“[Dylan Raiola] is really working on his body composition. He won’t be a great quarterback at 240lb, right? So getting his body composition to where he can be fleet of foot, slide nimbly, and move within the pocket.” said Huskers head coach Matt Rhule when asked about his QB1 at the outset of spring camp. What does that statement, verging on an indictment, imply? That Raiola weighs 240 pounds. Fairly straightforward. Apparently, that’s not what Coach Rhule meant at all. He’s even telling off the media for believing that. Here’s a tale of how a coach potentially lets slip information that causes his star player to catch some flak before then seeing a window of opportunity. And, backtracking, he suggests that maybe his comments were misconstrued.

Dylan Raiola’s a stud quarterback who can zip that pigskin around rather well. However, he comes from a family of offensive linemen. Dylan’s dad is NFL vet and Lions’ legend Dominic Raiola. His uncle, Donovan Raiola, is also a former pro and current O-line coach for Nebraska. This lineage lends to him just naturally being a little big-bodied. So maintaining weight can be tricky, especially in the off-season. When spring practice began, fans noticed Raiola was fitting a tad bit too tight into his threads! This led to Matt Rhule being confronted about whether he’d indeed put on weight. And it spawned the aforementioned comment. Mind you, Raiola’s listed at 230lb. So 240lb wasn’t out of bounds. Now that a fortnight or so has passed, Raiola appears slimmer. But instead of coach Rhule simply acknowledging his QB’s efforts, he took this chance to flip the script.

During his latest presser, Matt Rhule said, “I thought it was really poor on some people’s parts. If you went back and listened to what I said, I said, ‘[Raiola] knows he can’t be 240lb.’ I didn’t say he ‘was’ 240lb. People ran with that, and it’s something that’s unfortunate. I’m very marked with how I say things. I say things a specific way. All I said was, he knows he can’t be something,”  There’s either of 2 things at work here. Rhule’s either being candid and telling the truth – which he’s earned the benefit of the doubt for the masses to believe. Or he’s just clearing his name and trying to protect his QB1. In both cases, Rhule was shooting not-very-subtle subliminals. At anybody who gave a platform to what he alleges was false information, even though there’s a case for believing it very much was true.

In the aftermath of this, Mitch Sherman of The Athletic and the Locked on Nebraska podcast – who did discuss the initial comments – seemed to think Rhule may have indeed been trying to be a bit misleading with his latest comments. Sherman also suggested Rhule was being somewhat naive by thinking his comments didn’t imply that Dylan Raiola weighed 240 pounds. “If we are to take this at face value and believe that Rhule didn’t throw out that number for a specific reason, because he was trying to motivate Dylan or whatever… then I guess you could say that Rhule, in a rare instance, kind of stepped in it back then.” said Sherman.

“You have to know that if you say that – no matter what the nuance of the words – if you say, ‘[Raiola] knows he can’t be 240’ or ‘He has to get down from 240’, whatever it is, people are going to interpret that in a certain way,” added Mitch Sherman. Only Coach Rhule knows what he was really trying to denote the first time around. However, what really matters is that Dylan Raiola looks fit now. His doppelganger, Patrick Mahomes, is known to carry a bit of extra weight around in the offseason. At least Dylan isn’t mimicking that aspect! As overblown as it may have seemed, there’s a reason why the alleged weight gain became such a prominent part of discourse in and around Lincoln.

Matt Rhule and Dylan Raiola face a conundrum around what’s his best body-composition

Dylan Raiola is a gifted athlete who’s got football blood quite literally coursing through his veins. However, he’s not the most mobile. Sure, Raiola can navigate the pocket and do enough to avoid getting sacked if and when it collapses. Maybe even scramble for a few yards from time to time, move the chains. But he’s not someone who can go on designed runs downfield or pick significant yardage with his legs. Which he actually does try to do, and often ends up paying for it. You see, Raiola doesn’t exactly have his quarterback ‘slide’ figured out yet. Which leaves him open to injury.

Raiola had to exit a game against UCLA in early November last season owing to a back injury after a mishap while sliding. Not having your QB slide on lock as a true freshman in college is fine. Some of the greats in the NFL still mistime them. But one thing that offsets this issue for Dylan Raiola is that he’s bulkier relative to the average quarterback. Which makes him less susceptible to injury. So if he gained more weight, it’d make him less mobile. But also less injury-prone. This is a catch-22 that even the likes of Lamar Jackson have battled with. When rumours around the weight gain hit the airwaves, Nebraska folk began contemplating whether it’s really even a bad thing.

Well, Coach Rhule certainly seems to want Dylan on the lower end of the threshold. Have him be more mobile, more “nimble” as he proclaimed. Injuries are just an ugly byproduct and come with the territory of being a football player. Developing that QB slide and learning how to avoid hits will help Raiola elongate what is trending towards being a great career. He’ll hope his sophomore year entails a leap and not a slump. The Big Red yearns to get back to the upper echelons of the sport it once dominated, and Dylan Raiola is the key to the operation.