Four takeaways from Nebraska football's crushing 21-17 loss to Ohio State

I spent most of my late Saturday night and Sunday rewatching the Nebraska football game against Ohio State. I needed to take a deeper dive. How well did Nebraska really play? Was Ohio State just off or did the Huskers have something to do with it? And what in the world were all those screen plays? I had to find out.

I did a massive breakdown, full of clips, and you can check that out on Twitter/X.

After my rewatch, I came away with four big takeaways that I think show great signs of hope going into the final month of the season.

Nebraska football coaches still know how to create a great game plan

Let's be real for a moment: NU's staff coached their tails off. They created--and the players executed--a game plan that almost knocked off a top-5 team on the road.

As fans, if we are ready to critique and call for jobs when things are bad (you know who you are), we need to step up and say, "Bravo!" when it's good. And Saturday was very good.

How did they do it? I'll get into that more in #2 and #3, but the key is that Nebraska 1) stopped the OSU running game, 2) limited offensive mistakes, and kept the OSU offense off the field. The Husker coaching staff slowed the game down and played Big Ten football.

That's not enough to beat an SEC juggernaut or compete in the CFP, but we'll worry about that another year. For now, it'll play on a sunny October Saturday in Columbus.

The Blackshirts had their best game of the year, especially considering the opponent

After a dumpster fire performance against the Hoosiers in which defensive coordinator Tony White said he was "stupid," Nebraska's defense had their best performance of the year. Ohio State is a top 10 offense. The Buckeyes had 285 total yards, went 1 for 10 on third down, and five three-and-outs for the game. Ohio State only held the ball for 24 minutes.

Nebraska only gave up three explosive plays on the day--but two for touchdowns. You expect that when you play an offense like this. So there's no shame there. In fact, those touchdowns had more to do with communication breakdowns than anything. Entirely fixable mistakes. Take away the two long touchdowns and Ohio State had 185 yards the rest of the game.

The offense for Nebraska football did enough to win the game

This might be a shocker, but Nebraska's offense did enough to win. This was a typical Big Ten brawl, including 11 total punts. Kirk Ferentz would be jealous. But that's ok. That's the type of game this was. Nebraska's offense played smart, steady, and limited huge mistakes (I don't count those OPIs against them--I mean, c'mon on).

The Huskers were 50/50 in terms of run-pass ratio. There were times they were running down OSU's throat and then inexplicably went away from it. And despite not scoring after a first and goal inside the ten in the third quarter, Nebraska had a really nice touchdown drive in the fourth quarter to put them up by three. Nebraska had the lead with less than 11 minutes to play! It was the defense that gave up a touchdown and the lead immediately after that. Yikes. Complimentary football, right?

What about the screens? Ah, yes, those blasted screens. Ohio State plays an attacking style of defense, and they showed blitz often. So I understand the rationale to try to slow that blitz down and steal some yards with screens. A couple of them worked. Most didn't. When you know your perimeter blocking struggles, it's a marvel offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield kept trying them. Then on the last drive, they tried two to no avail. Push the ball downfield. Go get six.

The entire Nebraska football team played with fire and a purpose

This was the most encouraging thing I noticed in the rewatch. No one hung their head. No one appeared frustrated. And even with the worst possible start to the game, Nebraska stood tough with one of the most talented rosters in the country. They played through the first seven minutes of emotion, in the Big House, and made the game about football--not something else.

As Matt Rhule said in the postgame, they played "with a championship mindset." You can't deny that you saw it.

That wasn't the case in Bloomington. I firmly believe that whatever happened against Indiana was an aberration. Nebraska ran into a buzzsaw and got caught up in the moment. That's over with. This was the real Nebraska. This is the team that Rhule takes into a very winnable November.

How will Nebraska football handle November?

Nebraska is 5-3 with four games left. This is the exact same spot they were in last year heading into November. But you have to feel better about their odds of winning one game this year right?

November hasn't been kind of Nebraska in recent years. Nebraska is 6-21 in November since 2016 (not counting 2020). Will this year be different? Based on what I saw in the Ohio State game, Nebraska should easily win one if not two more games. But, as Rhule pointed out, it had better like this next week [vs. UCLA]."

Yes, it had better. If not? Well, I don't want to know.