What’s a realistic expectation for Nebraska Football in 2023?

Matt Rhule and the Nebraska football team open fall camp next week so what’s realistic for the Huskers in 2023?

There has been a lot of conversation this offseason surrounding Nebraska football and one of the questions asked is — will there be a quick turnaround?

Most Nebraska football fans seem excited about Matt Rhule. Some are tepid in anointing him the savior and after the way Scott Frost crashed and burned, you can’t blame them.

Rhule does have a pattern of turning programs around though. He did it at Baylor and Temple. However, the first season at both schools was a struggle. So you have to wonder, what’s a realistic expectation for the Nebraska football program in year one?

Matt Rhule will get Nebraska to a bowl game

Folks have been trying to find the best way to compare Rhule’s other first seasons to this one and the truth is that you can’t. Nebraska isn’t a program coming off a terrible scandal with hardly enough scholarship players.

That was Baylor when Rhule took over. Temple was a college football wasteland not too long before Rhule joined the staff as an assistant and both teams had winning records in their second seasons with him as head coach.

Rhule was a combined 3-21 during his first seasons as a head coach at Baylor and Temple. But both programs played for a conference championship by his third season. Temple made consecutive American title games and won the league in Rhule’s last season.

That’s the kind of trajectory Nebraska football fans are hoping for. You can bet they’d like to skip the first year though and I think the Huskers will. They won just seven games the past two seasons, but Nebraska beat itself more than anything else.

If the Huskers can avoid the mistakes and do all the little things right, it can lead to a dramatic difference. That’s what I’m banking on and why a bowl game still feels very realistic to me.

Anything less than that is a disappointment but after all the struggles in the last seven years, just getting to 6-6 would feel like a major achievement.

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