Nebraska Football: 3 questions that need answers after Northwestern

When Casey Thompson led the Nebraska football team’s offense onto the field for their first drive on Saturday, it was like a revelation. All the worries about what the quarterback position was going to be seemed to melt away as he threw dart after dart including a beautiful touchdown pass to give the Huskers a 7-0 lead.

He continued to play well for most of the first half, even as his receivers dropped some passes that could have kept drives going. And then there was that insane play in the third quarter where he ran around to avoid the pressure and then unleashed a pass that would eventually go 58 yards and set up the score that put the Cornhuskers in a position to win.

The thing that stands out here is that after that play, things went downhill rather quickly for Thompson.

That 58 yard pass was part of a start that saw the Huskers quarterback go 19 of 27 for 298 yards and a touchdown. He looked calm and collected in the pocket. And despite a few drops here and there, he looked like someone who could legit put together a campaign to be one of the best QBs in the Big Ten.

Then that play went down and something happened. After that pass, Thompson completed just 6 of 15 pass attempts for 57 yards while throwing two interceptions.

It’s possible he just got a bit too confident in his own abilities. Maybe that play convinced him he could do no wrong and things snowballed from there.

There is a question, though, considering that Thompson had to have surgery on his throwing hand this summer if something didn’t get tweaked there. While North Dakota isn’t going to have a defense that will likely really challenge the Nebraska football team, Thompson’s accuracy in that game is going to be something to watch