Andy & Ari On3 - Nebraska HOLDS ON to edge Cincinnati, is the one-score curse dead?

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Andy and Ari break down Nebraska's 20-17 win against Cincinnati in Kansas City. Our show is presented by BetMGM! See BetMGM.com for Terms. 21+ only. US promotional offers not available in New York, Nevada, Ontario, or Puerto Rico. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER (Available in the US). Call 877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY). Call 1-800-NEXT-STEP (AZ), 1-800-327-5050 (MA), 1-800-BETS-OFF (IA), 1-800-981-0023 (PR). First Bet Offer for new customers only. Subject to eligibility requirements. Rewards are non-withdrawable bonus bets that expire in 7 days. In partnership with Kansas Crossing Casino and Hotel. Join On3 today and get one full year of access to The Athletic included! https://www.on3.com/subscribe/C Watch us on YouTube! https://youtube.com/live/1gBEW3reZhw Hosts: Andy Staples, Ari WassermanProducer: River Bailey Interested in partnering with the show? Email [e-mail]

Welcome to Andy and Ari on 3. It's an instant reaction. We're, of course, presented by BetMGM and Ari. We just watched Nebraska hold on to beat Cincinnati. 20 to 17. You are now up in our picks competition because Nebraska did not cover. That's 2.0 now. Oh, yeah.

That's right. I'm 2 and 0 in the season, bud. That's right. That's right, because you're in Armageddon. Yeah, that's right. All right. Nebraska holds on. They win a one-score game.

This is, you know, Matt Rule's first game is Nebraska coach a couple years ago. They're at Minnesota. You've got Jeff Sims throwing the crippling interception. That didn't happen here. Now, Dillera took a pretty bad sack there when they could have probably put the game away. but Nebraska's D came up. They made an interception. They had, well, before that, had an incredible punt, which it changed special teams coaches this offseason.

So I ask you this, Ari, is the one score curse over for Nebraska? Yeah, I mean, it's funny, you know, working together for a long time. But, you know, I was watching the game and when they threw the pick there at the end, I'm like, well, it's good that Nebraska won, but are they happy? because you would think and hold on I've got a mic issue here let me fix it real quick put up the sign put up the sign yeah I picked the camera as the microphone

can you hear me better now hopefully but like for a minute there at the end I thought they were going to lose and I do think that there is something to winning games like that at the same time the Nebraska that a lot of the Nebraska fans were anticipating this off

season. The Nebraska fans and my mentions when I said I was taking Cincinnati plus six and a half, I think even your expectation to a certain extent was that Nebraska was going to arrive tonight in terms of national relevance or being scary and I'm not sure that occurred.

When they went up 2010, I thought, okay, they're playing good D here. They're going to put this. They'll probably score another field goal or score another touchdown and put this game away. Instead, what happened was they let, since he marched down the field, even though since he couldn't throw the ball to save its life all night.

And it's like, you know they're going to run. You know if you get any pressure at all. Dylan Sorsby is going to escape the pocket and start running. So you know exactly what they're going to do and you just let them do it anyway. And that's kind of the problem. So it was a nine-play 75-yard drive in 321. I got to check. I don't know how many yards they gained in there.

the air on that drive. I don't think it was very many. It was, like, you knew what they're going to do the entire time, and you just let them run through you. And that part is scary because guess who Nebraska plays in about three weeks, a team that couldn't throw at all last year, but could run it whenever they wanted to and had a really good defense. It's a supercharged version of this team that you played tonight. It's Michigan. I'm seeing this in the chat. I saw it a lot on Twitter,

and I kind of felt it myself. Did they feel slow to you? Not, I don't know, it's slow. I was a little more concerned about the amount of push that Cincinnati's offensive line got on Nebraska's D-line. That was the more concerning thing to me. I don't know, I don't know how good of a downfield thrower, Dylan Rao is.

And maybe that they weren't protecting him enough. But, like, I know D.N. Key's fast. I've seen him be fast. I've seen him run DBs in the SEC. You did mention in the text that we were having during the game that you thought he was improved last year. And I wanted to make a point because, you know, I made Nebraska fans upset twice this offseason the first time being on the show when I said I doubted whether or not Dylan Rayola will be able to grow from his inability to escape and evade pressure or freelance well enough to be a really, really top level first round quarterback.

And I stole that from Cody Belair, our talent evaluator, who told me that. And I could never unsee it when watching him. And there was one play in this game that I thought would have ended up being a sack last year that turned out to extend the drive and it ended in a touchdown drive. It was the second to last possession they had. Do you remember that? I know exactly which player you're talking about. And I think, yeah, he slides up.

the pocket there's pressure he kind of evades one tackler and then goes around and runs for a first down and then you know that last year would have been a punt and they were up by three at the time and then instead they cap a drive with a touchdown past the dain key in the red zone and like i fourth down by the way that was a hell of way and i i don't know that pointing out that a quarterback scrambling on third and seven to a first down is an overly complex or, you know, deep thought in terms of how big they can be in a game. But I think in the context of the conversations that we had about Dylan Raola this offseason, that was something that I was unsure he was able to do.

So seeing him be able to do it, I think makes you feel good. On the other hand, like, if we want to look at this Nebraska team and say, yeah, this is a playoff team, that's not what I saw tonight. So it's like feel good that we won. I think our guy, Josh Pate, may have overestimated them. Yeah, I mean, I felt very similar to watching them last year. But also, growth as a program means that if they are the team that they were last year, that means they win a lot of games.

There was a fan that they zoomed in on during the broadcast at the end of the game, Andy. I know you saw this, that said, the T-shirt read, the team, we almost win. we almost always almost win and it was really funny i don't know if you saw that um didn't see that that describes nebraska football for the last 10 years basically and look is the next step in the progression actually winning these games consistently and then playoff like i i just don't know like i know that there's a lot to be excited about about how fast you can flip a team and how much you can accomplish in one year indiana gave us a nice you know viewpoint of how quickly you can change your destiny.

But, you know, before we start biting off too much, we can chew about the playoff and contending for the Big Ten championship. And again, I'm not burying Nebraska as a team that could be good this year. But if they are the same team they were last year, except three of the one possession games they lost, turned into wins, isn't that huge growth for a program that's trying to build something sustainable? Massive growth. Massive.

You know, I think I struggle too, Andy, with my overreactions to things. or my prisoner of the moment things. The thing that I am doubting, and I'm not trying to be like rude or make people feel bad. Dylan Rayola was supposed to be something. I don't know if I see that there. This is you not being able to let go

of the five-star quarterback thing. I'm doing the opposite. I'm saying I'm not sure he could ever live up to that at this point. Like, do you see that potential? No, I don't know that he will. That's what I'm saying. From a talent standpoint. But that doesn't mean he can't be a good college quarterback.

That doesn't mean he can't be a good quarterback in Nebraska. And you saw a period of night where he's dealing. He had nine straight completions at one point. And he's throwing from different arm slots. He's making good choices with the ball. Like all of these things that weren't happening last year. Like go back to the Illinois game and watch crunch time in that game. This was growth.

Yeah, I think there was growth there. I think that he was build as sensational, and I don't know that I see that. And again, I'm not burying by us. Like, yeah, yeah, right. This is the same, this is the same thing we talked about with Avery Johnson. It's not Avery Johnson's fault. We hyped him up. Yeah, no, I know.

But I trust, and you do too, are evaluations of talent. And speaking of our evaluator, Cody Belair, he's in the check right now. He shouldn't have been a consensus five star in the first place, which is the issue, in my opinion. But he's always been extremely talented, potential top 100 pick even. He's talking about in the draft. And you saw definite growth in his ability to process tonight. Maybe that is because Dana Holgerson has made an offense that is better for him. Or maybe he's just gotten better as a quarterback or a combination of both.

But I did like the way he was playing. The sack he took there on that last drive, that was rough. But there weren't a lot of, oh, my God, mistakes. There was one play, and they got very lucky. There was one play. He was a fourth down play. He gets pressured. He tries to throw to a safety valve outside.

It's not really a safety valve because there's a, there's a DB, just wait, just sitting on the ball. And the DB gets a jump. if he catches the ball it's a pick it's a pick six that was the only one i saw it was like that is bad massive danger everything else he was very under control and he made good choices yeah 243 yards against a pretty safe defense i think is a pretty efficient evening right no interceptions you like 33 or 42 like i mean i i'm not trying to act like he sucked you know that's not what i'm saying yeah i mean you you'd like a little better yard They were, they were playing it pretty safe.

They weren't throwing it down the field very much. But in a game like that, that's fine. Cincinnati threw for 69 yards. So the one thing you've got to avoid is the crippling interception mistake, which, by the way, Matt Ruhl has seen in his Nebraska tenure. So they didn't have that, and that is why they won the game. You know, when we talked to- So I get to try to build on that.

When we talked to Scott Satterfield at Big 12 Media Day, we were visiting with him, he said that Cincinnati's number one issue last year was inability to get separation in the receiver room and that they tried really, really hard to, you know, address that in the off season. And it felt like nobody was getting open. Now, they started picking on Malcolm Hartsock Jr. late, and you saw it culminate in the holding, defensive holdings. penalty that kept a drive alive. But then Hartzog goes back and makes the pick. And he's the hero. So like, yeah, Nebraska's secondary, I felt good about their D-line. We'll see. Cincinnati actually has a pretty good offensive line. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to go crazy on that. And Thomas in the chat points out, are we forgetting we had a running back over 100 yards? That shows growth. Yes, Emmett Johnson, 25 carries for 108 yards. And I thought,

thought, for the most part, they did run the ball when they needed to. I thought they were going to run the ball all the way down Cincinnati's throw it on that final drive, and then they ran a few weird plays. Like, they were doing pretty well getting the three, four yards of pop there. He started going east west a little too much, I thought. East West that lost two yards, and then the second downplay was a sack, and that ended their drive. And I thought that that was a little bit cutesy for the way that they were, because like Nebraska, if they would have just ran down the field there and ran the clock out

without giving Cincinnati the ball back, I think maybe we'd have a little bit of a different taste in our mouth. I don't know why Cincinnati took that shot downfield. If you had 69 yards passing for the entire game, that's not the spot you do that. They had plenty of time, and they were slippery with the quarterback position. I thought Sorsby was really, really quick and had a lot of really good faith. I think they felt like they had Hartzog on the ropes, and they were going to go. They had made a decision to go at him every single play because they had gone out in the previous two plays. And that's exactly, I think that's exactly what it was. They saw he's lined up on the field there and they take a shot.

I didn't haven't rewatch it since it was live, but was he beaten? Like on a better throw? No, he made an incredible play on the ball. Yeah, but was the ball underthrown or was he just not open? I don't remember. He was not open. Yeah. Harts up covered it really well.

So even throwing that to me in that situation was, you know, kind of a weird thought, because I thought they were going to be able to think and dunk down the field. They were doing it, you know, they were doing. Going at him is exactly what they were doing. That was clearly the point. That was the first pass they threw that was more than 10 yards down the field in the last, however many minutes it was. Like I just feel like the shot that they took there in that moment was an unnecessary shot. Like it was like the game was gambled on in that moment when they had more.

We can we can we can do a lot with Scott Satterfield toward the end of the game. Taking the last time out with 2.16 to go instead of letting it run down to the two minute timeout and then you have that one timeout with the ball. instead of just having to rely on going out of bounds to stop the clock or throwing incomplete passes to stop the clock. That was one I was a little bit concerned about. And yeah, I mean, maybe you just let Brendan Sorsby scramble or maybe you try to dink and dung, but here's the problem. The clock was running.

They had no time out. So that's why I thought not saving that time out hurt them because it put them in a position where they had to throw, and they hadn't thrown very well all game. Yeah, I'm having a hard time actually analyzing and breaking down how a Nebraska fan feels right now because I was watching them on Twitter freak out for four quarters and now they're in the chat. They can freak out amongst themselves. We're not allowed to be critical at all.

They freak out amongst themselves during the game, but once it's over, then they were awesome. But I really would like to know, like, if you're a Nebraska fan, and you should be happy, you want a game, you want a close game against the power four opponent. That's always a good thing. But how are we feeling? Like truthfully, and I'm not in the club. Clearly not. So I don't know if I'm allowed to have that conversation with them.

But like, how do you think they're feeling? Like happy or a disappointment? Well, I think they're happy. I think they're, but they're nervous. I think they're nervous about the rest of the season. But they should be happy. They should be really happy because these were the games that they lost for so many years. and they won.

So you've got to enjoy that. You have to enjoy that. Because think about the heartbreak that these guys have been through. Like the Iowa game last year, the Illinois game last year, I could name a billion games during the Scott Frost era. It is, you know, it's fun. This is progress. I'm telling you.

Andy, that you're saying this. And listen, I've taken a lot of pot shots from Nebraska fans this summer. I've covered a lot of games there. I've seen the passion of that fan base. I've seen how loyal they've been. I think they've been steadfastly loyal during a time in which other fan bases would have become apathetic. And I found myself in this game rooting for them to win.

Like in the fourth quarter, I was like, you know what? These people have suffered enough. Yes, I think so. And when he threw the pick, I was like, I was like, hell yeah, because I had plus seven. It was like the game's over. But I was like, that's good. At least like, you know, you can, even if you're down a little bit, you can go into the next few weeks, kind of sharpen some things up and then maybe, you know, hit Michigan at the right time. You know, they're good people with, and I respect how passionate they remained during a time in which it would have been easy to become frustrated or to become apathetic.

um good win i don't know that it was a great win i you know i think that there was this notion and like i follow will compton online so like i see will they're all they're all great at this point are yeah like i'm gonna go like seek out will compton's like thoughts on this because like i don't know if me following him and a lot of him having a huge platform now like altered my reality of like what people were expecting but you know leading into the game we talked about this on the PIC show on Thursday morning, people weren't, didn't think Cincinnati plus six and a half

was the right play. Like, the thought process was Nebraska is going to kick the crap out of him, I felt like, and that didn't happen. So I wonder how he feels about it. You know, he's like, oh, my God, I, we're going to have a 10-win season for the first time since I was a senior in college.

And it's like, I wonder, like, what his thought is now. But it's a good win. single possession wins are good. That T-shirt said we almost always almost win. You won today. They didn't almost win. They won one. They won. And they should have a few weeks here now to get a few more wins. And listen,

I know that there's no way they're going to lose to Akron or Houston Christian. So if they can go into Michigan home game up 3-0, which I anticipate they will, that could be a really, really exciting big game. And we don't know what Michigan will be at that point either. Ari, look at that schedule. And producer river points out, great job recognizing the Houston Christian logo and not saying Yukon.

I was reading the win. I wasn't looking at his graphic just so he knows. I'm not going to take credit. If they could win the Michigan game, Ari, you could be talking about a team that would be six and no going to the Minnesota game. And I watched that whole Minnesota game tonight against Buffalo. I like Minnesota's young quarterback, Drake Lindsay,

but he made some mistakes. too like their defense was good their offense kind of sputtered at times i i think nebraska should feel pretty good about where they're at right now um you look at that schedule that river put up and you see why josh paid put them in the playoff mm-hmm that's a very that's a very manageable schedule there are some there's some you know time bombs on there's some landmines, you know, but they could conceivably with what I saw tonight still make it the 7-0-8-0. And then maybe we'll be having a different conversation. So, you know, it's so much, being 1-0 is so much better than being 0-1-1. Taylor Swift was in the building. You know,

everyone gets excited about that. How's that dinner? And her future husband got to watch his alma a moderate lose to you, Nebraska. Yeah, Pat Mahomes was there. I saw. The whole band was there. So it was a good night for Nebraska, and a lot of times when they've been isolated on TV with the entire country watching, they've kind of lost in these scenarios. And they did, so good for you. The one score curse may be dead, which, hey, so they mentioned on the broadcast a million

times. Matt Rule, I think they said three and ten in one score games in Nebraska. So now four in ten, I just keep on going. Keep on going. That's the thing. I just, like you said earlier, these people have been through so much heartbreak to see them get one like this where it could have gone really badly. And I thought after that defensive holding call that it was going to go really badly.

There are so many fan bases that check out during the downturns. Like how many fan bases out there, like from a percentage standpoint, do you think would have been? remained this steadfastly loyal to the team with the product that they got for the last 10 years. Very few. Very few. And I respect that. And I think that that should be rewarded because

to me, you know, the best part about being a fan is living through the bad times. That's what makes the good times worth living through, right? Like going through it with your team, seeing the evolution, seeing the firings and the hirings and the mishaps and the

in the victories. I feel like success is more deserved, more enjoyable when you stuck through bad times. So, you know, Nebraska being good is good for us. Nebraska being good, I think, is to be cliche, good for college football,

and, you know, it couldn't happen to a better group of people. So, you know, it'd be great to see. Want to know. Want to know. That's all it matters tonight. Guys, great weekend coming up. Stick with us.

Got Auburn Baylor tomorrow night, got Colorado and Georgia Tech tomorrow night, and a whole mess of games on Saturday. This is going to be a lot of fun. What a way to start with a one-possession game. This time Nebraska wins it. Talk to you soon.