“In the final analysis, I had to evaluate where Iowa was.”
– Nebraska Athletic Director Shawn Eichorst in 2014 before deciding to make the coaching change that ended up with Bo Pelini out and Mike Riley in.
As humans, we all “burn the tape” in our lives. You’ll hear coaches mention it when a game is so abhorrent, nothing can be gleaned from watching it other than liver failure via whiskey intake.
People who are non-coaches burn their own kind of tape, too. Everyone has days in their lives at work where it’s just pure misery, and you dig a hole and bury it in mentally, never to be brought back up. People do it in relationships, too. One gender is always better at not bringing up dirty laundry than the other, so they say.
For the Nebraska Cornhuskers, the entire 2015 may as well be taken out back to the bonfire and turned to ashes.
Because college football’s bowl season is MTV’s “My Super Sweet 16,” 5-7 Nebraska technically has a chance to play again, but it’s not likely.
The end result looks as ugly as the record, which included Nebraska’s first losing season at home in nearly 50 years.
The Blackshirts were 81st in total defense; they end up 74th in the country in scoring defense, giving up an average of just under 28 points per game.
Tommy Armstrong, Jr. never found any consistency and was ill fit for Riley’s offense the way you thought, “there has to be someone else that can do this better,” and then it never happened.
More damning, the Huskers never really showed either improvement or worsening over the course of the season. It was as flaccid in September as it is today. Nebraska has talent on the roster, as evidenced by the past few years, and the natural “changing of systems” was going to cause some guys to look like they’ve regressed, but good coaching is taking what’s on the roster and tailoring your system to it rather than trying to tailor the players to the system.
Danny Langsdorf, offensive coordinator, inherited a talented offense with skill, but skill more befitting of a team that wanted to run to pass rather than pass to run. Armstrong is just simply not fundamentally sound enough to be accurate, and not accurate enough to be good in this Nebraska offense.
On the other side of the ball, it’s hard to imagine Riley parting ways with any of his defensive staff after one year, but many a Husker fan would probably hope he eschews that logic.
You flat out cannot give up 28 points per game at Nebraska.
Contrast that to 2014, when they gave up over 28 points in regulation twice all year in the regular season.
Your bottom line at programs like Nebraska is, you need to get to bowl games at least because they’re just not that hard to get to anymore. All it takes is winning half of your games, and Nebraska was easily competing in the weaker Big Ten division. They missed Michigan and Ohio State plus got Michigan State at home (and defeated them, the lone large highlight of the season).
This season has been a nightmare in Lincoln, so you torch it. With guys like Riley who overachieve at schools that aren’t traditional powers as he did at Oregon State, it’s always a wonder what they’d do if they got the keys to someone’s castle. It’s the pretty girl who still looks good shopping at WalMart, and you just wonder what she’d look like if you sent her to Macy’s with a no-limit credit card and told her to go nuts.
Early returns in this case is that she just bought a bunch of socks.
If you’re glass half-full, Iowa was 7-6 last season, the same Iowa Eichorst was talking about in the aforementioned quote. They finish the regular season unbeaten only one year later.
The Huskers should be so lucky, and if they are, a lot of bad got a lot of good quick, fast, and in a hurry. Either way, pour some 151 on the tape and toss it in the sticks. The off season is cold and long, and the least you can do is make S’mores while watching it burn away into memory.
