Nebraska beat Northern Iowa 34-3 on Saturday night, in what was a solid but not perfect performance against an FCS opponent. Let’s get right to the topline takeaways.
CHEERS TO THAT
Celebrate all the Ws. Here is Nebraska’s record after three games from every season between 2017 and 2023: 1-2, 0-3, 2-1, 1-2, 2-1, 1-2, 1-2. The Huskers are now 3-0 for the first time in nearly a decade. If the last several years have taught us anything, it’s that we need to celebrate all the Ws. And this wasn’t even an ugly win! Yes, there are some things the team needs to clean up. But the Big Red took care of business against a pesky Northern Iowa team, and after running out to a big lead, never let the Panthers close enough to make it interesting. Many people have made this point, especially after the last two games, but Nebraska teams of the very recent past did not know how to close the door. This Husker team is playing winning football, they’re in the top 25, and the boys in red have everything to play for heading into conference play. Enjoy it!
Nitpicking. At the risk of contradicting myself…this will probably come off as a bit obnoxious, but this was a good-not-great performance. And that’s OK! I’ll take a 31-point win while still feeling like the team can play even better football all day long. We’re still celebrating this W, but Common Fans will be hoping the team can tighten things up and take a step forward against Illinois on Friday night.
The defense didn’t look quite as dominant as they had looked in the first two games. There were several missed tackles, which led to UNI getting a lot of leaky yardage. Also, it felt like the Panthers hurt themselves in key moments as much as anything. The Malcolm Hartzog interception was a fantastic, athletic play by Hartzog, but the receiver was wide open and Panther quarterback Aidan Dunne just misfired. Northern Iowa also had some untimely penalties that helped Nebraska. The Huskers took advantage of these moments which is what good teams do, but the point is, there were definitely some moments where it felt like it was coming too easy for the UNI offense, and we were lucky they hurt themselves.
Now, back to the positive: the great thing about this season…