and got him to 400 yards. He could have let Dowdell get 100. Any of the three running backs could have done that. That wasn’t the message Rhule wanted to send. He wanted to send a message that said any of you guys can do the job. That’s why I recruited you and we’re all going to do this. As a family, a unit, a team. A team we haven’t seen be this dominant for decades.
Rhule has a standard. A standard that says, we’re not just going to win big, whether we win by three points or 30 points, we’re going to do it the right way.
