The Nebraska football team had a rather disastrous beginning to the 2022 season on Saturday. After leading 28-17 at one time, the Huskers managed to blow that lead and ended up losing 31-28.
There were all kinds of questions that popped up after the loss but there are some that stand out more than others.
Some are rather obvious, such as whether or not Nebraska football head coach Scott Frost is on his way out the door. The tone on the internet today seems to indicate that the is indeed, on very borrowed time.
The question becomes if he has enough time to right the ship. The good news is that the Huskers have two games that they should have no problem winning coming up on the schedule. With North Dakota and Georgia Southern next up, things would have to go very, very wrong in order for the Cornhuskers to not be 2-1 after three weeks.
It’s even possible that those two games could allow the Huskers to work out some of the kinks that popped up against Northwestern?
However, in order for the Nebraska football team to work out those kinks and get ready for the rest of the season, there are some serious questions that need to be answered as soon as humanly possible.
In the end, it doesn’t feel like there was any unit that should avoid scrutiny the day after the Huskers opened yet another season with a shockingly poor showing. Some of the answers could come next week. Others might take a bit to truly come into focus.
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
While Casey Thompson’s day took a real turn, the Nebraska football team’s defense never really got off to much of a start. That was especially frustrating considering that the Blackshirts were one of the big strengths of the Huskers in 2021 and most expected that defensive coordinator Erik Chinander would come up with something really special against a Northwestern team that came into the year considered one of the weakest squads in the Big Ten.
Instead, that weak squad managed to hand the ball to quarterback Ryan Hillinksi and then stand back as Hillinski diced up the Huskers secondary from the very beginning. Even when Northwestern had to settle for a field goal in their first drive, there was still some concern over how easily the Wildcats had moved down the field.
Hillinksi, who had the worst quarterback rating of any QB who played for the Wildcats a year ago, shone throughout the game, completing 27 of 38 passes for 314 yards and two touchdowns.
If that wasn’t bad enough, there was also the fact that Northwestern did whatever it wanted to do, especially in the third and fourth quarters on the ground.
The Wildcats finished the game with 214 yards rushing on 47 attempts for an average of 4.6 yards per carry. And when it mattered most, the Northwestern offensive line opened up massive holes for its backs to run through.
The big question now is whether or not the Huskers simply had the wrong scheme, or whether it has the wrong players. The complete lack of participation in plays from the linebacker corps for most of the game stands out the most. However, the Nebraska football team’s defensive line didn’t get much in the way of a push all game. Just what went down with the defense likely won’t be answered anytime soon, but come Oklahoma, it seems likely we’ll get a pretty decent answer.
If there was one consistent positive when it came to the Nebraska football team, it was the performance of Anthony Grant.
The Huskers spent most of the summer keeping a lid on just who was going to be the starting running back. For the most part, that secretiveness seemed to indicate that the running back position was going to be more of a committee approach.
However, once the Cornhuskers took the field against Northwestern, Grant appeared to be the man that the Huskers trusted most. Grant ended up with carries in 19 of the 28 designed run plays and turned those carries in 101 yards.
While it’s true that Grant’s day was one of the only real positives for the Huskers on Saturday, there are some questions that came along with it. Right at the top of the list is whether or not Grant is really going to be the bell cow for the Nebraska football team or if this was more a matchups kind of situation.
There’s also the fact if you take out a 46-yard run, Grant had just 55 yards on 18 carries for a 3.1 yards per carry average. That’s not going to get it done for the Nebraska football team over the course of the season.
So was Grant hampered by an offensive line that didn’t seem to get much of a push against the Wildcats, or is he simply not cut out be the main ball carrier for the Huskers? What Nebraska football has planned for the position will definitely be something to watch next week and beyond.