We are going the wrong direction

 Week 3

As quoted in the movie Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, “YOU ARE GOING THE WRONG DIRECTION!” This season has officially gone from hopeful to hopeless in a matter of 4 games. 

With all of the pent up excitement wrapped around the Husker football fanbase and the hope they had for some semblance of Scott Frost success, has all come crashing down. 

While last week the Huskers fired Scott Frost and had interim head coach Mickey Joseph take over the reins, it was a complete and utter embarrassment yet again this week from the Cornhusker defense. 

Heading into this game, the new look Huskers clearly had a new leader. Mickey Joseph took away all Blackshirts and implemented a new “I lead this team” mentality through the Unity Walk prior to the game. While Mickey made changes to practice structure and had the players tackling more, it was clear that the impossible task of changing this team in 6 days to compete was, well, impossible. 

The defense started off the game exciting, feeding off the energy from the 385th consecutive sell out crowd, forcing a punt later allowing Trey Palmer to receive a 32 yard touchdown pass from Casey Thompson that again sparked hope in the Husker faithful. Yet, following that 7-0 moment, Oklahoma proved just how much better they are than Nebraska. What was thought to be a potential hard fought competitive game, it became another slaughtering the Huskers endured. After half, the score was already 35-7 leading Memorial Stadium to be nearly half empty by the time the Huskers returned ready to receive the second half kick off and that total dwindled after the Huskers fumbled on that possession leading to yet another Oklahoma touchdown. 

While the Huskers missed 13 more tackles and were left grasping on air, the Huskers fell to a 49-14 game in Lincoln. Oklahoma had 580 total yards after only playing competitive football for two and a half quarters before kindly leaving Nebraska’s dignity and pulling their starters. 

While the Huskers lost badly, the fan base lost worse as it was yet another blowout on national television following the excitement of being on Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff. Nebraska fans as a whole are BIRG fans (BIRG in the fan world is Bask in Reflected Glory). Husker fans don’t take losing lightly,-many fans don't however, Husker football is a religion in Nebraska and having this season go from bad to worse has left the majority of Husker nation completely deflated.

The national embarrassment , as I predicted, wasn’t talked about much simply because the media narrative turned to how they don’t have a head coach and Mickey Joseph was only there for 6 days to make adjustments. 

While Mickey was the (interim) head coach this week, he is fully embracing the task of rejuvenating the group of guys and making the necessary adjustments needed to potentially win at least one more game this season. Mickey fired Defensive Coordinator Erik Chinander after watching the defense get picked apart game after game. Mickey knows this university’s team is built off the stout defense and he knew things needed to be changed from the personnel perspective after giving up over 1200 yards on defense in two games, one against a Sun-Belt program. 

Mickey says all the right things, leads the team with integrity, and shows all the pride for his guys, however, it’s clear the mess he has to mop up after Scott Frost’s failed tenure. Is he the right guy? I have faith, however, we just have to wait and see how his boys rally around and respond after back-to-back weeks of coach firing and embarrassing losses. 

This bye week is nice for us fans and hopefully the team to figure a few things out to maybe scratch a few more “W”s on the standings, but the flame that was once spreading like a wildfire of excitement, has officially been extinguished. 

Go Big Red.