Nebraska’s 27-20 loss against UCLA shows the continued regression throughout the season. Head coach Matt Rhule and his staff got outcoached and the Huskers didn’t show much energy on Tom Osborne Field.
“If I was in the stands, I’d be frustrated,” Rhule said postgame.
Here are some quick takeaways from Nebraska’s loss:
Satterfield may have just lost his job
It’s pretty clear that freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola is not thriving in offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield’s scheme. Raiola’s struggles continue to worsen as the season has progressed.
Satterfield’s playcalling never seems to add up. The Bruins had 25 plays to Nebraska’s three early in the second quarter. Nebraska had (three) three-and-outs, two turnovers on downs and a pick-six. This is bound for failure.
Raiola is still the guy, but opposing defenses have figured out how to take him out of the game. There is no identity for the Huskers’ offense. They can’t run the football, and receivers struggle to get open when they attempt to air it out. All Nebraska’s scoring drives were sustained by the three unsportsmanlike conduct penalties on UCLA.
The clock-management is another problem. The huddling, mixed with motioning receivers and backs, is causing Rhule to have to burn timeouts. Will quarterbacks coach Glenn Thomas get a shot at calling plays?
Where were the Blackshirts?
The Bruins came into Saturday averaging 2.5 yards per rush as a team. The Blackshirts gave up 141 yards on the ground, for a 4.9 average. Defensive coordinator Tony White did not have the defense prepared.
The secondary didn’t look any better. The chunk pass plays on third down torched Nebraska’s defense. The Blackshirts achieved pressure at times, but senior quarterback Ethan Garbers improvised to exploit NU.
Is the culture actually established?
It doesn’t make much sense why half of Nebraska’s players were dancing on the sideline when they’re down 27-7 for a kickoff. There is a big difference in teams that win and lose. Instead of the Huskers being angry and going out there to fight, it seemed they were comfortable messing around till the end of the game.
Not to mention, Scott Frost addressed this when he was head coach. This type of stuff happened when Mike Riley was running Nebraska’s football program. The culture seems to be misleading. There are no signs of ‘blue-collar’ football in November.
Overall take
Nebraska’s performance was very disappointing. Husker Nation continues to fill 87,000 plus in Memorial Stadium, thousands more are downtown Lincoln outside the game and the entire state is watching, only to see them not show up. The fans deserve better.
Rhule and his coaching staff have been outcoached in three of its four losses. They hold themselves accountable at press conferences, but there is no improvement seen in areas of weakness. The offense in particular gets worse week to week.
The Huskers’ best shot at a bowl was against 2-5 UCLA. Even though Wisconsin got drilled 42-10 at Iowa and USC lost at Washington 26-21, Nebraska is going to have to actually fix these weaknesses in one of the next three, if they want to end the drought. This is going to be a long bye week for the Big Red.
