The Rear View Mirror: Weaker Boulder

There are days — and nights — when the Mirror wonders if we should keep writing, but we have decided, at least for now, that we are going to stick out. Let’s just get it our there from the start — the proceedings in Boulder made us want to put on a blind fold.

But, here we have resigned to a few things:

1. Matt Rhule has only coached two games.

2. If you really look at a stat sheet, Nebraska should have a chance to win multiple games this year and still put a smile on our face.

3. Turnovers will KILL all the good things on the stat sheet.

4. It’d be easier to have patience if the movie we were watching was at least a little bit different.

5. The next six games will certainly test our team (and our fans), but let’s chart our way to a bowl game just for fun.

As you know, this space is a genuine fan of Coach Rhule and believes we have a coach who can change the direction of the program. (The Mirror will stop tweeting during games for the rest of the year. Making myself that promise.)

Let’s chat these five things above and spend the week figuring out how to beat Northern Illinois.

Matt Rhule has only coached two games at Nebraska and we probably trusted him a little too much. Rhule is saying all the right things. We think he believes he is coaching a football team that is better than 0-2.

“I really think we are better than we are showing, but what does that mean? That’s just words, so,” he said after the game on Saturday. And, yes, for now, they are.

Rhule is a humble man, it appears. A real football guy (looking from the outside). He is unfortunately coaching a football team (a football PROGRAM) that has a turnover problem. This, on both sides of the ball.

We chatted last week about players making plays. This is really where it pops out. It’s a hard thing to look at. Consider…

Those numbers turn into pretty consistent losing when you are giving away THAT MANY possessions. At some point, one must draw a line in the sand and say NO MORE. Nebraska needs someone, anyone, to step up and do this. A defender who is going to force turnovers, an offensive player who refuses to turn it over, coaches who won’t all kids to play that do turn it over.

“You fumble the ball, you run a mile,” the great Herman Boone once said. Someone needs to engrain these habits into Nebraska football.

Matt Rhule has only coached two games here. He’s off to a horrible start, but he knows it and that’s half the battle. So, maybe the tide turns sooner rather than later.

It’s certainly interesting to look at Nebraska’s stat sheet and turnovers during the first two games. If you really want to, you can find a load of positives. Let’s do bullet points two and three together.

Take yesterday. What has to be the blueprint to beat a high-powered Colorado football team that needs to be in a rhythm? Control the ball, control the ball, control the ball. So what does Nebraska do?

First possession: 4:51. Excellent football, moving the ball via the run and the pass. And, then a Sims fumble.

(It’s funny to type this as the Bears play the Packers and Greg Olsen is talking about a “culture of winning” for Chicago not being able to make plays. Familiar.)

The rest of the first half: a three-and-out, a 2:52 possession, the 5:12 possession (missed field goal) and then old Nebraska shows up, finally. It’s almost like they were a new, real football team (the defense had forced four punts) and, then, boom. Old ways.

Nebraska didn’t have possession longer than 2:48 the rest of the game. That problem is two-fold: turnovers make short possessions, it’s hard to churn clock when you are behind. The Huskers folded — which led to sad tweeting about ranking bad losses.

After the second fumble for the Huskers, Colorado scored on seven of their last nine possessions. SEVEN of NINE.

So, when you look at the good things you see on the early stat sheet, regarding time of possession, you can see the staff had a decent plan and were (mostly) executing it. And, then turnovers.

We said in this space last week that Jeff Sims had some data regarding turnovers that we didn’t like. We also have been on record that it would take some extraordinary coaching to get those data points to move. After two games, we are not quite sure how you fix it.

Our guess is here that Sims is QB1 for a reason because coaches aren’t trying to lose. We also would guess that he’s not turning it over in practice much either. So when the lights come on, something different has to happen. Simple as that. The longer this goes on, the more the staff will have to answer for it.

The sad part of the whole Husker football movie is that it seems we have our own version of Groundhog Day. The losses are continual gut punches and more often self-inflicted than not.

Especially recently. When you look back there is so much to be frustrated about. And, probably the hardest part about sitting and watching a game and having a phone (and a Twitter account) is analyzing the moment and not the long game.

I am begging folks to try and long game focus. (That said, I don’t want to see a 2-10 football operation either, our players are better than that.)

But game day’s are wild on social media. This tweet got 300+ replies.

Or this one. Play of the game, a simple sentence gets almost 16,000 views. It’s a brave world out there where nearly everyone wants to be a coach. Or pretend to be one.

Football is hard. It’s been especially hard for Nebraska for 20 years. Our movie, it seems, will never end and the story line keeps going. If it was a movie you’d have up and left a long time ago. If you were the screenwriter, Hollywood would laugh you out of the building saying it’s too far-fetched to be good fiction. But too many new characters keep arriving that you like to make you stay a little longer.

One of the big texts that comes in the group chat

every once in awhile is, “Wheeeeee…” when things start going sideways. We got another one of those yesterday. There might be more.

Ah, but the group will keep watching. We don’t know what else to do. Someday, it will feel like good football. Or the reel will keep spinning on the same scene over and over.

It’s always best to part on a good note if we can, so that’s what we’ll do tonight. Have you seen the rest of Nebraska’s schedule? Even with what we have seen, so far, there is a path to a bowl game (IF the turnovers get fixed).

Teams Nebraska will play that have equal or lesser talent and that we should defeat: Northern Illinois (lost to FCS Southern Illinois), Louisiana Tech (a 38-14 loss to SMU), Northwestern and Purdue (protect your home field).

Michigan is a likely loss (could you imagine beating Jimmy at home on Big Noon Kick?).

Then, we have these 50-50 or 60-40 or 40-60 games: Illinois, Michigan State (interesting proceedings today), Maryland, Wisconsin and Iowa. If you think Nebraska can’t compete with these teams, we need to have a discussion. Will they beat them all? Probably not. But, they’ll have a chance.

The first stop is getting to 1-2 and seeing some ball security improvement. It will also be interesting to see what the coaching staff does about it, too. They are paid well enough to know they need to fix it. We’ll need to sit back and watch.

“I think we have a team that wants to win so badly that sometimes they are doing things we aren’t really wanting them to do,” Rhule said Saturday. “I think it’s out of care. This team really cares.”

The head man has a lot of chances going forward to coach his team out of his funk. We’ll keep writing about it even if we have to watch with our eyes closed.