New year, new Nebraska

Kole Scheneman

After going 4-8 two years in a row, the Nebraska Football team has high hopes for 2019. Scott Frost’s first season as Nebraska’s head coach didn’t go as most people thought it would. An 0-6 start wasn’t exactly what most fans were expecting, but the team showed major potential in the last six games of the season. Four wins and two really close losses on the road should give the team some motivation going into this next season. But I think the recruiting class is easily the thing fans are most excited about. Nebraska is listed in the top 20 on mostly all recruiting class ranking lists. Nebraska has even been listed as one of the teams to finish within the top 25 this year.

Being inside the top 20 in recruiting classes is great, but why not number one? We don’t even have a single 5-star recruit! Also, what teams are above us on these recruiting class rankings? A few of them have South Carolina over Nebraska which stinks because it means these kids would rather go to a school that will ALWAYS finish behind Alabama, LSU and Georgia.

One of the recruiting class ranking lists even has Florida State over us, a team that arguably had one of, if not THE, most disappointing 2018 campaigns with a 5-7 record. The rest of the teams above Nebraska are the ones that you would expect, like Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Georgia and Oklahoma.

Now on to my opinion about all of this. First of all, we need the defense to step up in late game situations rather than fall apart. If they would’ve stepped up in the Ohio State and Iowa games, we could’ve won. Wins are great, but when they’re against Minnesota, Bethune-Cookman, Illinois and Michigan State? Yeah that’s pretty bad. Now, yes, Michigan State was actually not that bad, but they were falling apart late in the season. I’d say a reachable and reasonable goal for this year would be to beat either Wisconsin, Northwestern, Ohio State or Iowa. We also need to beat Colorado for playing dirty last year by purposefully trying to injure Adrian Martinez, and also just to put them back in their place.

Do I expect us to make the top 25? Well, that’s a tough question. I feel like it depends on the type of Nebraska we see this year. I definitely feel like when we got rid of the guys who were on the team just to mess around and not do any work, we started doing really well. I feel like we’ll really see what kind of team we are in the first game against South Alabama. I think it’ll show what kind of team we really are. If we blow them out, I expect the rest of the season to be pretty good. I predict our record will be 11-1 and we’ll finish 12th overall in the country. You heard me right. I think this team has a lot of potential and the ability to do great things.