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The Nebraska football team has piled a lot of hope into how well new quarterback Anthony Colandrea can perform this season. Despite a campaign that included the Mountain West Offensive Player of the Year in 2025, there’s still a question as to how well his stats at UNLV will translate to the Big Ten. Those questions were underlined when The Athletic did its annual survey of three dozen coaches, general managers, personnel directors, scouts and front office staffers across the country, representing every conference.
This survey ranked every FBS quarterback and put them into tiers. Tier 1 is the best of the best, and Tier 7 is for those who are “QBs are unproven at the FBS level or journeymen who have experience and have made multiple stops in their careers.” According to this survey, people who work with these kinds of guys every day have put Anthony Colandrea into Tier 4.
The Nebraska football team’s starting quarterback is put into a group that certainly offers a high ceiling. However, it could also be a bunch of guys that are on their last stop in a long journey and are looking to make good before their career comes to an end.
So why is the best offensive player in an entire conference last year not a bit higher up on the list than the No. 39 QB in the country? It all comes down to his brand of play. Colandrea can be electric. He’s got a strong arm and speed for days. He can hurt teams on the ground and through the air. But he can also hurt his own team with turnovers.
Nebraska quarterback Anthony Colandrea ranked No. 39 by industry survey
“He’s going to make plays outside of the system but he’s going to make mistakes outside of the system,” a Mountain West head coach told The Athletic. “You don’t get one without the other.”
There’s also his history of turnovers when he’s playing in a Power conference compared to the Mountain West. Last year, Colandrea threw for almost 3,500 yards, 23 touchdowns and 9 interceptions. He also ran for 649 yards and 10 touchdowns. He was the kind of guy who is “dual-threat” personified.
However, the previous two years with Virginia, Colandrea was decent, but far from all that impressive. In 2024, he threw for just 2,125 yards and 13 touchdowns but also 11 interceptions. He also only for 227 yards.
His 2023 numbers were very similar. Especially when looking at his touchdown-to-interception ratio.
In two years with the ACC team, he didn’t come close to totaling the rushing yards he had in one season with UNLV. There’s a chance those numbers are lower because the Cavaliers didn’t run the same kind of offense and didn’t play to his strengths. Or it’s that the better defenses of the ACC had him very much more contained.
In Matt Rhule’s fourth year at Nebraska, there are a lot of questions surrounding his team. There are a lot of questions about Colandrea specifically. It appears that even the people who live and breathe the sport on the ground level aren’t quite sure what to make of him.
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This article was originally published on huskercorner.com as Nebraska enters fall with enormous QB hopes, but insiders still see plenty of risk.
