Nebraska Football: 3 areas the Huskers must improve to win in 2022

There’s very little doubt that the Nebraska football team needs some big-time improvement on its offensive line. After all, Greg Austin was one of the offensive coaches that were fired with a few games to go in the 2021 season.

One area where the offensive line struggles show up biggest is just how often the line allowed a tackle for a loss. Certainly Martinez had some serious problems getting time in the pocket, but the fact of the matter is that he wasn’t hurried nearly as much as he acted he was.

A bigger problem was that even when Martinez wasn’t sacked, or hurried out of the pocket, there were plenty of times when a Husker play went for negative yards. In fact, a Husker play went for negative yards on average 5.5 times a game.

That had the Cornhuskers ranked 60th in the country in number of times that they were tackled for loss on average. There is a bright side to this number as they didn’t lose nearly as many yards as some of the teams that were around them in the rankings. But – and yes I sound like a broken record at this point – in games that were as close as they were in 2021, getting stuffed for a loss could have been very, very big.

There’s going to be a lot of focus this year when it comes to how the Nebraska football team protects its quarterbacks, but if the Huskers really want to get better, they’re going to have to cut down on tackles for losses in general.