REVISITED: Where Does Dylan Raiola’s Freshman Season Rank Among Other Star QB Recruits?

Let’s compare some profiles and see what they can tell us about the future

Photo courtesy Nebraska Athletics.

Early last offseason, I wanted to find a historical framework for the quarterback experiment Nebraska was about to attempt as it handed the reins of its program rebuild to incoming star recruit Dylan Raiola. I detailed every five-star or top-100ish four-star quarterback to start at least six games as a true freshman for a major-conference team over the past 15 seasons. While the situations of most of those players ended up being quite a bit different than where Nebraska found itself entering 2024, those profiles — examining those 21 players’ recruiting rankings, true freshman performance, supporting casts, offensive styles and play-callers, and later college and NFL play — showed us the breadth of results we could expect from turning to a high-end recruit with no experience at the sport’s most important position:

I think it’s useful now to go back and look at where we’d slot Raiola’s first-year performance into that grouping of players and what it can tell us about future results. There’s not always a strong correlation between how you play quarterback as a freshman and how you perform later in your career — there are many historical examples of bad freshmen who later become good players, and there are at least some examples of good true freshmen who became bad or mediocre players later — and the surrounding variables around a quarterback in a team sport matter a lot. But you can also generally bucket these performances and see some trends.

While box score stats are a very imperfect measure and can’t really account for things like quality of supporting cast, quality of defenses faced, or play-calling or offensive philosophy, short of watching 15 years of film, they’re probably the best comparison tool we have.

Raiola’s performance of 2,819 yards, 13 touchdowns to 11 interception, 67.1% completion percentage and 27 sacks taken isn’t eye popping but also is far better than most other true freshman to play early. Some of the underlying metrics were even impressive regardless of age: Raiola was 22nd-best nationally in turnover-worthy-play percentage out of 94 qualifying starting FBS QBs last year, 36th in adjusted completion percentage, and 54th in pressure-to-sack ratio. He had a blistering start to the season in the UTEP through Purdue games, a stretch of very poor play from Rutgers through UCLA, and an increasingly strong close to the year from USC through Boston College. But whatever the ups and down, on the whole, as a true freshman, Raiola largely performed like an average power-conference starting QB, completing a lot of his passes and not often putting the ball in danger. That may not have met the expectations of people who were saying he would win the Heisman Trophy after the Northern Iowa game, but compared to the wide stretch of all true freshman starters at QB, just being functional/useful undoubtedly puts you on the very high end of the spectrum.

It is worth remembering that this is just a comparison to high-end recruits to start as freshmen in power conferences. There are many other true freshmen who aren’t star recruits who start at quarterback across college football, the vast, vast majority of whom play very poorly.

But Raiola wasn’t just any freshman — he was a top recruit. So he gets compared to other top recruits. A lot of these players put up some of the best freshman quarterback seasons we’ve seen; this is a comparison to the best of the best. But when your expectations are to be elite — as they are for Raiola — these are the peers you get compared to.

I’ve grouped this list into four categories of true freshman performances from the other quarterbacks I discussed last offseason:

• Players who performed clearly better than Raiola;

• Players who performed clearly worse than Raiola;

• Quasi-comps to Raiola; and

• Close comps to Raiola.

Let’s get started:

CLEARLY BETTER

Caleb Williams. Photo courtesy Oklahoma Athletics.

• Deshaun Watson, 2014 Clemson: 1,466 passing yards, 14-2 TD-INT ratio, 67.9% completion percentage, 8 sacks taken, 200 rushing yards and five touchdowns (four full games played)

• Brad Kaaya, 2014 Miami: 3,198 passing yards, 26-12 TD-INT ratio, 58.5% completion percentage, 20 sacks taken

• Josh Rosen, 2015 UCLA: 3,670 passing yards, 23-11 TD-INT ratio, 60.0% completion percentage, 15 sacks taken

• Jalen Hurts, 2016 Alabama: 2,780 passing yards, 23-9 TD-INT ratio, 62.8% completion percentage, 19 sacks taken, 954 rushing yards and 13 touchdowns

• Trevor Lawrence, 2018 Clemson: 3,280 passing yards, 30-4 TD-INT ratio, 65% completion percentage, 11 sacks taken, 177 rushing yards and one touchdown (nine full games played)

• Jayden Daniels, 2019 Arizona State: 2,943 passing yards, 17-2 TD-INT ratio, 60.7% completion percentage, 32 sacks taken, 332 rushing yards

• Sam Howell, 2019 North Carolina: 3,641 passing yards, 38-7 TD-INT ratio, 61.4% completion percentage, 36 sacks taken

• Caleb Williams, 2021 Oklahoma: 1,912 passing yards, 21-4 TD-INT ratio, 64.5% completion percentage, 20 sacks taken, 442 rushing yards and six touchdowns (seven full games played)

This top tier is largely a collection of the best true freshman quarterback seasons in the modern era. Five of the eight players on this list went on to be high NFL draft picks and starters, and of the the three who weren’t, Rosen was still picked in the top 10 and Kaaya and Howell would both be prolific college players and get drafted. Delivering results this good your first year is about as close as we can get to a guarantee that you’ll end up being at least a high-end college player, if not more.

Raiola didn’t make it to this tier. That obviously doesn’t rule out that he’ll ever be a star player, but he also definitively didn’t reach the supernova level required to be treated like a lock, either.

It’s worth pointing out that Raiola functioned at a disadvantage to every player here in surrounding talent and to many in “ease of scheme” or offensive coaching; Raiola’s box score numbers likely would have been much better than they were if he were playing with, say, the 2018 Clemson supporting cast and in the 2018 Clemson offensive scheme. It’s also a reminder of how seldom these caliber players go to schools outside of the elite programs.

Every quarterback in this tier was playing with a stacked offensive supporting cast; even the QBs playing for non-elite programs all had multiple future NFL starters in the lineup around them:

• Kaaya had first-round pick Phillip Dorsett and multi-contract slot Braxton Berrios at receiver, a top-10 pick at tackle in Ereck Flowers and future NFL IOL starters Jon Feliciano and Danny Isidora up front, and Duke Johnson and Gus Edwards in the backfield;

• Rosen had three future long-term NFL starters on the offensive line (Conor McDermott, Jake Brendel, and Colton Miller);

• Daniels was throwing to All-Pro Brandon Aiyuk and 2024 first-round pick Ricky Pearsall; and

• Howell had NFL picks Dyami Brown and Dazz Newsome at receiver and was handing off to a run game of two NFL starters in Javonte Williams and Michael Carter.

Raiola didn’t have any of that. A couple players from the Husker offense last season have an outside chance of being drafted late this spring or being undrafted free agents, but betting on any to be long-term productive NFL players seems like a stretch. Raiola was also playing in a run-heavy, play-action shot offense with difficult concepts until the final three regular season games, whereas most of these players who put up the bigger numbers were in spread-out systems like the Air Raid or Veer and Shoot.¹ I think it’s an open question if Raiola’s numbers would have reached these heights had he been playing with a better supporting cast and in a more box score-friendly system, but we’re going off the data we have instead of hypotheticals.

It’s also worth noting Raiola’s completion percentage as a true freshman was higher than all of these players but Watson.

CLEARLY WORSE

• Braxton Miller, 2011 Ohio State: 1,159 passing yards, 13-4 TD-INT ratio, 54% completion percentage, 39 sacks taken, 715 rushing yards and seven touchdowns (11 full games played)

• Drew Lock, 2015 Missouri: 1,332 passing yards, 4-8 TD-INT ratio, 49% completion percentage, 25 sacks taken (eight full games played)

• Kellen Mond, 2017 Texas A&M: 1,375 passing yards, 8-6 TD-INT ratio, 51.5% completion percentage, 19 sacks taken (six full games played)

• Dorian Thompson-Robinson, 2018 UCLA: 1,311 passing yards, 7-4 TD-INT ratio, 57.7% completion percentage, 19 sacks taken, (eight full games played)

• Dante Moore, 2023 UCLA: 1,610 passing yards, 11-9 TD-INT ratio, 53.5% completion percentage, 25 sacks taken (six full games played)

If the first group was the highest-end results you can expect from an elite recruit QB as a true freshman, this group is the lowest end. To be fair to these players, all but one in this tier were subbed into action in their first year because of unexpected circumstances. Miller was supposed to be a backup but took over early when Joe Bauserman played poorly and as the Ohio State program nosedived during the Jim Tressel tattoo scandal; Lock entered the lineup only because Missouri’s returning starting quarterback got busted with drugs; and Mond and Thompson-Robinson only played because of injuries to starters. Only Moore here won the job coming out of camp.

Still, these were poor seasons. If this is the bottom of the bell curve distribution of what you could expect from Year 1 of a top-recruit quarterback, Raiola cleared it by a significant margin and showed he was much more ready to play power-conference college football than these players.

QUASI-COMPS

Bo Nix. Photo courtesy Auburn Athletics.

Now we get into players who displayed similar profiles. This next group is a collection of seasons from top prospect true-freshman starters that partially resemble Raiola’s 2024 campaign but have some outlying elements:

Christian Hackenberg, 2013 Penn State

Hackenberg was sort of the “cautionary tale” I used in the offseason for what one of these careers could look like even with success as a freshman.

Hackenberg probably had better first-year numbers than Raiola, throwing for 2,955 yards and 20 touchdowns to 10 interceptions, completing 58.9% of his passes and taking just 21 sacks in a stacked year for the Big Ten. Hackenberg also played in a similar “hard” offense to what Raiola ran, with this PSU team led by Bill O’Brien, fresh off a stint with the NFL’s Patriots.

But Hackenberg’s play is a poor comp when you look at both the style of play and the supporting cast. Hackenberg had first-team All-American Allen Robinson as his No. 1 receiver, plus NFL tight end Jesse James and future NFL starting linemen Donavan Smith and John Urschel protecting him. He also was much more of a downfield, chunk-play thrower than Raiola; he got most of his yardage on deep balls to Robinson and Geno Lewis, another solid college receiver in the corps, and displayed little efficiency. About half of Hackenberg’s freshman passing production just came by throwing to Robinson — he finished with over 1,400 yards. Raiola’s raw completion percentage in a similarly difficult scheme for most of the year outpaced Hackenberg’s by over 10 percentage points.

After the Penn State supporting cast took a step back the next year — Robinson, Lewis, James, and Urschel left for the NFL, as did O’Brien, who was replaced by defense-first James Franklin — Hackenberg’s career tanked, with two poor seasons before he entered the draft early to not play a single NFL down. Though Hackenberg’s sophomore and junior years happened behind a poor offensive line and in what would become a pretty toxic program environment, it’s also clear his freshman play was on some level inflated by the supporting cast — specifically Robinson — and without that elite support his production just wouldn’t have been as promising

This is a lesser comp, to me, because we just saw Raiola be a functional/solid player without elite supporting talent. Raiola played behind an average offensive line, and he also didn’t have a single dominant receiver and had his offensive coordinator replaced midseason. Raiola as a true freshman played in an environment closer to what Hackenberg faced as a sophomore and junior, and Raiola was just a much more efficient player in 2024 than Hackenberg was as a sophomore and junior.

JT Daniels, 2018 USC

Daniels would finish his season with similar counting stats to Raiola — 2,672 yards, 14-10 touchdown-to-interception ratio, 59.5% completion percentage, 25 sacks taken — which invites comparison. But Daniels was a much more game-to-game boom-and-bust player as a true freshman, putting up a few huge performances against bad defense with largely poor play sandwiched all around them. And some of Daniels’ underlying numbers were also much worse than what Raiola’s profile, with Daniels finishing worst in the nation among the 70 QBs that season with 350 dropbacks in turnover-worthy play percentage, bottom five in pressure-to-sack ratio, and bottom 10 in adjusted completion percentage. Raiola performed much better in all three of those indicators last season.

So, despite the box scores looking similar, these aren’t really similar profiles of on-field play; Raiola was closer to a league-average QB in efficiency as a true freshman, whereas Daniels was among the worst. A big part of the reason Daniels’ numbers look as good as Raiola’s despite the worse underlying play is that Daniels was throwing to Amon-Ra St. Brown and Michael Pittman Jr. as his top two receivers, plus had three currently starting NFL linemen protecting him. The supporting cast is important!

Daniels would go on to have his career derailed by injuries, so it’s tough to use this as a comp, anyway. He would tear his ACL in the next season’s opener, then transfer to Georgia. After serving as a backup there for a season, he would suffer a major oblique injury in his first year as the Bulldogs’ starter and lose his job to Stetson Bennett, hitting the portal again to play for West Virginia. Poor play forced him out there, and he started for most of a season at Rice before his career would end with his fourth concussion. Not a lot here to takeaway long term.

Bo Nix, 2019 Auburn

Nix also has a similar box score profile to Raiola but with some key differences in play under the hood.

Nix would finish with 2,542 yards, a 16-6 TD-to-INT ratio, and complete 57.6% of his passes, pretty comparable to what we just saw from Raiola. But Nix’s adjusted completion was near the bottom of all FBS starters, and he would also be near the bottom in turnover-worthy play percentage. PFF had him throwing 18 interceptable passes in 422 dropbacks; Raiola only had 12 in more dropbacks. Nix also put up most of his production in a handful of games against lesser defenses — he had big performances against Mississippi State, Mississippi, and Arkansas — and surrounded them with really poor play, completing under 50% of his passes in three conference games. While Raiola had a rough stretch in early conference play, his only game all season under 50% was Rutgers, and he only had one other game under 60%. So while the Raiola-Nix final stats look close, Raiola was a much more consistently solid game-to-game player than Nix as a true freshman.

Nix is a closer comp to Raiola than Hackenberg and Daniels in supporting cast and schedule, though. The Tigers had a decent line and two late-round NFL picks at receiver in Seth Williams and Anthony Schwartz, but no stars and were on the lower end of the talent spectrum compared to their conference peers. Nix also had to face a difficult slate of opponents in his first year, playing seven teams that would finish in the top 25 at SP+; Raiola faced a top-20 schedule in difficulty, though he played just five teams in the top 30. Nix did benefit from having Kenny Dillingham, who just led Arizona State to the playoffs as head coach, as his offensive coordinator, so he probably had a play-calling advantage. But Dillingham would leave the Auburn program after that season.

Nix is sort of the nightmare scenario for Nebraska on how this can go from here. Nix would put up essentially the same level of play in his sophomore season during the pandemic season after Dillingham and a lot of the supporting cast left, and Auburn coach Gus Malzahn would be fired. Nix would play even worse in 2021 under Bryan Harsin and hit the transfer portal, landing at Oregon. Then with the Ducks, he would become one of the most prolific QBs in the country in a short-passing and RPO-based offense and get selected early in last year’s NFL draft.

Not maximizing an elite legacy-commit QB while you had them and then watching them go play high-end ball somewhere else would be about the worst outcome here. I don’t know if there are any lessons Nebraska can learn from Nix’s situation at Auburn other than to not lose your good OC/supporting cast and go through a pandemic as a quarterback enters their second offseason.

CLOSE COMPS

Teddy Bridgewater. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

These are the other star recruits I’d say truly resembled Raiola’s freshman season, considering statistical profile, supporting cast/play style, and team results. I’ve ordered them from weakest comps to strongest comps.

Jacob Eason and Jake Fromm, 2016 and 2017 Georgia

Here’s where I think we begin to see some truly similar seasons.

Eason and Fromm finished with remarkably similar box score numbers to each other — Eason had 2,430 yards and a 16-8 TD-to-INT ratio on 55.1% completions while taking 21 sacks, while Fromm was at 2,615 yards, 24-7, 62.2% and 20 sacks with an extra game played — and are close in the advanced metrics to Raiola. Both, in particular, finished with stellar turnover-worthy-play percentages as a freshman, similar to Raiola, and rarely put the ball danger. Both also played in “pro-style,” heavy-personnel, run-first offenses that provided fewer easy answers for quarterbacks than peer schemes and played to protect their elite defenses. The stats aren’t a complete match, but there are a lot of similarities in those profiles and play styles between these Georgia QBs and Raiola.

The obvious difference here would be that Georgia’s 2016-17 surrounding talent was better than 2024 Nebraska’s, but it’s not by as much as you might think. The Bulldogs had a better offensive line than NU both years, and Fromm benefitted from having an all-time collegiate running game in 2017 with Nick Chubb and Sony Michel, but the UGA receiving talent in this era was pretty mediocre: The top receivers on the team were Isaiah McKenzie, Mecole Hardman, and Javon Wims. McKenzie and Hardman have gone on to be useful NFL role players, but neither was an overwhelming talent in college. I’d maybe argue Eason and Fromm were functioning much more in game-manager mode behind the strength of that running game, whereas Raiola was more of the focal point/driving force of his offense as NU struggled to run the ball at times.

These might not be the most exciting answers, but if Raiola ends up having a career similar to either one of these guys, it’s probably a win for Nebraska. Both would go on to be solid college quarterbacks who were among the top five passers in elite conferences and get drafted. Eason would sit out the next two seasons for either injury or transfer rules, but he would go on to have a great year at Washington in 2019, throwing for over 3,000 yards and getting drafted in the fourth round. Fromm never really improved his underlying numbers in Georgia’s offense as he largely continued in game-manager mode, but he played solid ball for three years, won a lot of games in college and was also drafted. Neither of these careers would represent the “star-level” expectations for Raiola, but they each would represent a successful college career. And probably among the better quarterback performers for Nebraska in the modern era.

Matt Barkley, 2009 USC

Barkley had the stature of Raiola as a recruit and also has the program-savior, Day One-starter pedigree, but his statistical profile, too, also ended up being close to Raiola’s: 2,735 yards, 15 touchdowns to 14 picks, 59.9% completion percentage, and 17 sacks taken. He started all 13 games for USC against a tough schedule and was largely consistent all year — topping 190 yards in 10 games — and also played in a non-spread West Coast timing offense with challenging reads. Barkley had a similar “midseason slump,” costing USC a couple of wins with a three-interception performance in a loss to top-10 Oregon and another three-pick day in a blowout loss to Stanford. They don’t have advanced stats going back to 2009, but Barkley was probably a little less efficient than Raiola and more turnover prone, but these were, on the whole, similar seasons.

Barkley’s supporting cast wasn’t as much of an advantage over 2024 Nebraska as you might think. This was still Pete Carroll USC, but the Trojans’ best skill players in 2009 were Joe McKnight, Allen Bradford, and Damian Williams, though Barkley did benefit from having future NFL All-Pro Tyron Smith at tackle, but Smith was just a sophomore in 2009. That’s still probably an upgrade on what we saw from NU last season, but not by a huge margin.

The USC program would get hit with sanctions in Barkley’s sophomore year of 2010 as Carroll left over the Reggie Bush scandal, and the Trojans saw a slight talent drop-off. Even without elite weapons around him, Barkley still put up some big numbers as he linked up with Lane Kiffin, throwing for 3,500 yards and 39 touchdowns as a junior and 3,200 yards and 36 touchdowns as a senior. USC’s success as a program would fall from its dynastic run under Barkley, with the Trojans going just 34-17 in his starts, but that was largely on the sanctions; Barkley played well. He would get picked in the fourth round of the NFL draft and go on to a long career as an backup, staying in the league until this past season.

Barkley was overshadowed by other collegiate quarterbacks of his era but still ended up being a productive, high-end starter in a power conference and undeniably one of the better pocket passers of the era. Most would probably argue he didn’t reach his billing as a mega-recruit, but if Nebraska gets a couple 3,000-yard seasons with over 30 passing touchdowns, it’s hard to say that was a bad result, either.

Jake Browning, 2015 Washington

Browning was a prolific high school passer who was deemed a high four-star in the stacked 2015 quarterback class, earning Washington’s starting job as a freshman coming out of fall camp in Chris Petersen’s second year as coach. Browning had a poor opening performance but was largely steady the rest of the year, delivering dependable, high-efficiency play with few big games but few disasters, either. He’d finish with 2,955 yards, 16 touchdowns to 10 picks and complete 63.3% of his passes — all in line with Raiola. He’d play his best game of the year — completing 70% of his passes for 284 yards — in a bowl-game win to get Washington to seven wins. Browning was charted with 18 turnover-worthy passes by PFF, so he likely got luckier in the turnover department than Raiola did, but these were largely the same styles of play and same production.

He did all this in Petersen’s complex, shift-heavy West Coast offense and with a pretty poor supporting cast of young players in a rebuilding program; this is the rare one here where Raiola’s supporting cast was probably better than Browning’s: Browning was pressured 140 times by one of the worst OL groups in the nation, and Washington’s receiving corps would take a big hit when future NFL player John Ross tore his ACL in spring practice. Browning did have a 1,300-yard rusher in Myles Gaskin to rely on and had now-Michigan State head coach Jonathan Smith calling plays for him, though.

The similarities here to Raiola are pretty clear: Both largely put up solid play across a whole year with high efficiency while operating in difficult offenses without great skill talent around them for rebuilding, non-elite programs.

Browning would go on to have a good — but not great — career. He would break out the next season, throwing for 3,400 yards on nearly nine yards an attempt and throwing 43 scores as Washington went 11-1 and made the playoffs. He would suffer a major shoulder injury late in the campaign that lingered over his junior and senior years, keeping his passing totals from being gaudy. But he still delivered extremely efficient play — having an adjusted completion percentage above 74% and a turnover-worthy play percentage of under 4.4% both seasons — and led Washington to 10-3 and 10-4 records and a pair of BCS bowl berths. He didn’t get drafted, but he’s now considered one of the better backups in the NFL.

While Raiola delivering a Browning-like career would probably be a relative disappointment to NU fans hungry for a star, it’s hard to argue that a guy who led an offense for a team that won this many games would be a bad outcome. Browning was the driving force and leader for a team that went 32-9 over his final three seasons and would have likely made at least a couple 12-team playoffs had they existed. That’d be good with me.

It’s also worth remembering Raiola as a prospect is considered to have much more physical talent and creativeness than Browning, which was the main knock against Browning in the draft.

Teddy Bridgewater, 2011 Louisville

Bridgewater was only a high four-star prep prospect, but his on-field play, supporting cast, offensive environment/playcalling make him the closest comp to Raiola’s 2024 season.

Bridgewater — a prized QB recruit viewed as the future for second-year coach Charlie Strong’s rebuilding project — didn’t fully take over as Louiville’s starter until the fourth game of the season, but in his 10 starts, he’d throw for 200.9 yards per game (Raiola was at 216.8), complete 64.5% of his passes (Raiola 67.1%), and throw 14 touchdowns to 12 interceptions (Raiola 13-11). Bridgewater also played in a difficult/complex offense (a West Coast system run by former Nebraska coordinator Shawn Watson) and did so without elite receiving talent (his top receiver as a freshman was Michalee Harris, who would transfer to Akron the next offseason) and without a strong running game (Louisville would finish 101st nationally in rushing efficiency that year). Bridgewater would have a string of unproductive performances in a three-game losing streak in early conference play before putting up his best performances of the season down the stretch, throwing for over 240 yards in wins against a ranked West Virginia team and against South Florida. Louisville would finish 7-6 in Bridgewater’s first year.

So: The true freshman quarterback viewed as the key cog in a program turnaround playing in a difficult scheme without an elite supporting cast who put up above-average efficiency and limited mistakes through most of the year and recovered from a conference-play slump to play their best ball down the stretch? Sounds familiar.

The overall prolificness of quarterback numbers in this era and his just-OK NFL career have made people forget about how good Bridgewater was in college: In his sophomore and junior years, Bridgewater would throw for a combined 7,688 yards and 58 touchdowns with only 12 interceptions, completing 68.5% and 71.0% of his passes as he led Louisville to a 23-3 record, two conference titles, and a Sugar Bowl win. He was the Big East’s player of the year in 2012, and he’d be an NFL first-round pick and starter across a decadelong professional career. If Raiola — who has a more physically talented arm than Bridgewater — can meet this comparison Nebraska will have had a star college player.

1. Watson, Rosen, Lawrence, and Howell in particular benefitted from being in very quarterback-numbers friendly systems.