Nebraska Football: Team working on becoming a tougher group

Nebraska Football has not had easy practices over the past couple weeks.

All throughout the offseason, you have heard the Nebraska Football coaches talk about toughness. Toughness is a trait that several of the successful Nebraska Football teams of the 1990s had. Toughness is what it takes today to win football games. Toughness is something that can’t be taught. However, teams can certainly work on becoming tougher.

Nebraska Football has been working on just that. All throughout the practices so far, the Huskers have been working on becoming a tougher team. It’s a hard thing to do, especially in today’s football game. With so many rules being changed and different measures being taken to protect players, the art of being tough is certainly being challenged. However, there is also the task of being mentally tough. So far, it seems like Nebraska is working on becoming that type of team.

More from Husker Corner

• Former Nebraska football star returns to the program in new role
• Travis Hunter injury uproar has some Nebraska football fans reminding Colorado about Adrian Martinez
• Nebraska Football: Freshman RB in line for big playing time
• Nebraska Cornhuskers News: Heinrich Haarberg has believer in Rhule, more
• Nebraska Football: Matt Rhule faces tough decision between Heinrich Haarberg and Jeff Sims

They certainly have the players to do it. There are so many players on the roster with different skillsets. One thing I’ve noticed in particular this year, is that the entire team seems like they just want to play football. They want to put on the pads, and either hit somebody defensively or make a play offensively. It’s an entirely different mindset than what last season was like. Now in their second year under head coach Scott Frost, the Nebraska Football program is certainly a better position to execute their goal of being tough.

They need to be tougher if they want people to take them seriously. This is certainly a right move on the part of the coaching staff to preach toughness. This is something that they were missing at times last year. Offensive line coach Greg Austin explained a little bit of the thought process behind these tough practices.

"“We’ve talked about toughness and the mentality, all those things,” Austin said. If you want to improve those things, you have to practice tough. My response to that would be, ‘how we practicing?’ are we practicing tough? Are we running tough runs? Are we putting ourselves in tough situations? That’s how you make a tough team. You don’t talk about it. You do it. Toughness is an action. You have to do it. My rebuttal to that, even coach Frost, is, ‘OK, well let’s practice tough then.’”"

I really like the fact that Nebraska Football is focusing on toughness. That is what’s going to take you through conference play. That is what’s going to help you navigate the tough Big Ten conference every Saturday. Postseason games are won because of toughness. For Nebraska, the hope is that they will be playing into late December and early January.

They need to get better in his area. So far, it seems like they’re working on it. Hopefully, nobody gets hurt. However, you can practice toughness and be smart about it. These types of practices will only help Nebraska Football be better come the start of the season.