In case you hadn’t heard, the Nebraska football team begins fall camp this week. More than seven months after Matt Rhule’s team ended the 2025 season with a whimper in Las Vegas, a new season is finally here. Thank God.
For fans of the Big Red, this season brings promise, intrigue, questions, hope, anxiety, and more. Can the Huskers make a third straight bowl game? Can they get beyond seven wins? Can a Nebraska football team finally look stronger in November than it did in September?
There will be plenty of time for all the questions. For now, as I read all the coverage from Big Ten media days, and obsess over the position battles and storylines and quotes that will be emerging from fall camp, there’s one big-picture, overriding thought I can’t get out of my head: the Nebraska football team needs to overperform in 2026.
What does overperform mean? I’m not talking playoff or conference championship here (those things would, of course, be lovely). But I am talking better than seven wins. Beating somebody (or somebodies) you’re not supposed to. In the words of Royal Tenenbaum, I’m talking about putting a brick through the other guy’s windshield.
I don’t want to be content to exhale with relief when we beat Maryland and Rutgers; I want to be elated about beating Indiana or Oregon. I want to take the fight to Illinois and Iowa, and be the one left standing at the end. Husker fans know what better looks like, and it needs to be better this year.
Here are three reasons why.