The Osborne Standard: A Better Way to Judge Nebraska in 2026
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It’s prediction season.
Every college football channel, podcast, and website in the the Big Red is currently ranking all sixteen Big Ten teams, assigning win totals, and telling you with a straight face that Nebraska goes 8-4 or 6-6
I think the whole exercise is kind of dumb, and I’d like to explain why before I offer something better.
The roster you’re predicting doesn’t exist yet
In the NIL and transfer portal era, rosters turn over in ways that make preseason projection close to meaningless.
We expect players who produce at another team to come to our team and do the same or better production. Teams are made up of coaches other players and players are not just toasters you don’t just get a plug them into a place and expect the same out of them.
I guess what bugs me is the human component about all of this.
The expectations game is exhausting
If I say 7-5, half the audience tells me I’m being negative and half tells me I’m being a homer, and then we spend the next four months arguing about my tone instead of the football. That argument has been running in Nebraska fandom for twenty years and it has never once produced a first down.
So if you’re going to hold a gun to my head: 7-5. We’ve gone 7-5 in the regular season the last couple of years. Bo Pelini won nine games every single season until the day he stopped, and everybody kept predicting nine because that’s what the program kept producing. U
ntil Nebraska stops going 7-5, 7-5 is the honest projection.
Do I think this team is better?
Yes. We finally have an offensive line coach who looks like he knows how to coach an offensive line. We might have a functional defensive coordinator. I sat down to make a whole video about last year’s defense and abandoned it, because reviewing it is miserable.
Do you know how many times last season we allowed explosive plays because the three-man front stunted and the linebackers were out of position and it sucked and it’s fucking horrible? If we don’t allow 75-yard runs like we did against Minnesota and Michigan, we’ll be better off as a defense and a team.
What I’d rather do: the Osborne approach
If you’ve read Tom Osborne’s books — More Than Winning, On Solid Ground — Osborne does not talk about winning games when he prepares his teams.
He talks about performance. He set specific goals for each game, and the goals were not “win the game.” They were things his team could control and measure. You could accomplish your goals and lose. You could win and fail them.
That’s the frame I want for the 2026 season. I want to know whether Nebraska played good football.
So I’ve pulled a set of statistics from cfbstats.com, which is where I get most of my numbers. These are plain statistics, not advanced analytics. I can get nerdy, but I don’t think you need to be that nerdy to tell whether a team is playing good football.
Every benchmark below is the top 25% nationally in that category. In other words, if we score 32 points a game, we’re in the top 25% of offenses.
When it comes to explosive plays, I believe Dana Holgerson has mentioned that we need five explosive plays a game.
Offense
- Points per game — 32.0
- Yards per play — 6.1
- Yards per pass attempt — 8.0
- Explosive plays per game (10+ yard rush, 20+ yard pass) — 5.0
- Third down conversion rate — 44%
- Red zone touchdown rate — 67%
- Sacks allowed per game — 1.6
Defense
- Points allowed per game — 20.0
- Yards per carry allowed — 3.7
- Opponent red zone trips per game — 3.2
- Opponent red zone touchdown rate — 55%
- Sacks per game — 2.5
Both sides of the ball
- Turnover margin per game — +0.5
- Takeaways per game — 1.75
Why these and not others
I chose yards per play and yards per attempt over raw rushing and passing totals on purpose. The standard fan take is “if we rush for 200 yards we win.” Sure — but if it took fifty carries to get there, that tells me almost nothing about the offensive line. Yards per attempt tells you whether your line is winning, whether your backs are hitting the right hole, and whether your quarterback is throwing to people who can do something with the ball.
Explosive plays get their own line because Dana Holgorsen has said publicly that five a game is the target. Last year’s defense surrendered explosive plays like the explosive diarrhea plague that’s going around. Our offense needs to do that to other teams.
Third down rate and red zone touchdown rate are both really about the same thing: can you finish? Getting to the red zone is not an accomplishment. Getting seven instead of three is.
Sacks allowed is the offensive line again, from the other direction. We gave up an enormous number last year and I want to see that fixed in a way I can measure rather than a way I can feel.
On defense, yards per carry is the one I’ll be watching hardest. Last year we were around 4.8. At 4.8, a team gets first and second down and is essentially already at the sticks. At 3.7 you’re actually stopping people. Last year’s run defense was genuinely bad, and teams that reached our red zone scored touchdowns something like 37 or 38 times.
One year we give up too many touchdown passes, the next year too many on the ground. Maybe this year we manage to not be catastrophic at either. I hope Aurich is a good defensive coordinator, because getting run over was what killed that team.
And the takeaways. We haven’t been a takeaway defense in a long time, largely because you don’t generate turnovers when you’re getting gashed. Turnover margin and takeaways per game might be the two most win-correlated numbers on this entire list.
LET ME KNOW IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ANY OF THESE
The name
I need something catchy to put on the graphic. What I’ve got so far: Above the Line. Clearing the Bar. The Top Quarter — which sounds like a saloon, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. The Husker 15, which is admittedly cheesy. A few others worth considering: The Osborne Standard, The Performance Board, Good Football Grade.
If you’ve got a better one, the comments are open. Same goes for the stats themselves — tell me which ones you’d cut, which ones I’m missing, and whether I ought to be tracking special teams too.
Some one on Youtube suggested I call it – IN YOUR DREAMS”. Looks like that person is a Ducks’ fan. I THINK I’m GOING WITH THIS! Because if we reach these categories, we will be a good football team. And that would be well within my dreams.
One last thing
There’s a contingent that’s already at 4-8, and they’d rather be right about it than watch Nebraska have a good season. Get those people out of your life.
Matt Rhule still has time to establish whether he’s a used car salesman at the low end of the lot or a used car salesman at the… well, Bugatti would be a bit much. Maybe an Audi saleperson.
We’re a week out from the 2026 Nebraska football season. This has been a shitty summer. Began with a stroke, our beloved dog Esther died, I have barely fished or done anything.
I am ready to bitch about what everyone else is bitching about now.
Go Big Red.
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