Dylan Raiola on his message to Nebraska fans this season: 'Buckle up, it's gonna be a fun ride'
As Nebraska gets set to open its season season under coach Matt Rhule, excitement is through the roof in part because five-star freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola will be taking the reins.
And Raiola had a message for the Cornhuskers faithful ahead of the season opener.
“Buckle up, it’s gonna be a fun ride,” Raiola said.
A 6-foot-3, 230-pound quarterback, Raiola has some of that rare flair to his game that can really make an audience gasp. He does things few others would even attempt, busting out an underhand throw here or an off-hand flip there.
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That’s not why he won the job for Nebraska, though, and knowing when to channel that kind of energy will be paramount.
“I think he’s really cleaned up his footwork in the pocket, which is one of the big things,” Rhule said of Dylan Raoila recently. “I know sometimes people want us to name a starter because it’s the most convenient thing, but at the end of the day we want to be a program where you earn things. And so while you might be ahead of people, until you show me you can do this, you’re not the starter, and that challenges people to go do this.
“And so I think one of the biggest things for Dylan has been, and it’s really a lot about young quarterbacks now, is Dylan can drop back and throw it behind his back and probably hit you. He can throw it underhanded. But we don’t want to do that unless we have to.”
Then there’s all the stuff that goes into managing a gameplan each week. This week it might be UTEP, but down the road it’ll be Ohio State and USC.
Nothing can be missed.
“I think you’ve got to take each opponent as its own, respect your opponent and you’ve got to study,” Dylan Raiola said. “It’s actually funny, one of our receivers was watching tape and he forgot what color UTEP was. But we’re watching different stuff getting ready for UTEP, so that’s the challenge, not knowing where people are going to be lined up.”
It’s Raiola’s job to put all the pieces together and make them fit on gameday.
Flashing that sort of confidence that some of the other true greats have, the young Nebraska signal-caller made a bit of a promise to the fans.
“We have everything we need, all our guns are loaded and ready to fire, so whatever it takes on Saturday it’s gonna happen,” Dylan Raiola said.