Nebraska Football: Promising season went downhill quickly

It’s been a rough season for Nebraska football and that wasn’t what Husker fans were anticipating heading into what appeared to be a promising year.

Yes, the Nebraska Cornhuskers started the Scott Frost era off going 0-6 and not getting their first win until mid October last year. But, the Huskers’ 4-2 finish over the last month and a half of the season gave fans hope that 2019 would be different for this group.

That has not been the case.

Nebraska is coming off a horrid loss to the then-two win Purdue Boilermakers, and unless they pull off a big upset of either Wisconsin or Iowa, it’ll be another bowl less year for Big Red. That wasn’t supposed to be the case in 2019.

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A big reason why this season went downhill as quickly as it did was because of the quarterback position. Adrian Martinez hasn’t been the same since the Huskers won in the final seconds on the road at Illinois (which, if that game were to be played now, the Illini undoubtedly would have won). He’s been banged up and missed a few games, but he played poorly last week and a once Heisman type season went down the drain weeks ago.

Noah Vedral and Luke McCaffrey have shown flashes of potential at the position and might be a better option for 2020 and beyond (McCaffrey is only a freshman, so he’d be the better option if the Huskers want to stick with consistency).

Another big thing with the Huskers’ poor season has been how badly their defense has played, especially over the last few weeks. Indiana and Purdue were able to do just about anything they wanted to against this Cornhusker defense and that needs to be a point of emphasis when it comes to recruiting moving forward.

So, with the quarterback position and the defense both being bad, that doesn’t leave the Huskers much room for error. If their quarterback can’t move the ball effectively and the defense can’t stop anyone, what should we expect to happen? A gross game, that’s what.

I’m nowhere near the camp of being ready to give up on Scott Frost yet. It’s only been two years and building a team takes time. What’s frustrating with the situation, however, is that we saw improvements start to take place at the end of last year, so what happened this year? Why didn’t that 4-2 team we saw down the stretch in 2018 show up again in 2019?

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I didn’t expect a Big Ten Championship or anything in 2019, but making a bowl game would have been enough progress to show me that the Nebraska Cornhuskers were on the right track. Instead, they very well could end the season with the same record they had a season ago, and that’s not progress.

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