The Mirror has tried to be a positive space for a long, long time in the fall of 2024. WE can still try, we might fail. Maybe, you’d like us to fail. (Wink) Nebraska lost to Indiana 56-7 on Saturday afternoon — quite frankly, it was over before noon. What a downer.

So, here is the deal. Just last week we wrote about how hard winning is in college football. Surely that didn’t change in the last seven days, did it. It’s amazing what a blowout will do to your brain. You’ll make all sorts of silly tweets. Hate it when that happens.

As always, you get The Mirror each week because our friends at South Central Chiropractic in Sutton said you should. But darn it if we aren’t even sure what to write this week. Just a completely awful game.

Over Here Googling

Be weary of the man with a chip on his shoulder. Maybe Nebraska fans can hope that Indiana placed one on some of the Huskers leaders — players, coaches, you name it.

Because Indiana and their “Google me” head coach sure played with one. Can you blame them, if we are being honest. Indiana is good. Really, REALLY good. They are win-a-game in the playoff material. How? Old and experienced players who were never given a chance.

It was an amazing display of talent (first and foremost; Indiana had better players than Nebraska and you can shut it with your recruiting rankings), coaching (not much to say there) and grit and toughness. Indiana’s dudes wanted to hammer Nebraska. Nebraska got punched once and retreated to the corner. Wonder what Bud Crawford thinks of that?

And, so Nebraska wanted to rely on their defense (but didn’t once play an offense like THIS last year). Or they want to chuck it around with a freshman quarterback. Whatever it is, it all lead to a very, very sad day in Bloomington. And, now, the Huskers have a trip to Columbus, Ohio ahead.

During the game, The Mirror had a little time to think. And, text with some football loving friends. What became more and more clear is that the Colorado game is an outlier at this point.

Everything else, well. UTEP is 1-6, Northern Iowa is getting completely hammered in the Missouri Valley (Nebraska looks equal to South Dakota, North Dakota and SDSU if we are being honest), Purdue and Rutgers are horrible (maybe the two worst teams in the big, Big, BIG TEN).

Do you see it? Does anyone else see it?

Can Nebraska turn this around? Will be sitting at the kitchen table next Sunday and writing about a gritty Husker performance in Columbus? Maybe. But, right now, it doesn’t look very probable.

Last week, we typed about what Nebraska needed to do the rest of the season to get to 6-8 wins. None of it showed up in Bloomington.

• High level defense that hadn’t allowed a touchdown run all season. Cignetti laughs in our face, gets five touchdowns on the ground and 215 yards on 33 carries. That will make you want to quit playing defense.

• A vastly improved running game that actually called runs. There is nothing more we can type here, but we are going to in a second. This is a problem.

• Serviceable special teams. LOL.

Let’s assume a few things over the next few weeks.

• That Nebraska’s defense might not be as good as we think it was a few weeks ago.

• Special teams are a blunder and we just need to deal with it.

• And, that winning games is still the point of football and you need to figure out a game plan to do that.

We can’t say this loud enough. Nebraska needs to give someone, ANYONE a headset that will ACTUALLY call run plays. To wit, the Huskers if you just look at the stats have 240 runs and 228 passes on the season. What to do you mean, Mirror? Nebraska is running it.

But, look closer with us, please. Dylan Raiola has been sacked 21 times. Now this flips to 219 runs and 249 passes (from the headset). And Nebraska has been WINNING and LEADING games folks. And, they keep calling pass plays. Why. WHY? WHY? Probably because there is zero evidence that the guy calling the plays doesn’t like driving the ball down the field.

Watch. “What were the results of Satterfield as an offensive coordinator in other places that made you think he was going to be successful here.” From the top of your lungs, Mike’l.

The simple facts are this. Nebraska is averaging less than 30 running back runs per game. You can find multiple stories from our summer media blast that said Matt Rhule wanted “a guy” to average 20-25 runs a game and another to average 10-15 a game. Makes sense. The evidence? Dowdell is at 11.5 and Emmett Johnson is at 6.1. Holy smokes.

The sad part? When Nebraska runs with their running backs they are averaging right at 4.5 yards per carry. That’s not a bad running game. That’s a decent running game. That’s a bunch of first downs. Nebraska just doesn’t call runs.

You can find Rhule’s pregame interview that said, “we’d need to run it” against Indiana. You can find his postgame press conference that said, “we wanted to get in big people, we wanted to run the ball, get be play action, be violent.” Nebraska is NEVER that. Ever.

Either Rhule is lying or Satterfield doesn’t do or believe in what the head coach is saying. Both are a problem.

Can Nebraska fix that and change it? Most definitely. It’d be nice to see it.

SIDE NOTE: For fun, The Mirror dug up the 1976 season stats. Osborne was 9-3-1 (4-3 in the Big Eight) and about to get run out of town. He had his best NFL quarterback in Vince Ferragamo. The numbers? 679 runs (52.2 per game!!!) and 306 passes.

The Standard

I guess we’ll make grading the standard a weekly thing here. See how it goes.

1. Win the turnover battle. Gross. Five turnovers. An inconsequential end of the first half interception for the defense. GRADE: F. 

2. Most physical team in football. Did we beat this horse to death up top? Probably. GRADE: F.

3. Culture of execution. Step out of bounds at the 2. Check. Six more penalties (and it’s an improvement!!) Check. GRADE: F.

You don’t need anything else here. You just don’t. And we don’t need to analyze it much more. They are paying people good money in North Stadium to make the product better. If they can’t do it, someone else will have to figure it out.

A long week awaits with a Horseshoe trip at the end. But, maybe high school football is your thing. The playoffs are coming so that might ease your mood. Remember The Mirror, always free thanks to our sponsor. But, be careful. You might get what you pay for.