TLDR I think the biggest thing to remember with ****braska this year: they have 2 wins against FBS schools and only 1 of those wins is a P5 team. The P5 win is NW, who was in the conversation for worst offseason in the country. Not only did they lose some key cogs to graduation (including 2 1st round picks, a 5th round pick, and then the Nate Landman of their defense), they had such bad and unexpected attrition that even their own writers assumed that Fitzgerald had taken an NFL job and broke the news to the team. And then 2 key starters got season ending injuries in fall camp. Coincidentally, the G5 program in the conversation for worst offseason in the country was Buffalo, who is ****braska’s other win. Leipold was hired by Kansas and brought several players with him. On top of losing the conference player of the year to graduation, Buffalo lost 2 all-conference players to the transfer portal, 2 additional key starters, and in total 7(!) players in the trenches. These are ****braska’s only FBS wins lol.
The close losses have been admittedly fairly impressive but overall, hard to excuse when they also lost games to Illinois and Purdue. Their two most game-breaking offensive players are WR Samori Toure, a grad transfer who is gone after this year and TE Austin Allen, who tweeted that he will be entering the NFL draft. They landed the #1 TE in the 2020 class, a kid who grew up a ****braska fan, and there’s a reason their TE coach was the only one not fired on offense. I expect them to be mostly fine at that position. Every year, we hear they are loaded at WR but they continue to start walk-on guys there so I honestly have a hard time gauging the depth there. RB attrition has hit pretty hard. They currently have 2 guys who have had trouble staying healthy and a former walk-on who got in a bit of trouble for yelling at a coach and refusing to go in a game at one point.
Defensively, they lose Jojo Domann, both starting safeties, a starting CB, a starting DE, and their starting NT is likely to declare for the NFL draft. On top of all this, I agree with Holic, wondering if DC Chinander gets a HC opportunity somewhere. I would assume he would bring their DL or DB coach with him, or maybe both if he does. Would be a massive coaching turnover on both sides of the ball if that happened. This really was the year where it all came together. Just a massive failure to not get to a bowl game, even with Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Michigan on the schedule (Michigan State too but that wasn’t as obvious in the preseason). It’s gotten so bad, they had to run a BOGO sale for tickets for the Purdue game to keep the sellout streak alive and Scott Frost is still their HC. No need to worry.
