Husker fans, Saturday isn't a chess match. Matt Rhule told us so himself.
"This won't be a schematic game," Rhule said Monday. "This will be a execution game."
Nebraska is 3-0. It has topped 200 passing yards and 200 rushing yards in all three games, something no Husker team had done since 2016.
And not one of those games came against a Big Ten team.
Rhule spent part of Monday calling Luke Lindenmeyer maybe the best tight end in the country, then finished the thought with the line that hangs over this entire week:
"...we haven't played the Big Ten yet."
That ends at 4 p.m. CT Saturday in East Lansing.
The Air Raid guy knows who he works for
Dana Holgorsen got kicked out of the Air Raid club about 12 years ago. His words, not mine.
This week he told us exactly where he stands now.
"And everybody wants me to open it up and throw it all the time, but then there's the other half there saying run the damn ball, so to speak," Holgorsen said. "And I know who I work for, and Matt Rhule's an old school downhill run-based coach, and that's Big Ten style."
Read that middle part again. I know who I work for.
That's an offensive coordinator hearing a split fan base and refusing to pick a side in the comments. He picked the head coach.
Then somebody asked him to rank the conferences, and he wouldn't take the bait.
"...is it the Big Ten, the best conference in the country or is it the SEC? I don't know," Holgorsen said. "...it's just everything's a little bit bigger, everything's a little bit tougher."
Rob Aurich didn't hedge at all. "Yeah, best conference in America," the defensive coordinator said.
The players already sound done with the debate. "If we want to run the ball, we're going to run it," Janiran Bonner said. Then, a few seconds later: "We going to do what we want to do."
Confidence is great. Saturday is where it gets checked.
Last year "wasn't a pleasant day"
Holgorsen has seen Joe Rossi's defense exactly once. He hasn't forgotten it.
"Just competed against him once. That was last year. And so as my interaction with him, it wasn't a pleasant day for us," Holgorsen said.
He said Nebraska started well, "but then we were in a rut for three quarters or whatever it was, two and a half quarters and found a way to come out of it."
Here's the part that should bother you. He thinks this year's Michigan State defense is better.
"...the physicality with how they play compared to last year, the speed with what they play, the discipline with how they play. It's a whole different set of challenges for us," Holgorsen said.
Rhule went further. Looking back at the games Nebraska struggled in last year, he named Minnesota and the "Joe Rossi blueprint," then added, "Michigan State we struggled in."
"I'm not saying that was the only reason," Rhule said, "but as I watched it, I was like, man, I love the way Iowa plays defense."
So the head coach studied the defense that gave him fits. Now his offense has to go beat it on the road. Holgorsen said the players had "game four kind of circled." He also admitted something that tells you how new this is: "I've never been to East Lansing."
The edges are coming for the right side
If Nebraska loses this game, I'd bet it starts on the edge.
"I think their edge rush and their edge players are as good as we'll see all year," Rhule said.
Eli Coenen, No. 96, leads Michigan State with three sacks. Holgorsen knows exactly what that means for his tackles over four quarters.
"Michigan State's got some guys that can come off the edge, right? And so they need to be fresh. They get wore down and that's not good for us," he said.
Nebraska's right side is Brendan Black at right guard and Gunnar Gottula at right tackle, with Tree Babalade rotating in. And Holgorsen put Babalade on blast in front of the cameras.
"Yeah, Tree needs to practice better. He'll play better and he'll play more."
That's a public challenge the week you face the best edge group on your schedule. Watch Babalade's snaps Saturday. They'll tell you whether he answered it.
LeVar Woods is on the other sideline now
Carriker already covered Nebraska's slow special teams start this week. My worry is who's on the other side.
LeVar Woods is Michigan State's assistant head coach and special teams coordinator. He came from Iowa. Rhule didn't hide how much he respects him.
"Yeah, LeVar's a great coach. You know, I interviewed him at one point when I was in the [NFL]. I thought he was one of the best that there is in college," Rhule said.
Then there's Kenneth Williams. Michigan State's kick returner, No. 32, has three returns for 90 yards. The Spartans' roster lists his last school as Lincoln, Nebraska. On Oct. 25, 2025, he took a kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown for Nebraska against Northwestern.
Now he's returning kicks against the program he did it for.
"Obviously Kenneth Williams is there. We're always rooting for Kenneth," Rhule said.
Rooting for him on Saturday is another story. And Rhule was blunt about his own unit: "We've had too many penalties on the special teams. Some I thought were a good call. Some I didn't think they were, but it doesn't really matter what you think. They're going to call what they call."
Nobody gets to hide behind "execution"
"And I can't stand when coaches say we just didn't execute. To me, that's our job as coaches."
Now put that next to what his own quarterback said after North Dakota. "...I think we executed to a point we honestly didn't execute that at a high level tonight, but we got to clean some things up," Anthony Colandrea said postgame.
That's not a feud. It's a standard. And Pat Fitzgerald's teams are built to punish anyone who doesn't meet it.
"They're going to win the turnover battle. They're not going to have penalties. They have half as many penalties through three games as we do," Rhule said. That's his count, and he clearly believes it.
The defense has its own box to check. "We haven't hit that mark when it comes to takeaway generation," Aurich said.
Rhule's summary of the whole afternoon: "This won't be a game where you remain fresh. This will be a battle, a four quarter war."
Gottula already has the plan. "Just kind of chipping away for first three quarters and then try to go win it in the fourth quarter."
Take them seriously anyway
Michigan State is 2-1, and the loss came 27-10 at No. 3 Notre Dame.
Fitzgerald is in his first year in East Lansing, but this is his 18th season as a Big Ten head coach, and he's 6-6 against Nebraska. He is not going to be surprised by anything.
Cam Edwards, No. 0, leads the Spartans with 288 rushing yards and three touchdowns. "There's not necessarily a hole there and he makes a hole," Aurich said.
"They're not going to beat themselves," Gottula said. "So it's just going to come down to us versus them, just being technically sound and being physical."
What I'll be watching, and my pick
First, second down. If Nebraska is behind the chains early, we find out how serious "run the damn ball" really is.
Second, the right side against Coenen in the fourth quarter, when Holgorsen's "wore down" worry becomes real.
Third, every kickoff. Woods and Williams only need one.
Nebraska is favored by 5.5. I think it's closer to Rhule's four quarter war than to a comfortable road win, and I think the team that commits fewer penalties wins it.
My pick is still TBD as I need to think this through.
Rhule says he tells his team the same thing every week. "It's never good enough. I'm never good enough. We're never good enough."
Saturday, in a stadium Holgorsen has never seen, good enough finally gets graded by the Big Ten.
Kickoff is 4 p.m. CT on BTN. GBR.
