Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule explains how the five-star freshman won the Huskers starting QB job

The wait is finally over: Five-star true freshman Dylan Raiola is the starting quarterback of Nebraska football.

That statement alone is incredibly remarkable in its own right, given the Raiola family legacy, their history with the program and everything that happened between his initial recruitment to Nebraska and his eventual signing with the Huskers last December.

But that’s a story for a different day.

In the here and now, Raiola being the Huskers’ starter for the 2024 season was predicted all the way back to the night he committed, it only got stronger in January and became a foregone conclusion by the time the first scrimmage had wrapped up in April.

After that, it was merely a formality.

That long-drawn-out process is officially over as of Wednesday morning, when Matt Rhule and the Huskers made the QB1 announcement through a social media post without much glitz, glamor or fanfare.

There’s no problem whatsoever with using that sort of approach to the official news break of Raiola now being the starter, and that type of method was to be expected. Rhule was always going to reveal the official decision – even though it had been decided many months ago – with the same tone that he had handled all of the quarterback discussions when Raiola’s name came up: Nondescript.

Much more important than the way that Raiola as QB1 was revealed, obviously, is how it all came to be.

How did the former blue-chip prospect and legacy recruit put his stamp on the job so quickly?

Rhule dove further into that discussion tonight.