Nebraska Football: With Jeff Sims healthy, Huskers buckle up for QB battle
As the Nebraska football team heads into the bye week, Jeff Sims is finally 100 percent healthy and the coaches are staging a QB battle
The time that Nebraska football fans knew was coming has officially arrived. Jeff Sims has been declared officially healthy after missing the last four Husker games.
Now that he’s back, Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule knows that people are going to have some mixed reactions. Some, like myself are all about the Huskers having a quarterback competition. Let Sims and his replacement in the last four contests, Heinrich Haarberg, battle it out for the starting job against Northwestern.
Others just want Haarberg to hold the job until he “loses” it. Whatever that means. Those people tend to gloss over the weaknesses in Haarberg’s game because of just how disastrous Sims’ first two starts as a Cornhusker were. They simply don’t want to see that level of play again and are afraid that’s all that Sims offers.
If Rhule knows that some people just want him to name Haarberg “the man,” he’s not obliging. At his press conference on Tuesday, he made it clear this next week is going to be an honest-to-goodness QB battle.
“Heinrich’s started the last several games, and if we played today, he’d be out there starting,” Rhule said of the Kearney Catholic graduate. He added that the young quarterback capitalized on his opportunity. But the Nebraska football head coach made it clear Haarberg hasn’t been anywhere near perfect.
"“He has a long way to go. He’s leaving a lot out there. He’s learning the wear and tear of running him as many times as we’re doing.”"
Nebraska football quarterback battle begins
Rhule said that Sims and Haarberg are going to try and show they deserve the starting job against Northwestern. It appears for now that the Kearney native has the edge. However, it’s also not clear that it’s just a two man race.
Rhule made it clear on Tuesday that had Chubba Purdy been totally healthy when Jeff Sims went down, he might have been the guy to get the opportunity Haarberg did.
That particular warning shot appears to mean that Nebraska football is going to have a real competition. A three-man race over the next week to see who emerges the victor next week.