2 Average Guys

Nebraska Football Blog Space

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We are just average guys who love our Nebraska Cornhuskers! We discuss college football and will also dabble in baseball, volleyball, and UNO Mavericks hockey!

  • Nebraska vs USC Preview

    Happy Halloween Husker fans, its finally here, Blackout weekend against the USC Trojans.  A lot has happened since we beat Northwestern and this game is gut check time for Nebraska.  First thing’s first, let’s take a moment and thank Troy Dannen and Julie Rhule for telling coach Rhule where they will be residing for the foreseeable future.  In this era of college football, stability matters and the facts are that under Matt Rhule, we have seen this program trending in the right direction.  Rome wasn’t built in a day and it’s better to get it right by re-building a program than just spending as much as we can for any 4 or 5 star we can get.  Think of them as free agents that fill skill positions and focus on keeping Nebraska kids in Nebraska.  

    This game against the Trojans isn’t a measuring stick game, it’s probably the biggest test in the Matt Rhule era for Nebraska, who happen to have the youngest roster in the Big Ten.  It’s huge because victory is very achievable but it will be extremely difficult.  There’s a lot to overcome in this game mentally and from an execution standpoint so the Huskers will need to play lights out for 4 whole quarters plus overtime if needed.  There’s no excuses in this one, either they can be the team we know they are capable of, or they hole up like we’ve seen in the past.  

    In the horse world, our number one rule is that if you get thrown from the horse, you get back up because it’s not a matter of if, but when it will happen.  We’ve all been there, arm torn up and bleeding, bruised, groin pulled from hitting the saddle horn, sitting in the dirt and rocks with two choices; either sit there and bleed or reach up, grab the reins and saddle horn and place your foot into the stirrup, pulling back up into that saddle again.  That’s when the work gets put in mentally, knowing your mistakes that lead to it and correcting them by squeezing the horse up and getting back to work.  Getting thrown sucks and it’s in no way as cool as it looks in rodeo competitions, it’s embarrassing and very painful, but if you don’t put all that out of your head and get back to it, you’ll never do it again.  Scars are cool and make a great story, but only if you had the guts to not quit.  This Husker team needs to have good scars to show after this one.  This game is a must win.

    Last week was about finding our identity and we know that we are young, talented and make a lot of poor decisions and let ourselves get beat.  But the positive is that if we flip the switch mentally, with our talent….think about that for a second.  The all black uniforms do look cool and simple, which is who we have always been.  We are not and should not be a flashy program that become the darlings of social media and espn, rather we should represent the state and its hard working farming culture of sun up to sun down.  It’s honest and simple but tough to do day in and day out.  This blog is short this week, but that’s because there isn’t much more to analyze other than the past mistakes, punches in the mouth, and mockery by the college football world need to end.

    And wouldn’t it be something, if that’s exactly what happens Saturday.  Go Big Red.

    • Joel

  • Nebraska vs Northwestern Recap


    Andre Agassi shocked the world in 1992 when he won his first Grand Slam title at Wimbledon on the grass surface he hated and wasn’t built for, dressed all in white. Andre, after all, lived by the creed of “Image is everything” according to his commercials and lifestyle.  In the years following he hit rock bottom, at one point playing the challenger circuit ranked 141 in the world, and was out of shape.  His career was over as far as fans and media were concerned,  that is until one day in 1994, out of nowhere, an unranked Agassi fought back  and won the US Open.  From 1994 through 2002 Andre won six Grand Slam titles, reached number one in the world rankings, including the Olympic gold medal in 1996 and achieved the elusive Career Grand Slam, winning all four major titles.  What changed?  He took on Brad Gilbert as his coach who taught Andre how to be patient and grind out matches, not focusing on style points, in fact Gilbert’s book is titled, “Winning Ugly”.  Brad wasn’t the country club style player himself or coach but he found ways to win, regardless of how it made him look.  

    Nebraska won ugly on Saturday against a gritty Northwestern team that basically wrote the Big Ten book on how to do it.  At times it was pretty, like when Kenneth Williams took the opening kickoff of the second half in for 6, but for the most part, it wasn’t a fan’s dream of a dominant game. In fact, it was frustrating thinking we might be watching the same movie play out like in years past.  Northwestern clawed back to tie the game until Dylan Raiola led an incredible drive to take the lead in the 4th quarter. This year the Huskers keep finding ways, in spite of the situation in close games, hell even Michigan wasn’t supposed to be as close as it was, but the guys stayed in it until the end, giving themselves a chance.  Chalk the Minnesota game off as a wake up call.  

    As a fan, watching Agassi all those years ago, he had moments in every match that frustrated me so much, thinking he was going to choke again, but point after point, he kept playing his game and finding a way.  That’s what the Huskers did today, they stuck with their game plan and used their grittiest player, Emmett Johnson, to keep moving the chains and leading by example.  Leading up to this game, I mentioned how we need to find an identity and maybe, right now our identity is finding ways to discover who we are.  One week it’s Raiola, the next Nyziah Hunter, and then it’s a dose of Kenneth Williams and Emmett.  That’s the world we live in right now as Husker fans and maybe AD Troy Dannen was right when he said that as fans we see 15 years or terrible football, while the current coaching staff is still teaching toughness and how to find ways through adversity.  After all, if we would have been told that Nebraska would start the season 6-2 heading into the USC game, we would probably have been thrilled.  

    There’s not really a feeling of “Will we or won’t we?”  with a tough Trojan team coming to Lincoln this week. It’s more of a “Wait and see how it plays out”.  That’s where we need to be right now after the nightmare of Mike Riley and Scott Frost coaching tenures.  This staff knows what they’re doing and the players will put it together as they go along.  It’s tough having to let go of the past and give this team its chance, but it’ll be worth it, knowing how they took their steps and made mistakes, all while rebuilding a once dominant program. The alternative of putting together a quick fix team that scorches for a few years and falls again isn’t our style. We live for the grind it out games that eventually wear our opponents into submission.  Go back and watch the games from the 95 team. Even though they were dominant, they still had games where they took awhile to get going against mediocre teams.  

    Looking good while winning is great and all, but it pales in comparison to demoralizing an opponent that prides itself on looking sexy.  Remember 94 Miami, and Colorado last year?  Good teams that couldn’t pass the test when it came to facing adversity.  This week we’ll cuss at our tv’s and call for coaches to be fired because we do care and want  to get over this mountain. I’d love to smoke the Trojans, but that probably won’t happen because it’s not who we are and not who we need to be right now…

    We’re young, we’re fast, and we are learning how to win ugly!

    • Joel

  • What to expect after the Minnesota loss.

    It’s been an interesting week in Husker Nation due to an unexpected loss to Minnesota last Friday night and with that comes a lot of anger, second guessing, and coaching from outside the program.  We all do it and, yes, there’s things that need to be fixed, but at 7 games in, we’re likely past that point  so all we can do is focus on making adjustments and moving on to the next game.  Northwestern comes into Lincoln this week with an identical record, but a different trajectory.  The stakes are much higher for the Huskers than for the Wildcats and a lot of eyes will be on this game, whether to crown us or laugh us into our graves of sub-mediocrity. 

    Northwestern is who they’ve always been, winners in a rock fight.  In fact pretty much every team in the Big Ten knows their identity at this point and sticks to it with the exceptions being us and Wisconsin.  This game doesn’t so much come down to X’s and O’s because those are a given at this point and time.  

    So who are we?  What’s our identity?

    We lost and yes it sucks but it’s still in the past and what happens next decides who this team is and what we can expect from here until the season ends.  Fan and media opinion are one thing, but voices from within the program are another and these coaches and athletic director have been more transparent than we’ve ever had at the University of Nebraska.  I’m not going to sit here and write out stats and scenarios for this one:  The Huskers just need to put everything behind them and play with attitude, with brutal focus, and….heart.  Lay it all out there in spite of who they’re playing and know that winning is the only option.  The Mike Riley days are over….nobody’s getting flipping ice cream after this one.

    • Joel Telschow