By Jordan Hansen
Part 3 of The Daily Iowan’s summer look at the Big Ten.
Nebraska football is in a strange place.
Bo Pelini roams the sidelines of a Division-IAA program, while Mike Reily led the Cornhuskers to a losing record. They’re far removed from the national championships in the mid-90s and drifting further away from the success they enjoyed under Pelini.
It was, however, just Reily’s first season and issues were bound to pop up. Nebraska finished 6-7 overall, but it came with an ugly 1-5 mark in inter-division play. However, the team did win three of its final four games, including a bowl victory over UCLA.
Now, how a team with a losing record ended up in a bowl game is a completely different conversation, but winning at the end of the season gave Reily breathing room. The Cornhuskers weren’t going to move on from Reily after just one year, but disappointing losses early in the season made firing Pelini look a little questionable.
Nebraska returns 16 players that played significantly and are veteran at a number of positions.
This list starts with none other than quarterback Tommie Armstrong.
wait a second… pic.twitter.com/A4nVK0s4fh
— Jordan Hansen (@jordyhansen) June 16, 2016
A dual-threat quarterback, he was quite the match for Reilly’s West Coast offense background. Nebraska passed the ball a lot — nearly 270 yards per game — and Armstrong’s interception numbers bloomed as a result.
However, Armstrong remained effective on the ground, scoring seven touchdowns and gaining 400 yards. As long as he’s the starting quarterback, he will be what the offense flows through. The team does not have a dominating back right now and the rushing game had issues during certain points of the season.
Luckily for Armstrong, his favorite target — Jordan Westerkamp — returns for his senior season. Westerkamp finished with 918 yards (sixth-most in the Big Ten) and seven touchdowns.
That’s great production and they’ll need a similar level from him again this year.
Defensively, there are holes. The Cornhuskers had the fourth-worst defense (yardage-wise) in the Big Ten and gave up 30 or more points five different times.
There’s a lot of hope that the linebackers group can take a step forward this season.
The place where Nebraska will need to improve the most is at its secondary positions. Playing good defense has always been a hallmark of the Big Ten and its hard to win the conference crown without playing decent to good without it.
Since joining the Big Ten, Nebraska certainly hasn’t been known for having a consistently elite defense. It’ll be interesting to see if the Cornhusker coaching staff will be able to pull out some more production from its secondary or if the status quo fails to change.
Regardless, Reily needs to win games next year to continue to keep the rabid fan base away. If he fails to do so, the administration might (read: probably will) cave to the alumni and send him unceremoniously packing.
Follow @JordyHansen all summer long for Iowa and Big Ten news, updates and analysis.