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Patrick Mahomes calls Dylan Raiola ‘little kid’ after Nebraska QB touchdown
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Patrick Mahomes calls Dylan Raiola ‘little kid’ after Nebraska QB touchdown

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Nebraska football freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola turns heads on Saturday in his college debut.

And Patrick Mahomes, quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, three-time Super Bowl champions, is one of them.

Mahomes subtweeted a message on X (formerly Twitter) after Raiola threw a 59-yard touchdown pass to Isaiah Neyor in the second quarter of the Cornhuskers’ season opener against UTEP on Saturday. He captioned it with the phrase, “Lil cuzzo!!” and added a flex emoji followed by a bullseye emoji.

REQUIRED READING: College football schedule today: games, scores for top 25 teams from Saturday in Week 1

The touchdown to Neyor was Raiola’s second touchdown of the afternoon. The pass was thrown into double coverage along the sideline, but somehow found the hands of Neyor, who regained his balance after a brief fall before the walk to the end zone.

Raiola, the son of former Detroit Lions center Dominic Raiola, has gone viral in recent weeks after he arrived on campus in Lincoln, Nebraska, for training camp on July 31 looking just like Mahomes. His uncle, Donovan Raiola, is the offensive line coach at Nebraska.

Mahomes was quick to respond on X (formerly Twitter) after someone tagged him in a post by Dylan Raiola at Nebraska, which in hindsight added an extra layer and longevity to the post.

“That’s my little buddy,” Mahomes said in a quote on the tweet below.

But it’s not just the haircut or facial hair that’s fueled this. It’s also how Raiola throws the ball and goes through his progressions — which is nothing new for younger players to study and take cues from NFL players they look up to.

“It’s pretty cool to (get noticed) by a guy like Mahomes,” Raiola said earlier in a news conference when asked about the initial comparisons to Mahomes on social media. “He’ll probably go down as one of the best. It’s cool. But our focus is on working on our team and getting better and better in camp.”

Here’s a comparison of the two from earlier on Saturday, when Dylan Raiola arrived at the stadium:

The 6-foot-1 quarterback, who was ranked the 21st prospect in the 2024 recruiting class by the 247Sports Composite Rankings, transferred from Georgia to Nebraska on Dec. 18 of last year.

If the Cornhuskers win Saturday, they will be 1-0 after Week 1 for the first time since 2019, when Scott Frost was coach.