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

The cost of Nebraska football's quiet signing day

·56 min·3 clips

Dylan Raiola’s December 2023 decision changed how Nebraska approached the 2024 recruiting class.

1. The Pick Six Podcast focuses on Nebraska football’s quiet signing day, plus basketball, softball, and offseason roster questions. 2. Evan Bland and Sam McEwen of the Omaha World-Herald host the episode, and McEwen’s reporting on Nebraska recruiting, staff changes, and roster management drives most of the analysis. 3. The episode asks what Nebraska’s muted signing day and staff turnover say about Matt Rhule’s program-building plan. 4. McEwen says signing day is “the quietest signing day maybe ever,” and Dylan Berryman is the day’s lone clear addition. 5. He says Nebraska’s high school recruiting class is very small and may become the smallest class the program has ever signed. 6. McEwen links that small number to the earlier surge in high school recruiting after Rhule arrived and to the new roster cap realities. 7. The conversation shifts to Rhule’s talks with Trev Alberts and the need to get Nebraska “really, really good at everything that they need to do.” 8. McEwen says the staff is focused on operational details like travel, room assignments, nutrition, and game-week processes. 9. He argues that Nebraska’s season can turn on “a handful of plays,” which makes those procedures matter before kickoff. 10. The hosts then discuss the defensive adjustments after the season, including the replacement of Tony White-era help with Rob Orich on the defensive side. 11. McEwen says some late-game issues last season were not about Monday-through-Friday preparation, but about in-game responses when plays broke down. 12. He uses the Minnesota game and the Penn State game as examples of Nebraska not looking like itself after strong previous weeks. 13. The episode also examines Antonio Calandria, whom McEwen says brings “moxie,” improvisation, and self-assurance to the quarterback room. 14. Bland compares Calandria’s personality to Joe Ganz and Casey Thompson, and McEwen says Calandria’s background at Notre Dame and Clemson gives Nebraska a different kind of veteran. 15. Special teams becomes a major topic when the hosts unpack the promotion of Brett Maher and the retention of Nick Humphrey. 16. McEwen says Nebraska is keeping the Eckler teaching system while trying to preserve continuity after Ed Foley’s departure. 17. The tone is conversational and report-driven, with Bland asking follow-up questions and McEwen answering from reporting, observation, and roster memory. 18. The style mixes staff-room debate with specific examples from Penn State, Minnesota, Utah, Maryland, and Nebraska’s special teams history. 19. People who follow Nebraska football recruiting, staff moves, and roster construction. 20. People looking for game-by-game football breakdowns or deep staff politics.

As heard by us

Signing day frames a broad Nebraska update that links football turnover to basketball's bounce-back and the start of spring sports.

This episode starts with signing day and then moves into Nebraska football's offseason churn: special teams turnover, coaching continuity, and the small personnel calls that can make a program feel steadier or shakier than it really is.

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