Nebraska Football: Analyst points at one factor for Huskers struggles
Nothing has gone right for Nebraska football since the season started and fans have theories as to why, but one analyst thinks he cracked the code.
The Nebraska football team has a problem on its hands. After a ton of excitement about the Matt Rhule era over the spring and summer, the Huskers are 0-2.
The good news is that most people understand that a real rebuild of the program is going to take some time. Having said that, analyst Tom Fornelli believes Rhule has started his rebuild off on the wrong foot, thanks most of all to his pick at the quarterback position.
Jeff Sims has taken a ton of heat in his first two games for the Nebraska football program but. The most unfortunate part is that he absolutely deserves it. However, Fornelli is directing his heat at Rhule and offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield for picking Sims to play quarterback at all.
At the top of the list of reasons why Fornelli isn’t exactly a Jeff Sims fan is a statistic the analyst says he’s created called the “Whoopsy Daisy Rate.” The stat uses take the number of fumbles — not fumbles lost, but fumbles overall — and interceptions a QB has and divide it by plays on the field. Sims puts the ball in danger a lot.
Nebraska football and the Whoopsy Daisy Rate
"“Through Week 2 of the 2023 season, 129 different QBs have played at least 75 snaps on offense, and you’ll never guess who leads the country in Whoopsy Daisy Rate. That’s right, it’s Jeff Sims. Sims has fumbled the ball or thrown an interception on an astounding 7.77% of his 103 snaps this season. He has continually put the Cornhuskers in an untenable position.”"
That’s bad for Nebraska football. It’s actually worse.
Using Fornelli’s own stat, Sims has the highest Whoopsy Daisy Rate (3.34%) of any quarterback in college football since 2020.
The biggest problem with that is Nebraska football fans have to hope Jeff Sims can eventually stop turning the ball over so much. It doesn’t appear that’s very likely.