Nebraska football: Ranking the Huskers’ opposing quarterbacks

Oliver VanDervoort

MADISON, WI - OCTOBER 14: Garret Dooley #5 of the Wisconsin Badgers sacks David Blough #11 of the Purdue Boilermakers in the second quarter at Camp Randall Stadium on October 14, 2017 in Madison, Wisconsin. (Photo by Dylan Buell/Getty Images)

The Nebraska football team is going to be kicking off its season in just over 80 days. Check out how we’ve ranked their opponents’ quarterbacks from worst to best.

If there is one reason why the Nebraska football team struggled last year, it was because opposing quarterbacks tended to pick the secondary apart. To some degree, it didn’t matter whether the quarterback did it through the air, or on the ground.

If the Cornhuskers lined up against an opposing quarterback, they tended to lose the battle. Hence, Erik Chinander and his new defense coming to town.

The good news is that plenty of people are hoping that we’re not going to see a repeat of that nonsense with a renewed sense of purpose and a new scheme. The bad news is that we’re in the first year of that new scheme.

It’s also yet another new scheme for a large group of players that have been here a while. There’s no guarantee it’s all going to click from day one.

That means the quarterback is going to be an important cog in Husker opponents’ gameplan. Knowing that it might help Husker fans to know just what Nebraska is going to be getting itself into when it comes to the quarterbacks they will face off against in 2018.

We’ve ranked those opposing quarterbacks, from worst to first so you will have a decent idea on what kind of problems the Nebraska football team is going to face. Keep in mind that some of these squads are seeing quarterback battles emerge from the spring. Other programs might have a guy go down early in camp. Basically, know that this list as early as it is is subject to change.

Having said that, check out our rankings of the quarterbacks the Nebraska football team will face. Tell us where you agree and where you disagree and why.

Kaleb Barker might be a surprising place to start for some Nebraska football fans. Those who follow college football likely know that the Troy Trojans finished 2017 11-2.

That record included a 24-21 win over LSU. So how can the quarterback of that team be the worst ranked quarterback on this list?

For starters, Kaleb Barker wasn’t the quarterback who led Troy to that 11-2 record. Barker is a Junior who is expected to win the Trojans starting quarterback job this season, though the position isn’t completely decided just yet.

He and Sawyer Smith are both working to replace Brandon Silvers, who threw for 2,985 yards and 13 touchdowns a year ago. Neither quarterback has much experience but at least Barker has played in a college football game.

Over the course of his career, Barker has played in 13 total games, and thrown 17 passes. Last year he was used quite a bit as a rushing threat and did manage to gain 181 yards on just 21 carries.

If Barker does win the job, there is a chance he could move up the list quite a bit rather quickly when it comes to deadliest Nebraska football opponents. For now, his lack of experience and playing for a lower tier team puts him dead last.

The Nebraska football team didn’t get to see Cam Thomas a year ago. The now-sophomore quarterback didn’t take over the starting reins until after the Illini lost to the Cornhuskers.

The Illinois offense was the worst in the Big Ten a year ago and there isn’t a huge reason to believe that won’t be the case this year as well. Lovie Smith seems to finally be getting the team moving in the right direction recruiting wise, but 2018 looks to still be a pretty bad year.

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For Thomas, that means there are going to be growing pains for a quarterback that showed flashes a year ago but also struggled plenty. Thomas finished 2017 completing just 42 percent of his passes.

While he threw for 375 yards, he didn’t throw a single touchdown. He did throw five interceptions.

Where Thomas could be a problem is on the ground. In the four games he appeared in last year, he carried 52 times for 233 yards and a touchdown. There’s even a caveat to those numbers though.

In his first two games, Thomas averaged 7.9 and 7.8 yards per carry respectively. In his last two games, he averaged 2.1 and 2.6 yards per carry respectively. It appears opposing defenses started to know what to look for and the Illini didn’t have the weapons to adjust.

The Nebraska football team won’t be able to take anyone for granted next year, but when talking about the most fearsome quarterbacks they will face next season, Cam Thomas is an afterthought. He’s such an afterthought, there is always the chance he could lose his job to former Husker and current grad transfer from Virginia Tech, AJ Bush.

Nebraska football is going to see a lot of first-time starters next season. Tanner Morgan is the least experienced of the bunch. So why is he ranked ahead of Troy’s Kaleb Barker?

I’ll admit it’s mostly because Morgan is playing at a Power 5 conference school while Barker is playing at Troy. That doesn’t mean that Morgan hasn’t showed enough to be considered a threat.

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While he did not appear in a game last year while he sat out his redshirt year, Morgan did have himself a pretty good spring game. The redshirt freshman is the odds on to win the starting job after completing 18 of 28 passes for 272 yards.

Things didn’t all go swimmingly though. Morgan didn’t throw an interception while throwing for two TDs but that doesn’t mean he didn’t turn the ball over. The Star Tribune reports that Morgan and his apparent backup quarterback both fumbled twice.

The propensity to put the ball on the ground has to be making the Nebraska football defense lick it’s chops. The Golden Gophers beat the Conrhuskers 54-21 last season as now departed Demry Croft ran for 183 yards.

That game was likely the unofficial final nail in Mike Riley‘s coffin. It’s interesting that this time around, it doesn’t appear the Nebraska football team is going to have to worry as much about a mobile quarterback in Minnesota’s offense.

(Photo by Steven Branscombe/Getty Images)

Despite a resurgent season for Purdue, the Nebraska football team managed to edge out David Blough and the Boilermakers last year. If Purdue wants to change that in 2018, they’re going to need better quarterback play.

It might help if they finally, once and for all settle on a quarterback. David Blough and Elijah Sindelar have competed for the starting job basically since both arrived on campus.

Blough has been the quarterback who has seen the Cornhuskers the three times Purdue has taken on Nebraska during that time. If he goes up against the Cornhuskers, he’s going to want to have his performance look more like the first game, than the last two.

When Purdue upset the Huskers in 2015, Blough passed for 274 yards and four touchdowns, while rushing for 82 yards and another TD. Those 82 yards were easily a career rushing high.

In 2016 he threw for 309 yards and two touchdowns, but he also had a costly pick. He was also bottled up to -21 yards on the ground. His performance last year was his worst against the Huskers, as he got just 164 yards through the air and a touchdown.

The Nebraska football team knows the Purdue quarterback well. They’re going to hope that his career 44 TDs to 33 INT ratio gets even worse in 2018.

We are starting to move into the group of quarterbacks that could really cause the Nebraska football team big problems. Akron’s Kato Nelson is relatively low in these rankings because he didn’t get a ton of experience last year, but when he did play, he played really well.

As a freshman, Nelson appeared in 10 games and started five. In those games he threw for 989 yards and eight touchdowns to just two interceptions. Nelson also ran for 198 yards and another TD, though he only averaged 2.1 yards on the season.

Akron as a team looks to be on the way up. They just finished a 2017 where they went 7-7 and 6-2 in their conference.

Terry Bowden has been there a long time and most people might forget the former Florida State’s head coach’s son is still coaching at all. While the Huskers might be big favorites over the Zips, Nelson is exactly the kind of quarterback who has given the Cornhuskers fits in the past.

Apropos of nothing but a bit interesting is that Nelson had his best game of the year in 2017 against former Nebraska football head coach Frank Solich‘s Ohio Bobcats. Hopefully next years’ version of the Cornhuskers will be able to shut him down.

Clayton Thorson has been quite the thorn in the side of the Nebraska football team over the course of his career. He’s beaten them by running the ball (126 yards on nine carries in 2015), and by throwing the ball (over 240 yards each of the last two years.)

Having said that, Thorson is looking to have a bit of a bounce-back year in 2018. Last season, he stepped up his game when it came to accuracy a bit.

He saw a drop in yards and his touchdown to interception took a dive too. Thorson threw for 22 touchdowns and nine interceptions, to go along with 3,182 in 2016. In 2017 he threw for just 2,844 yards, 15 touchdowns and 12 interceptions.

Most interesting is his threat as a runner, other than right near the goal line has completely disappeared. In his freshman year he ran for 397. His sophomore year he ran for just 98.

Last season, he ran for just 23 yards, though he did have eight touchdowns. While the Northwestern quarterback is considered a legit NFL prospect, he’s going to need to reverse the trends in his production.

Thorson is also coming off an injury that had him sidelined during the spring. The Nebraska football team gets one more shot at Clayton Thorson and it’s a safe bet they are going to want to show once and for all that they can bottle him up.

Alex Hornibrook has never really been that big a problem for the Nebraska football team to handle. That doesn’t mean that Wisconsin is a team the Cornhuskers have ever taken lightly.

It just means that when talking about Big Ten quarterbacks that have been a problem for the Huskers, Hornibrook is low on the list.

The reason he’s high on this list is that there’s always the chance he could become a problem in the very near future. If he doesn’t shoot himself in the foot, he’s going to at least be a nice complimentary piece on a very good Wisconsin team.

Last season, Hornibrook completed 62.3 percent of his passes for 2,644 yards. He added 25 touchdowns but he did throw 15 interceptions.

His stats against Nebraska are decidedly pedestrian. In his first matchup with the Huskers he completed just 10 of 16 passes for 71 yards. He added one touchdown and one interception. His team still won the game in overtime.

Last year, he arguably played worse, completing just nine of 17 passes for a touchdown and another pick. His team won the game 38-17.

When it comes to the Nebraska football team, it’s always been Wisconsin’s defense and running game that causes the problems. That doesn’t mean they should ignore Alex Hornibrook or this could be the year he steps up.

The Colorado Buffaloes will take on the Nebraska football team for the first time since the Huskers and Buffs left the Big 12.

Colorado had thought their program was having a resurgence after going to a bowl in 2016 but they took a step back in 2017. If they want to go bowling again in 2018, Steven Montez is going to have to put up similar numbers to last year.

Montez isn’t a name that you’ve likely heard before unless you are a die-hard college football fan, but Cornhusker fans should get to know him quickly.

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The Buffs quarterback put up solid, if not eye-popping numbers and he’s continued to grow as a quarterback over the course of his career. Last season he completed 60 percent of his passes for 2,975 yards and 18 touchdowns. That was compared to just nine interceptions.

Even more important is that while he isn’t someone who is going to kill you with his feet, he’s got some mobility. Last season he ran for 338 yards and three touchdowns. The year before he ran for 231 yards.

The Nebraska football team isn’t going to be able to take Montez lightly. If they do, they might end up finding themselves in some trouble.

The Nebraska football team will be squaring off against Nate Stanley for the second time in 2018. They’re going to have to hope they do better than his 65 percent completion percentage and two touchdowns a year ago.

The thing about Stanley, and really all Iowa quarterbacks of late, is that they don’t put up gaudy numbers, but they get the job done. In 2018 Stanley completed just 55.8 percent of his passes, but he had 26 touchdown passes and a minuscule six interceptions.

It’s his ability to limit turnovers that is the reason he’s this high on the list. It’s his less than impressive offensive production (other than TD passes) that doesn’t have him higher.

Iowa’s offense has never been a juggernaut. Their quarterbacks have never been guys the Huskers traditionally fear. Despite those two things being true, the Hawkeyes tend to cause the Cornhuskers many a problem.

Now that Stanley is in his second full year as a starter and third year of action, there is a better than average chance he’s going to be a handful when the two teams square off on Black Friday. The Nebraska football team is going to have to try and limit mistakes and force a couple from Iowa to win.

The bad news is that the Nebraska football team has to play Ohio State again this year. The good news is that the Buckeyes are going to have a new starting quarterback.

The bad news is that Dwayne Haskins looked really, really good in the eight games he played as a freshman last year. He apparently looked good enough in the spring that he beat out longtime backup Joe Burrow.

Burrow later transferred to LSU, making Haskins as the starting quarterback a certainty. Haskins putting up big numbers in 2018 isn’t a certainty, but it’s a safe bet.

In those eight games he played a year ago, the then-freshman completed 70 percent of his passes for 565 yards, four touchdowns and just one interception. Against the Huskers, in mop-up duty, he went 3-3 for 25 yards.

What makes Haskins deadly, as is the case with most OSU quarterbacks is that he can run as well as he throws. Haskins had 86 yards on 24 carries a year ago. It’s a safe bet he’s going to be set loose upon the Big Ten.

The Nebraska football team has the luxury of knowing what they should see from Haskins. The bad news is that doesn’t mean they’ll know how to stop it.

Both the Nebraska football team and the Michigan football team have some thanks to give to Ole Miss and their former head coach. Without his recruiting violations, the Cornhuskers wouldn’t have linebacker Breon Dixon and the Wolverines wouldn’t have quarterback Shea Patterson.

While Michigan hasn’t officially named Patterson the starter, he looks to be the odds-on favorite to win the job. That could give Michigan the talent under center they’ve been missing since Jim Harbaugh arrived.

Patterson put up eye-popping numbers for Ole Miss through the air last year. Those numbers were even more impressive when you consider he did it in just seven games before an injury ended his season.