Nebraska Football: Being ranked adds to pressure of 2019 season

By Leigh Oleszczak | Aug 28, 2019

NASHVILLE, TN - DECEMBER 30: Nebraska Cornhuskers equipment on the sidelines of the Franklin American Mortgage Music City Bowl game between Tennessee and Nebraska on December 30, 2016, at Nissan Stadium in Nashville, TN. (Photo by Frank Mattia/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images) /

The 2019 season has the potential to be a special one for Nebraska football, but does being ranked in the top 25 add to the pressure for the Cornhuskers?

After going 4-8 in 2018 and missing out on a bowl game, the Nebraska Cornhuskers really don’t have anywhere to go but up, especially after starting the year at 0-6. Fortunately, year two under Scott Frost looks to be a promising one, as the Huskers did a great job with recruiting and also have some key players returning for another season.

Fans were already optimistic about the team rebounding mightily in 2019, but then the official top 25 rankings came out and on those rankings, right at number 24 came the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Just one season removed from winning only four games, the Huskers have made their way back into the top 25 and that’s pretty dang impressive. Not a lot of other programs could pull off that feat.

Nebraska does benefit from being a big name football program, but they definitely showed they were better than what their record indicated last year. In the final month and a half of the season, the Huskers went 4-2 and their two losses were both very close games against Ohio State and Iowa (with both of those also coming on the road).

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Clearly people noticed the Huskers down the stretch and they’ve gotten their fair share of respect this offseason. It’s all been well-deserved too and we’ve seen how Scott Frost can turn around a program, as he showcased that masterfully at Central Florida before moving back to Lincoln to coach the Cornhuskers.

A big part of why the Huskers turned it around last year was due to quarterback Adrian Martinez, who will be back under center again this year. Even better news is that Martinez is only going to be a sophomore in 2019, so the Huskers have him until at least the end of the 2020 season. The offense will go as Martinez goes and hopefully the defense can perform better than they did in 2018.

While it’s obviously great that Nebraska is back into relevancy (for now at least), does them being ranked add to the pressure of what fans (and the nation) are expecting out of them this year? Some people are already predicting Nebraska to appear in the Big Ten Championship Game and now them being ranked shows that they’re definitely getting hyped.

It’s excellent that the program is being noticed again, but there was a part of me that wanted the team not to be ranked so there was added motivation to these guys. Now they’re already ranked without having played a game and hopefully that doesn’t go to the players’ heads and cause them to slack off in the early weeks of the season.

The season opener against South Alabama shouldn’t be an issue, but week two in Boulder versus the Colorado Buffaloes is another story. If Nebraska looks too much into this preseason ranking, it could spell trouble for them in those early competitive games.

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Hopefully that’s not the case and Nebraska lives up to the hype. Go Big Red!

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