Ready Or Not

This Saturday the Nebraska Cornhuskers will travel down to Lubbock, Texas and try to avoid an embarrassing loss to the Texas Tech Red Raiders. That’s right, not try to win but try to avoid falling on their faces. Hey, at least this week it won’t be on national TV for the entire (or at least 30% of it) country to witness.

Nebraska is wrought with problems. Allegedly there has been some rumblings about certain coaches not getting along and having some heated disputes. Once again, take the “allegedly” and “rumblings” with a giant grain of kosher table salt. Nothing has been confirmed and until it is, we’re only talking about heresy here.

The current betting line (not that I gamble much, ahem) on the game has the Huskers as 20.5 point dogs. Yikes. Vegas doesn’t have much faith in Pelini and his reconstructed defense apparently.

Why the giant separation set by Vegas odds makers? Well, this make come as a shock to you but Tech’s offense is pretty darn good. While Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford and Texas’ Colt McCoy get all the press clippings (typical) along with Missouri’s Chase Daniel (painful). Tech’s QB Graham Harrell, with his 12,000+ career passing yards, is quietly having a darn good year. Actually, he’s passed for more yards than any gunslinger in the country with 2027.

The statistical matchups are enough to make you cry. Nebraska’s return to defensive mediocrity might take a bit of a slide after tomorrow. Currently, the Huskers and Pelini rank 83rd nationally in total defense and we’ve only played one Big XII opponent. If the team doesn’t start coming together on the defensive side of the ball, we could dip down into familiar 2007 territory.

Texas Tech doesn’t run the ball a whole lot. In fact they are 63rd in that nation pounding the rock. However, they defend the run fairly well. I’ll be honest though, Tech really hasn’t played anyone, but neither did Missouri (sans Illinois) up until last week and they had no issues stopping our offense. What we need to worry about is Tech’s ability to pass, something we couldn’t stop in hurricane winds. Nebraska is giving up an average of 243 yards per game which shakes out to being 93rd in the country. Ouch.

Remember 2003 and how we nearly led the entire country in takeaways? Remember Daniel and Josh Bullocks? Barrett Ruud? Demorrio Williams? Yeah, that’s a nice thought. Waking up back in reality in 2008, the Huskers are 88th in turnover margin.

So let’s review. We can’t stop the pass, we can’t create turnovers. Sorry to say, but if you read my prediction for the Big XII yesterday you can see I don’t have much confidence of the Huskers avoiding a blowout. I think I tossed out 63-21 and I’m sticking with it unfortunately.

I’ll leave you with something a little more disturbing. Before October of 2001, when we beat #2 Oklahoma in Lincoln with the toss play from Mike Stuntz to Eric Crouch, in the eight years previous to that the Huskers beat 26 opponents that were in the top 20. In the eight years since then? Zero. That’s right, a big fat goose egg. Since we beat the Sooners and when we melted down against Colorado 36-62 and lost to Miami in the Rose Bowl, we have defeated zero opponents in the top 20.

Now I live in Kansas City and Missouri and Kansas are top 25 teams. A Missouri quarterback is leading the Heisman voting too. I'm worried about a home game against Baylor. Baylor!! If I told my 17 (1997) year old self this, he'd say I'm living in bizzaro world.