The Nebraska football team finished 2021 with a 3-9 record. That is not a surprise to a single Cornhusker fan who has paid any attention at all. What might not be as obvious is why, exactly, the team had such a rough season.
Certainly, there were a number of areas that were clearly not very successful. Of their nine losses last year, eight of them were within one score. The other one was by nine points. That, too is not exactly a surprise for anyone who suffered through the campaign. The Huskers seemed to be in every game right up until the very end.
The question still remains why did the Huskers have so many problems closing out games and especially closing out wins when they had leads late in a contest? There are theories out there that certainly fit, especially when it comes to blaming the special teams. After all, the Nebraska football team was ranked 128th out of 130 teams in special teams efficiency, according to ESPN.
So yes, certainly improving special teams is a must when it comes to winning more games in 2022. But that’s a bit of a gimme. It’s also quite nebulous. Considering how bad they were last year, it seems impossible that NU won’t improve at least a little bit in that department. That will certainly help win, but the ways in which that unit contributed to losses also seemed odd enough that it would be wrong to expect that to continue.
Penalties, too, have long been pointed out as one of the reasons Scott Frost’s teams lose games they should win. That’s why some Husker fans might be surprised to find out that penalties really weren’t that big a problem in 2021. In terms of fewest penalties committed and fewest penalty yards, the Cornhuskers were 21st in the country. Certainly, there’s room for improvement there, but it wasn’t anywhere near the Achilles heel it’s been in previous years.
So what are the areas the Nebraska football team must improve if it wants to actually win ball games in 2022 you ask? Read on.
One of the absolute biggest reasons why the Nebraska football team struggled in 2022 is because it simply wasn’t good on 3rd down on either side of the ball. The good news is that there were certainly teams that were worse; the bad news is there weren’t that many that were as bad as the Huskers on both offense and defense.
When it came to the offense’s 3rd down conversion percentage, Adrian Martinez and company converted just 41 percent of the time, which was good for 56th in the country. In 161 third down attempts, the team converted 66 times.
Again, that isn’t a horrendous number all on its own. Most teams would even say that they’d be quite happy with a conversion rate of 41 percent. But in reality, it’s pretty middle of the road and is one of those things that can be even bigger when talking about the number of close games the team played in. One or two third downs that weren’t converted can mean the difference between a win or a loss. Especially teamed with a defense that struggled at times to get opponents off the field.
The Blackshirts, who were certainly considered the bright spot of the Nebraska football team for most of the season, had their problems every now and then. That was especially the case when it got a team to third down, as it allowed those opponents to convert 38.9 percent of the time. That number was good for 72nd in the country. Once again, in games that were decided by a touchdown or less, one failed conversion or one successful conversion here, and there could mean a win was turned into a loss.
The long and the short of it is that the Nebraska football teams efficiency in the red zone on offense was something that people likely knew was a problem, but they might not have known just how much of a problem it was.
The Cornhuskers’ offensive efficiency in the red zone was almost as bad as their special teams in terms of rankings among their contemporaries. In 53 red zone attempts in 2021, NU scored just 35 touchdowns.
Of those 35 TDs, all but seven were on the ground. The Huskers also only scored six red zone field goals. In all, the Nebraska football team had an offensive red zone efficiency of 77.4 percent. Which saw them rank 106th in the country.
Not to beat a dead horse, but considering how many times the Huskers lost by one score, improving the team’s ability to score once they get inside the opponent’s 20 yard line is very, very important. The argument can absolutely be made they need to get into the red zone more as well. But if they do, they have to come up with more scores than they did a year ago.
There is also an argument to be made that the Nebraska football team should get a bit better when it comes to defensive red zone efficiency, as they were ranked 61st in the country but it’s simply imperative that the Huskers need to get better on the offensive side of the ball. Getting a new kicker is going to help, but Casey Thompson or Chubba Purdy and company need to put it into the end zone quite a bit more often.
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.