The Pick Six Podcast - Husker sports news and analysis · Omaha World-Herald

Nebraska spring football preview and transfer player draft

February 18, 2026·54 min·3 clips

The transfer portal has completely changed how teams build rosters in college football recruiting.

Sam McEwen and Evan Bland open on Nebraska's spring football practice and the cold snap hanging over it. The weather becomes a small but telling backdrop for the tone the staff wanted out of the opening work. From there the conversation shifts to Matt Rule and the roster he has to sort through. The quarterbacks sit at the center of that picture, and the hosts spend time comparing one option's fit with the kind of offense Nebraska wants to run. They also weigh the skill talent around him and argue that Nebraska's group may be better than the one he left behind at Virginia. The discussion stays grounded rather than polished. Running back becomes the sharper debate. One side thinks the room is being underrated. The other keeps coming back to the same issue: there is still very little proven production to lean on. They run through the names and the results that exist. One player flashed briefly against Utah. Another moved positions. Another did not show much after early in the season. A true freshman enters as part of the plan. That leaves the whole room resting on projection. The hosts make clear that Nebraska has not dipped into the portal to solve it. Instead, the staff has doubled down on its own evaluation. The conversation briefly loosens for a nickname riff and a bit of local humor, but it keeps returning to the same central question. Can Nebraska's spring optimism survive contact with the evidence already on the roster? Their answer is that the Huskers might be better than the loudest skeptics think, but they still have to prove it.

As heard by us

A spring football preview that treats Nebraska's running back questions as the main story.

Sam McEwen and Evan Bland use Nebraska's spring football window to get to the part that actually matters: the roster questions. The conversation starts with the weather and the first week of practice, then settles into the quarterback talk, the comparison with Virginia, and the…

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Why you'd press play

You want a Nebraska spring preview that argues the roster like it matters.

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