Ahhh, football is back.

Which means you get introduced — or re-introduced — to The Rear View Mirror. So, in this first edition we’ll get you a few thoughts on this upcoming Nebraska football season. But, man, if we learned anything already — ALREADY — it’s that anyone can beat anyone on a given Saturday. (Montana State, are you serious???)

Which should mean good things for Nebraska. Or, well, let’s not go there yet.

So, what do you, the reader get from our weekly edition of The Mirror. Well, we hope you’ll find it fun, maybe even a bit comical. We hope that we can show you what we think good football might look like. This might be high school football, it might me NAIA football or, we hope, it’s Nebraska football.

In this first edition of the new season we’ll try to give a few thoughts on a new Nebraska season (spoiler: totally prepared to go all in and be disappointed), and a look at the first few games of the season from Saturday. Let’s dive in, thanks for hopping along with us.

Also, head over thank our sponsor South Central Chiropractic in Sutton. 

Chasing Three

If you have not been following the Nebraska Football YouTube series that follows fall camp it is worth your time before game one against UTEP next Saturday.

The number three — signifying how many points short Nebraska came in multiple games last year — is plastered in the theme of what Matt Rhule and his staff are trying to get taught before the season kicks off. It comes down to things being quite simple. Rhule is sick of losing; and he’s looking for winners.

Quite frankly, Nebraska has had trouble finding “winners” for quite sometime. Not that they have bad kids or bad players, but just kids who struggled making winning plays. It’s bound to change at some point. Will 2024 be that season?

If the coaching hits, the pieces may fall into place. But, it’s not like Nebraska is going to out “athlete” everyone. They’ll have to be disciplined, they’ll have to be able to run the football (not placing the whole game on the new kid) and they have to win the little things.

Let’s figure those out. What should we watch for as the season moves on.

Like Coach Rhule, we think it’s best to keep this simple. You can read all you want (and there is plenty out there on Nebraska football), but watch closely in the team meeting room and you’ll see three things on the video board. They are the ONLY place to start with the season.

1. Win the turnover battle. Not sure you need to say much about this as Nebraska turnovers have been yapped about and analyzed so much over the past (insert your favorite number here) years that Nebraska just needs to get it done. Nothing more, nothing less.

2. Most physical team in football. Many of my group chats worry about the physical nature of the offense with Marcus Satterfield and the new NFL guy Glenn Thomas in the room. The Mirror does too, but also has faith in Rhule to know this will be right. In the media sessions over the past couple of weeks he has noted needing a guy who can give him 20 carries and another who can give him 12 or so. Throw in a dash of QB run, maybe some wide receiver stuff and you can see a plan to 40 runs a game. We’ll be tracking.

3. Culture of execution. Maybe the most important thing listed here and it seems Rhule knows it. You get the sense from a few clips that HCMR sometimes feels like his players are trying to do too much in a tight spot (maybe even the coaches, too). This is on the head coach to get fixed and to get it right.

The Best Reading

Before the end of the football season you may be on to us that our favorite Husker writer is Sam McKewon. The Omaha World-Herald sports editor seems to get “it” when analyzing a Husker football game. That’s just our take, yours maybe different.

(Sidenote: we’d like to interact with you on Facebook and Twitter, so get in those replies if you can.)

Sam’s piece from early August about Nebraska’s aim to make the “40/20 Club” caught our eye. So, this 40/20 Club? Take the ball away 20 times and sack the quarterback 40 times.

It also made us think about a way to use those same to numbers offensively. Kind of like this. Can Nebraska run the ball 40 times per game and throw it 20? It would seem to us that many things would be going right if Nebraska was able to do this for as many games as possible. You’d be controlling the line of scrimmage no doubt, you wouldn’t be putting too much stress on Dylan Raiola and, most importantly, you’d be possessing the ball.

A winning formula. Much like we saw from Georgia Tech on Saturday in their “upset” of No. 10 Florida State. It didn’t look like one to The Mirror. Want to know what’s glorious to us? This little stat sheet — 69% rushing success rate!!

So, here we go. The party starts in a little less than a week. We are excited to be able to share this with you for the 2024 football season. Always free thanks to our sponsor. Be careful. You might get what you pay for.