Nebraska football: Casey Thompson reminds what could have been

While the Nebraska football team is a bit worried about their quarterback situation, the one that got away had a fantastic season opener.

Casey Thompson has had quite the wild ride in his college career. He started it off with the Texas Longhorns before transferring to the Nebraska football program. Now he’s at Florida Atlantic with his former Longhorns head coach.

While Thompson has had some ups and downs over his career, his start to the 2023 season was all positives and no negatives. The former Nebraska football quarterback played in his first game with FAU and did about as well as a quarterback can do.

Thompson completed 20 of 25 passes for 280 yards and 5 touchdowns. He did throw one interception but that turnover didn’t factor into the outcome as FAU won the game, 42-20.

Granted, Florida Atlantic and Thompson didn’t exactly play a powerhouse in their season opener. They took on Monmouth as a kind of warmup to a new season under a new head coach and quarterback.

While there’s absolutely no guarantee that Thompson would have had the same success with Nebraska football, it’s still frustrating to see the one who got away putting up such big numbers.

On the same weekend that Jeff Sims lost to Minnesota and threw three interceptions in that lost, both Thompson and another former Husker quarterback in Logan Smothers led their teams to victory and put up solid numbers to boot.

Nebraska gets insult to injury

Smothers and Thompson playing the way they did after transferring to make room for Sims definitely seems to be another in what has been a long line of insult to injury.

With Thompson, there’s an extra layer of “downer” considering there was a time Husker fans thought Thompson and Sims were going to battle it out for the starting job this fall.

Now the Nebraska football team has a thin quarterback room and Husker fans are going to be hoping Sims gets things sorted out.