The Nebraska football season is just a few days away from being over. Then the real fun begins. But before the entire Husker fan base’s attention turns to who will be the guy who officially replaces Scott Frost, it’s important to start doing the post-mortems about just what went wrong this season.
Right at the top of the list of what went wrong for Nebraska football is that the offense went from being something that people had real hope for to something that gave the Huskers almost no hope of winning games at all.
When Mark Whipple, Casey Thompson, Mickey Joseph, Trey Palmer, Anthony Grant and all the rest arrived in Lincoln, there was a thought that the Cornhuskers’ offense was going to have to carry the team. And at the start of the season, that was absolutely true. Despite scoring bushels of points against Northwestern and Georgia Southern, the team lost … often. But something weird happened as the season went on. The offense stopped working. Like at all. The high water mark was the loss to Purdue. Since then, abysmal isn’t even really a word that covers it.
The Nebraska football team scored 37 and lost to the Boilermakers despite Trey Palmer posting 237 yards receiving. It’s almost as though the team forgot how to play offense afterward.
It’s not just that the Huskers haven’t scored so much as 20 points in any game after Purdue. It’s not even that their ceiling has been 14 points in a game since that matchup.
As Twitter user Stewmanji recently pointed out, the Nebraska football offense has been bad in all facets.
Nebraska's offense is averaging 195 yards per game over the last 3 weeks.
— Eric (@stewmanji) November 21, 2022
That's dead last in FBS.
It's also 47 fewer yards than the next closest team in the Big Ten
- Maryland, 242
For reference, Iowa, the 2nd worst offense in FBS, is averaging 273 yards/game on the season.
The Huskers have not only had problems scoring points, they’ve had problems moving the ball at all. In their last three weeks, they’re averaging 195 yards per game. And it’s not like they’ve been good in one aspect and bad in another.
Neither the passing or rushing attack has been good. The offensive struggles have meant that they have been dead last in FBS. The team they play this week. The team that has been so maligned offensively in Iowa, has had an offensive attack that’s been quite a bit better over the last three weeks. 80 yards a game better.
Certainly some of that blame can be placed at the feet of Casey Thompson’s injury. Of course, we’ve seen other college teams lose their starting quarterback and still do ok. Kansas got to six wins despite Jalen Daniels being out for numerous weeks.
Minnesota beat the Huskers thanks to the play of its backup quarterback. Nebraska football didn’t have to struggle as much as it has. It also had Casey Thompson back last week and still managed just 171 yards of total offense (so well below its average).
The fact is, while the Nebraska football team came into 2022 expecting its offense to be a strength, it turns out it was a weakness in the Big Ten. That’s something the next head coach should keep in mind. No matter who it is.