Nebraska Football: 3 questions that need answers after North Dakota

The Nebraska football team escaped Saturday with a win. That’s the good news. That they needed to “escape” against North Dakota has more than a few people who are feeling a bit uneasy.

As the game went on, some of the questions that the Huskers had entering the game against the Fighting Hawks got answered. That included whether or not the pass rush was going to show up.

While the Nebraska football team had some serious problems getting to the quarterback, it did eventually find a way to generate a bit of a pass rush towards the end of the game. It even notched its first two sacks of the season. Perhaps best of all is that Ochaun Mathis started to look like someone who could make some noise in the offensive backfield beyond today.

There was also a question as to whether or not Casey Thompson’s health was in question. While he did actually get banged up a bit in this game, it also feels like Husker fans have a better grasp on what the former Texas Longhorns quarterback is.

There are going to be some throws where he looks like only he could pull it off. There are also some throws where it’s going to look like he’s having issues. It doesn’t appear his accuracy suddenly going away is due to injury.

As for the question of whether a tight end would step up in Travis Vokolek’s absence, it appears that at least Nate Boerkircher can give it another go. He had 2 catches for 32 yards and a touchdown on Saturday.

While some questions got answers, there are even more questions that popped up because of how the Nebraska football team played against North Dakota.

While Nebraska football’s offense didn’t look great against Northwestern, at least there was an excuse built in because the Wildcats had a pretty good defensive line. Especially when it came to their size.

That kind of excuse was not present against North Dakota and quite frankly, the offensive line was manhandled far more often than it should have been on Saturday.

Even when the offense was actually showing some success on Saturday, it tended to be in spite of the offensive line instead of because of it. There were a couple of players in particular who simply looked like they really shouldn’t have been on the field, whether because of poor play or because they aren’t entirely healthy.

It says something that they were there anyway and it should be more than a little worrisome when it comes to the rest of this season for the Nebraska football team. If the Huskers can’t push an undersized defensive line around the field, then what happens against Oklahoma and the rest of the B1G?

There was a lot of talk from Frost about how good this offensive line was going to be this year. There was the infamous puking comment that looks worse and worse every single day.

So far, the big development that Frost has claimed he’s seen from his offensive line just isn’t there. They don’t look more physical, they don’t look better technique-wise and they look at times like they don’t really know who they are supposed to be blocking from one play to the next.

At some point, the Nebraska football team is going to sink or swim thanks to the offensive line and right now, it looks like it could be sinking like a stone.

We are now two weeks into the Nebraska football season and Rahmir Johnson has … one target.

One.

Not one catch. Not one carry. One target. In two games.

Quite frankly, the lack of playing time after the Week 0 matchup was weird enough. However, the Nebraska football coaches actually seemed to acknowledge it was weird that a player they had talked about so much as having a big role in the offense coming into the season was suddenly seeing the field so little.

This week was supposed to be different. The coaches talked about how they were going to get Rahmir into the game more. And then, he had one target.

Granted, much as it was last week, some of the reason that his role has been reduced is because the offense simply hasn’t been able to find a rhythm. It also just didn’t have the ball all that much in the first half especially.

However, in the second half, the team did manage to find a rhythm and scored 31 points and still, Rahmir played almost not at all.

There’s also the fact that it appears the “wide back” is a bit annoyed at his lack of playing time at this point. On Saturday night, he tweeted out a short video that might have just been a funny joke. But considering what’s been going on so far with his playing time, one has to wonder if something is about to break there.

It’s very weird that the Nebraska football team’s offense has not found a way to get him more involved.

Nebraska football already seems to have a coaching controversy and it sure seems like that sort of thing is ahead of schedule.

For the second straight game, head coach Scott Frost put his “offensive coaches” on blast though this time it wasn’t after the game. This time he made comments that were clearly aimed at Mark Whipple as he was going to the locker room at half.

His comments were so edgy and so pointed that when the Huskers offense came out looking better in the second half, people thought there was a chance that Frost had actually taken over play calling.

It didn’t help that when he was asked after the game who was calling plays, he wouldn’t answer. It really wouldn’t have been that hard to say “Whipple did, of course.” That he wouldn’t say that means that this is going to be a thing for at least the next week.

It’s pretty clear that Frost had a little more input in the offense than he did against Northwestern. It also still seems pretty clear to me that Whipple was making the calls. But this continued stress and tension between the head coach and the man he hired just a few months ago is not a good thing.

If the fans are able to see it this easily, then the Nebraska football players are getting an even better look at it. In a season where everyone needs to come together to win, there’s already some infighting going on in the staff.