Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Nebraska Had a 50-Yard Edge in Total Offense and a Fired Coordinator to Show for It
A weekly, unique recap show for each college football team that played a game. This unique look at what occured has a forward-looking approach and gets you what you need to know. For hardcore fans, casual onlookers and the gambler looking for an edge. Check out the Depth Dossier!
This is the Depth Dossier: the Nebraska Cornhuskers, Week 10.
Nebraska had every reason to think it won this game on paper, but it still walked away with a loss and a fired coordinator to show for it.
The Huskers fell 24 to 13 at Illinois despite out-gaining the Illini 426 yards to 376, and one day later, that loss cost Dana Holgorsen his job as offensive coordinator.
Here's the quick version. Nebraska's four-game losing streak hit rock bottom in a game it statistically should have won. Quarterback Anthony Colandrea threw for 284 yards and a touchdown with no interceptions. Wide receiver Jacory Barney Jr. broke a 51-yard touchdown to make it interesting in the fourth quarter. The Huskers ran for 142 yards, averaging four and a half yards a carry. None of it was enough. Kicker John Hohl missed two field goals in the first half, Illinois turned a fake field goal into a touchdown, and 11 penalties for 82 yards kept wiping out scoring chances. Nebraska is now 5 and 4 after opening the season 5 and 0, and this loss led directly to Holgorsen getting fired.
So let's dig into how a team wins the yardage battle and still loses by eleven. Nebraska matched Illinois almost exactly in yards per play, out-gained them by 50 yards, held the ball for nearly 32 minutes, and still scored just 13 points. That's not an offense getting shut down. That's an offense that couldn't finish drives.
Start with the kicking. Hohl, making his first start after taking over for Kyle Cunanan, missed from 45 and 54 yards in the first half. That left the game tied 7 to 7 at halftime when Nebraska could have been ahead. Then came the gut punch. Facing fourth and twelve from their own 32 in the third quarter, Illinois faked a field goal. The holder took off for 29 yards down to the three, and a touchdown followed right after. That's arguably the biggest single play of the game.
Penalties piled on top of that. An illegal shift wiped out a first down on the opening drive. A holding call erased a 21-yard scramble from Colandrea that would have put Nebraska inside the Illinois ten. Another penalty pushed Nebraska out of field-goal range before halftime. And offensive lineman Tree Babalade was reportedly pulled after a second false start.
Nebraska also second-guessed itself on fourth down, with an empty-backfield pass on fourth and one falling incomplete, and a deep shot on fourth and three later in the game also missing, even with a run game averaging four and a half yards a carry sitting right there.
The defense, which had been a bright spot during this losing streak, cracked against the pass. Illinois scored on four of five possessions across the second through fourth quarters, finishing with 292 passing yards and three touchdown throws, with one Illinois quarterback alone throwing for 129 yards and two scores.
Now, the part that'll shape next week. Head coach Matt Rhule fired Holgorsen as offensive coordinator on November 7th, handing play-calling over to co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Glenn Thomas. Nebraska averaged more than 31 points a game during its five wins to open the season, and just 13 and a half points a game during this four-game skid. That gap is reportedly what Rhule pointed to in making the change.
On the injury side, offensive lineman Brendan Black didn't return after an undisclosed injury, which pushed backup Gibson Pyle into an expanded role, playing 82 snaps. That's worth watching given how split the line's performance was, reportedly grading out as its best pass-blocking game of the season but its second-worst in run blocking.
At kicker, Hohl's two misses complicate an already uncertain situation after the move away from Cunanan. No further change has been announced, but it's now a real question mark. Colandrea, meanwhile, was clean, completing 32 of 43 passes with no interceptions after throwing six over his previous four games, which argues for stability at quarterback even with his fourth-down struggles. Barney still looks like Nebraska's most dangerous downfield threat, and running back Jamal Rule's 69 yards on the ground suggest the backfield deserves more carries than it got once the game slipped away.
The Thomas-led offense debuts next week against Rutgers, and how different the play-calling looks will say a lot about where this season is headed.
This was the depth dossier. For everything college football, be it depth charts, data or dossiers, head over to C F B Depth dot com. We will be back next week. This was an AI-generated podcast from content developed by real human beings passionate about college football.