When the Nebraska football team takes the field on Saturday afternoon, there are some questions that will need answers. Some of those questions will indeed get answered almost right away. Others are going to need opponents that are on a different level than North Dakota in order to really get an answer.
Of course, even if playing an FCS school isn’t the most perfect way to really gauge where the team is as a whole, there are little things here and there that can point to the real health of the Nebraska football program.
The biggest question isn’t the most complicated. That’s whether or not this Huskers unit is able to bounce back from its seventh straight loss. That bounce back is going to be needed because there’s a long season ahead and Scott Frost likely officially finds himself on the hot seat, if he wasn’t there already.
There’s also the fact that the Huskers are having to bounce back on what amounts to a short week. That loss to Northwestern likely made what was actually a very long flight, feel even longer. There’s going to be a question as to how easily the Cornhuskers can shake off what was a long trip and then a bad loss.
Then add in the fact that it’s not all that easy for an FBS team to get fired up to play an FCS team. Granted, the Nebraska football team doesn’t really have any room to take North Dakota for granted, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
There are, however, some very specific questions that the Nebraska football team needs to answer in order to get right and get ready for the rest of the season.
This particular question was also part of the questions that popped up after the Nebraska football offense looked quite a bit less impressive in the fourth quarter of its game against Northwestern than it did in the first three quarters.
I asked whether Casey Thompson was “alright” and so far, it has to be considered an open question. His accuracy dropped off considerably in the second half. Maybe that was just the fact that Travis Vokolek wasn’t around anymore. Maybe Northwestern adjusted coverages enough that Thompson had problems finding a window.
Or, maybe a player who made no bones about the fact that his injured hand was giving him issues exacerbated something.
The fact that nothing was said about Thompson being banged up would, if things had been normal in the last few years for the Huskers, put to bed any guessing about whether or not Thompson is hurt.
However, head coach Scott Frost has a bit of a history of going above and beyond when it comes to hiding whether his QB is banged up. To some degree, Husker fans still don’t understand how badly Adrian Martinez was hurt for most of last year.
When people started talking about just how hurt he was, Frost dismissed the talk as ridiculous rumors. Until he eventually did let it be known that his quarterback was playing with all sorts of injuries including a broken jaw.
Knowing that, it’s hard to take the Nebraska football staff at face value. Thompson is going to have to come out and play four good quarters to put any thought of lingering injury behind him.
Yes, Travis Vokolek is still listed at #1 at the tight end spot, but there is more than a little talk flying around Nebraska football that not only won’t he play against North Dakota, he won’t play against Georgia Southern either.
Whether or not he’s really out for the next two weeks, one thing is clear, one of the reasons the offense struggled late in the game is because Vokolek was on the sidelines. That’s a plenty good reason on its own that the Huskers should spend the next two weeks looking to see what they have at tight end after the former Rutgers Scarlet Knight.
Nate Boerkircher is listed as the man who will take the snaps at TE if Travis can’t go and he did see some action against Northwestern. Unfortunately, it also looked like there was a definite dropoff when he came into the game.
It’s about more than losing a bit of talent too. Casey Thompson looked at his best when he knew he had Vokolek to dump the ball off to as a kind of safety valve. He tried to do that with Boerkircher but the red-shirt freshman looked like a red-shirt freshman and simply couldn’t fill Vokolek’s shoes.
The pressure should be dialed down a bit against North Dakota. Especially if Boerkircher is starting and has a chance to really take a breath and make the position his own. Will he be able to step up and take over the role? Will someone else? It’s gonna be something to watch for the Nebraska football team.
The Nebraska football team’s defense was, in a word … terrible last Saturday against Northwestern. The Blackshirts really didn’t do anything all that well and even when they did get a stop, it felt more like Northwestern had made some weird offensive play call rather than the Cornhuskers bowed up and really shut the Wildcats down.
One area that stood out more than any other was that the pass rush was just totally and completely non-existent. Northwestern quarterback Ryan Hilinski was able to stand in the pocket and do whatever he wanted to do all game.
Even when the Huskers blitzed, it felt like the defensive lineman didn’t occupy enough men to let the blitzer get through. The line also didn’t get much of a push when it came to run defense, but the sheer total lack of pressure against Northwestern should have Nebraska football’s defense’s coaches trying to find ways to fix that immediately.
That’s not to say that managing to get pressure on North Dakota is proof that things are fixed. However, if the Huskers struggle to find a way to pressure the Fighting Hawks then it would seem as though the defense is in real trouble.
The added point is that North Dakota has some size on its offensive line. It shouldn’t be a group that can just be bowled over. While it’s an FCS school, it’s a unit that’s talented enough that if the Nebraska football team can get three or four or five sacks, that might be one area where a fix is in being put in place.