Nebraska Football: Husker great offers words of wisdom amid early struggles

There’s been all kinds of ideas and theories on how Nebraska football can get Jeff Sims back on track and one Husker great has offered thoughts on a solve.

What is Nebraska football to do about Jeff Sims? That’s a question that just about everybody in and around college football has asked just two weeks into the season.

Sims is almost certainly asking himself what to do as well. This certainly hasn’t been the start to his Husker career he was envisioning this spring and summer.

While there have been all kinds of theories, including benching, one former head coach and Husker great has his own idea on what should be done. It all boils down to showing the transfer quarterback a little grace.

Former Nebraska volleyball head coach Terry Petit took to Twitter on Thursday morning to offer some words of wisdom that the Cornhuskers fan base could certainly take to heart.

“When an athlete consistently serves into the net, fumbles the football, or misses free throws in endgame, it’s a mindset issue. Trying harder doesn’t help. They need to flush the past and move into the present. Routine helps. Sometimes it doesn’t work out because it can be harder to trust ourselves than anyone else,” Petit wrote in his tweet.

The man who built the Nebraska volleyball program into a national juggernaut, that sport’s version of Nebraska football’s Bob Devaney to John Cook’s Tom Osborne, then made it clear that Sims may not be able to do it alone.

“But occasionally grace enters the competition in the form of unexpected support,” Petit continued. “We experience it in our own lives. Occasionally it enters the competitive arena.”

Nebraska football needs a little grace

It certainly seems as though Petit’s words are aimed directly at Jeff Sims, but they also apply to the Nebraska football program as a whole.

After an 0-2 start to a season that had so much excitement, Husker fans have been more than a little quick to point the finger. There are even rumblings about which coaches need to be relieved of their duties already.

In the first year of another rebuild that might have been closer to “from scratch” than people realized (myself included), looking for a little grace as the Nebraska football team and Jeff Sims try to right the ship is far from an impossible ask.