Like all of you, I am concerned that we won't have a college football season this year. I'm going to assume that we will have a season because I don't want to consider the alternative.
I have a masochistic habit of recording all of the Nebraska games each season on my DVR and then re-watching the season in the couple of months before the next season starts. It helps remind me of who our up and coming players are, and it's interesting to watch the evolution (or devolution as the case may be) of the team as the year goes along. So far in watching last season I've only made it through the Colorado game, but watching it reminded me of something that has really bothered me about Husker teams for quite a while now.
People have mentioned the need to improve the overall team talent level, and that is certainly a valid point. We are not going to beat the Ohio States of the world until we close the talent gap. But we still have enough talent to beat most of the teams on our schedule. Nevertheless, we keep losing close games against teams with comparable or lesser talent. Put simply, our team does not know how to win. We were 1-5 in games decided by one score in Frost's first season, and last year we blew games we had good chances to win against Colorado, Indiana, Purdue and Iowa. Although we lost by 16 to Wisconsin, I would even put that game into the category of games that we could have won. We blew several scoring opportunities in the second half. Had we converted those opportunities into points, we would have been in it at the end with a chance to win. Yes, Nebraska beat Illinois and Northwestern last year in close games, but they were bad teams. We didn't win close games against good teams.
What is particularly frustrating is that this is not a new problem. This has been a defining characteristic of Nebraska teams for several years now. If we did nothing else other than win rather than lose a majority of our close games, our record would look much different. Wisconsin wins close games. That's why they are consistently around the ten win mark.
Why don't we know how to win? Frost's teams at UCF were over- rather than underachievers. And it wasn't simply a matter of getting "his" guys in place, because he mainly did it with guys he inherited from the prior staff. You know, the same staff who went winless in their final season in Orlando. Why hasn't he instilled the same mental toughness in his teams in Lincoln? I wish I knew.
We have a tough schedule this year, especially at the back end, but if we show some heart and eke out more close wins against good opponents, I will have hope that Frost is finally turning the corner with this team. For the collective sanity of the State of Nebraska, let's hope we finally see some progress. We have had a very disappointing couple of decades.
