Nebraska Football: What the Jeff Sims commit could mean for the Huskers

This weekend, Nebraska football’s recruiting success continued on Sunday afternoon when Georgia Tech transfer quarterback Jeff Sims announced he was ready to become a Husker. While the commitment is a heck of a get for a Cornhuskers squad that needs to rebuild and rebuild fast, his pledge also opens up several questions.

Since Sims took a visit to Lincoln last week, he’s been considered someone who was quite likely to pull the trigger for the Nebraska football team. Now that he has, the top question on the table is whether or not he’s beaten Arkansas transfer Malik Hornsby to the punch.

Hornsby visited Lincoln this weekend and by all accounts loved what he saw. However, he also left town without giving his pledge. One has to wonder if Sims saw the writing on the wall and decided he wanted to pull the trigger before his offer went away.

Nebraska Football Will Run The Ball More

One of the biggest signs this commit is pointing to is that the Matt Rhule, Marcus Satterfield offense is going to be pretty run heavy. It also means that it might look a bit like what Husker fans saw from Scott Frost’s first four years. It will certainly run the ball more than the Huskers did in 2022.

That doesn’t mean that it’s going full option offense by any stretch. Sims actually threw the ball plenty. In fact, he threw it about 200 times a season while starting all three years he played for the Yellow Jackets. But he also had at least 300 yards rushing every season.

That the team will be running RPO type offenses isn’t anything new either. Hornsby is definitely a run first type of QB. That the Cornhuskers didn’t get a strictly drop back passer at least tips things off.

Someone’s Gotta Go

The Nebraska football team now has quite the logjam in the quarterback room. Even if it didn’t always feel that way in 2022. Casey Thompson, Logan Smothers, Chubba Purdy, Richard Torres and Heinrich Haarberg are all on scholarship and all could return in 2023.

Add in jeff Sims, who has three years to play two and there’s an awful lot of QBs that will be wandering around Memorial Stadium this spring. The biggest question mark in this regard is what Thompson’s plans are. Some believe his leaving is a foregone conclusion. Others believe the fact he hasn’t announced yet means he’s likely staying.

For his part, Sims has said that he wasn’t promised the starting job in 2023. If he and Thompson are both here, it seems likely that one or both of Logan Smothers and Chubba Purdy could be on the way out. Purdy seems the most likely as he was brought in to try and run Mark Whipple’s offense while Smothers was brought in to run Frost’s version which relies on running more.

There there’s Richard Torres, who seems to be a kind of an afterthought at this point. Can he remind Rhule and company he’s still here and worth a shot at the quarterback job?

Things just got real interesting in that room for the Nebraska football program.