LINCOLN — In advance of Saturday’s Big Ten tilt, Michigan’s acting head coach gushed all things Nebraska football Monday, particularly on the Huskers’ Memorial Stadium atmosphere.
“I don’t know if there’s a harder place to play than Nebraska,” Biff Poggi said at UM’s weekly press conference. Poggi is serving in the interim role while coach Sherrone Moore serves the second of a two-game suspension this season. “Fans are very loud, the stadium is loud, very raucous. They’ll obviously be very excited.”
Poggi was exposed to NU’s crowd as a member of UM’s staff back in 2021, when the Wolverines beat the Huskers 32-29. Michigan’s coach at the time, Jim Harbaugh, called the victory a “Clint Eastwood win.”
The interim coach’s message has trickled down to players.
“I’ve heard their environment’s electric,” UM running back Justice Haynes said at his press conference. “I heard it’s going to be great atmosphere, so I’m looking forward to it.”
Haynes, an Alabama transfer, cited Tennessee’s Neyland Stadium as the toughest atmosphere he’s been in before.
Memorial Stadium is likely to be rocking again Saturday as No. 21 Michigan comes to town with freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood, the five-star phenom who won Big Ten honors this week but struggled the week before at Oklahoma.
“Just be Bryce,” Poggi said. “You’re not playing against the stadium. They’ve got 11, we’ve got 11. Everything else is just noise.”
Nebraska, Poggi said, has a “really good football team” with “big, physical” offensive linemen, good receivers and a defensive line that’s “stout as can be.” Coach Matt Rhule is “tremendous,” Poggi said. When Poggi got the job at Charlotte in late 2022, his first phone call came from Rhule, at the time between jobs at the Carolina Panthers and Nebraska.
Poggi offered his strongest praise for NU quarterback Dylan Raiola, who’s completed 77% of his passes for 829 yards and eight touchdowns, mostly against inferior competition.
“He has a huge football IQ,” Poggi said of Raiola, who’s given the freedom to change NU’s plays at the line of scrimmage. “He’s one of the few young guys who can actually sit in the pocket and make the right reads. The kid can throw the football, and he finds open windows. And he’s a good enough runner that if you’re undisciplined in your lanes he can extend a play and keep your defense on the field.
“Everybody rallies around him — it’s kind of his football team, it looks like from the film.”
Poggi feels the same about his quarterback, Underwood, the No. 1 recruit of the 2025 class, who after playing conservatively in the 24-13 loss at OU, rushed for 114 yards in a 63-3 win over Central Michigan.
Against the Sooners, Michigan attempted to play it safe its own offense to slow down OU’s passing attack. Moore, Poggi said, directed a mindset shift afterward.
“Coaches don’t win games, plays don’t win games, players win games,” Poggi said. “You have to let your players play. So we’re lettin ‘em play. All of them.”
It’s not clear if Moore, suspended for his noncooperation in the Connor Stalions spying investigation, will travel with the team to Nebraska. His absence, Poggi said, leaves “a tremendous void” that Michigan will try to fill by following Moore’s “strict menu” of plays for the Huskers.
“Think of him as Tiger Woods and I’m the old guy with the fluffy mustache caddying for him,” Poggi said. “We’re going to keep it the way he wants it.”
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Sam McKewon
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