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00:00 Welcome to the Kronicles, the people show.
00:11 Check the pulse of Husker Nation, ladies and gentlemen.
00:12 This is my gut reaction to Matt Ruhl's first win as Nebraska head coach.
00:16 First win inside of Memorial Stadium.
00:19 31-11 over Northern Illinois.
00:24 Real quick, going to dive into the game right here, right now, but before I do that, the
00:28 light show was phenomenal, as always.
00:31 Now, if you are happy, excited, enjoyed seeing Husker smash-mouth football, smash-mouth football
00:41 from the Huskers, and great defense like I did, smash that like button.
00:46 Now, it wasn't always entirely pretty.
00:48 There was some kind of up and down moments in the first half, but let's go to the beginning.
00:52 All right, Henry Carberg obviously started this game.
00:55 Jeff Sims did suit up and he warmed up.
00:58 Now, on the opening drive, man, they looked good.
01:01 They followed the script.
01:02 Your script plays.
01:03 Usually your first 16 is an offensive quarter.
01:05 They looked good, went down the field, they scored, they ran a couple of option plays.
01:09 Harburg was running hard.
01:12 All in all, four quarterback runs, a couple of nice passes, a touchdown pass.
01:19 The drive capped off 7-0.
01:21 Harburg to Billy Kemp, that pass was a 10-yard touchdown pass.
01:25 Now, the defensive line kind of just overwhelmed Northern Illinois all night long.
01:29 They started out the gate plan very well, but alas, we had to make it a little entertaining.
01:34 We couldn't have you feeling too good, Husker fans.
01:37 All right, a fumble deep in our own territory when we didn't pick up a blitz.
01:42 Okay, they blitzed, we didn't pick it up.
01:44 Trouble in the backfield led to a fumble.
01:46 Northern Illinois got a short field.
01:48 Now, the Blackshirts played great all night.
01:50 Okay, I know they gave up the late score, but they held Northern Illinois to a field
01:54 goal, so right off the bat it's 7-3 Nebraska.
01:58 The offensive line in the first half really wasn't playing great.
02:03 They really were not playing well.
02:05 We were lacking a vertical deep threat.
02:07 We've been lacking a vertical deep threat in the past game.
02:11 All of our passes seemed to be relatively close to the line of scrimmage.
02:14 I believe in the second half some of the play-action passes may have been 10 or 15 yards downfield,
02:18 but that's really been the extent of it so far, barring a double pass in the first
02:22 game.
02:23 Now, around this same time, I checked the stats.
02:26 I did it a couple times throughout this game.
02:28 I was curious.
02:29 I was like, man, Northern Illinois, they're going to get 100 yards of total offense.
02:32 What are we doing rushing yards-wise?
02:34 Various things that I found were interesting.
02:36 Now, at this point, the Blackshirts had only given up 37 total yards, okay, and this was
02:41 towards the end of the first quarter, and minus 3 rush yards.
02:44 At that point, the offense was kind of sputtering a little bit, and I literally wrote down,
02:48 "Thank goodness for the 3-3-5 defense."
02:50 Now, again, the offense struggled in the first half, got things going a little bit better
02:56 in the second half, maybe found an identity, so to speak.
03:01 But the Huskers' first drive was 6 plays, 55 yards.
03:05 Their next 4 drives were 17 plays for a total of 40 yards, but with under 5 minutes left
03:10 in the first half, had a good drive that we put together.
03:13 It included a hard run where Harburg lowered his shoulder.
03:17 We did this a few times throughout the game.
03:18 Man, do I love that.
03:19 Now, some people are going to say that's not smart.
03:22 Right now, we just got to be good at football, and I love a quarterback that's running somebody
03:25 over at the moment.
03:27 And it was capped off with a touchdown pass from Harburg to Thomas Fedoni, his former
03:32 roommate.
03:33 This is their second touchdown connection on the season.
03:36 Now, it's interesting because Thomas has been clocked, Fedoni has been clocked at 21 miles
03:41 an hour at 6'6", 250 pounds.
03:44 That's pretty impressive, even with the knee brace on.
03:46 Now, the Huskers at halftime had 3 sacks already defensively.
03:49 I got to look and see what they ended up the game with.
03:51 They came into the game tied for first in the country.
03:53 I have to imagine they're still going to be up there pretty high at the end of this game.
03:56 Nash Huttmaker looked really good to Polar Bear at halftime.
04:00 At halftime, had 2.5 tackles for loss.
04:02 Northern Illinois, their 84th year quarterback.
04:05 Actually, it's his 7th.
04:08 Can you believe that?
04:09 7th year.
04:10 Okay, playing college football.
04:11 Rocky Lombardi, great name, been pointed out a couple of times.
04:15 He was actually the Michigan State quarterback in November of 2018, if you remember that
04:19 game.
04:20 Okay, Michigan State, 6, Nebraska, 9 in the snow.
04:23 Nebraska got the win that day, but he was the quarterback that day.
04:27 Okay, I got to ask, is there no limit to the COVID eligibility rules?
04:32 I just, I don't know, seems like a fair question, but I digress.
04:34 Now, the first half, the Blackshirts played well.
04:36 The Nebraska offense had 2 touchdown drives on short fields, admittedly in the first half.
04:41 Couple of observations, Heinrich Harburg at that point, he looked like a young guy, okay,
04:49 for sure, but he was playing with a lot of heart.
04:52 How do you make halftime adjustments?
04:53 How do you come out in the second half?
04:54 How do you respond and get better as a young guy, first start, a quarterback for Nebraska?
04:59 Okay, now, it was one of those things where he looked poised, though.
05:04 I couldn't help but notice that he looked poised, despite, you know, some of the ups
05:08 and downs in the offense in the first half.
05:10 I got to ask another question.
05:11 Why did Thomas Fedoni give the silent finger to the fans?
05:14 I would like, it's probably more so to some of the doubters that he's heard through the
05:18 years, but I thought that was interesting because he is inside Memorial Stadium.
05:23 A couple of option plays where maybe Harburg could have pitched it a couple of times, all
05:27 right, that was something that I noticed, but man, the guy runs hard.
05:30 I got nothing but excitement for his future, and I really liked a lot of things that I
05:35 saw from him tonight.
05:37 Our first couple of punt returns, again, this is at halftime, or right after halftime now,
05:41 weren't great.
05:42 Our first two punt returns were a total of three yards.
05:46 Now, Harburg, at halftime, I went back and looked at this point, he was 8 of 12 passing,
05:51 75 yards, two touchdowns, 11 rushes for 39 yards, okay, and I wrote down here, "Improvement
05:55 needed but plenty of poise."
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06:24 Now, this is where Husker fans started to feel a little bit better about things, going
06:27 into the second half, okay?
06:29 All right, with one minute, well, towards the end of the third quarter, I should say.
06:34 With one minute left in the third quarter, Gabe Irvin scores his first touchdown of the
06:38 year to put Nebraska up 21 to 3.
06:39 Now this is where it really started to feel like old school physical football.
06:44 This was a 14 play, 76 yard drive, took 7 minutes and 10 seconds off the clock, okay?
06:51 Again, I wrote again, "Heinrich Harburg, a very physical runner.
06:54 Love his physicality."
06:55 You can debate whether it's smart right now, I just love it, okay?
06:59 All right, old school.
07:00 Now, at one time, we're going in to score, we're getting inside the red zone, I counted
07:05 three tight ends, but then I found out I was wrong.
07:07 It was two tight ends plus offensive lineman Teddy Prochaska lined up as a tight end to
07:12 the right.
07:13 Gee, I wonder which way we were running the ball, but I love that, okay?
07:16 Now Irvin's touchdown run at that point was the first touchdown scored by a Nebraska running
07:21 back this year.
07:23 All right, the second half, our offense, it was just body blow after body blow and we
07:28 just kept punching them.
07:29 I know it's Northern Illinois, but ladies and gentlemen, you've got to fricking start
07:32 somewhere.
07:33 Okay, I couldn't help but wonder, I'm sorry, I apologize, but this entered my head so I
07:37 wrote it down.
07:38 I said, "How many non-conference games could we have won recently if we had just done this
07:41 in previous years?"
07:42 I apologize, but Husker fans had to love seeing it tonight.
07:45 All right, now offensively, we're not explosive, okay?
07:48 I think we're aware of that.
07:50 We have actually moved the ball all year at times.
07:53 The biggest difference I noticed tonight was when we got inside enemy territory and I'm
07:56 not taking a shot at anybody.
07:58 Just an observation.
07:59 Okay, when we got inside enemy territory, we didn't turn the ball over.
08:03 Now we had the fumble early on, okay, I believe inside of our 10 or 15, which gave Northern
08:07 Illinois the short field, led to their field goal, but Nebraska ends up winning 35-11.
08:13 Now with a couple minutes left in the third quarter, or the fourth quarter, this was another
08:17 time that I just looked at the stats and I got to look at the final stats, but Nebraska
08:21 ended up doing pretty well towards the end of this game.
08:23 Total yards, 329 total yards for Nebraska, 79 for Northern Illinois.
08:27 Pass yards, 147 for Nebraska, 73 for Northern Illinois.
08:31 Rush yards, 182 rush yards.
08:33 At that point in time, again, I got to look up the final stats, but at that point in time,
08:36 9 total rush yards for Northern Illinois.
08:38 They were averaging 0.5 yards per carry.
08:42 Nebraska was top 10 in the country coming into this game, yards per carry.
08:45 They're going to leave top 10 if not higher.
08:48 Time of possession, at that point in time, we had the ball for 15 more minutes than Northern
08:52 Illinois.
08:53 Okay, all right.
08:57 Now, again, the late touchdown, okay, I get it, but Blackshire's pretty much dominated
09:01 this game.
09:02 All right, the D-line looked good.
09:04 All right, the coverage was tight in the back end.
09:07 Okay, the tackling was solid again.
09:10 Offense got stronger as the game went along, and maybe, just maybe, found an identity.
09:16 All right, ladies and gentlemen, I got some questions for you fine folks at home.
09:21 Let me know your thoughts below.
09:24 Number one, Heinrich Harburg, is this a quarterback debate?
09:29 Do we have, I'm just going to ask it because it has to be asked.
09:34 Did Heinrich Harburg do enough to be the starter?
09:37 Matt Rule has said earlier this week that if Jeff Sims is healthy, that he's our starter.
09:42 Do you think that's potentially changed after this game?
09:45 Okay, it is Northern Illinois, but again, you got to start somewhere.
09:49 Number two, second question, two-part question, I might add.
09:52 Did we find an offensive identity?
09:55 Okay, I can't help but wonder if this has been our identity all year long, just minus
09:59 the turnovers.
10:00 What are your thoughts?
10:01 Here's the second part of that question.
10:03 We got things to improve on offensively, no doubt.
10:05 What is your biggest concern offensively?
10:07 The offensive line?
10:08 Who starts a quarterback?
10:10 What seems to be the lack of a vertical deep threat in the passing game, or otherwise?
10:14 Again, let me know in the comments below.
10:16 Last question I got, kind of a random one.
10:19 Was I the only person who noticed Matt Rule sticking out his tongue a lot, licking his
10:23 lips a lot?
10:24 Does somebody get the dude a cup of water?
10:26 I know it's random, it has nothing to do with anything, but I couldn't help but notice it.
10:29 I'm a random type of guy.
10:32 Now, Carriker Chronicles.com, we have a plethora of phenomenal contributors to that website.
10:39 Check out Carriker's crew.
10:41 You got Connor Hayden of Corn Crates, you got John Johnson of Corn Nation, you got Dawn
10:45 Collins who was recently added the past couple of weeks, you've got Big Red Country Jeff,
10:49 alright, these are passionate individuals, these are individuals who do a great job,
10:53 okay, and people keep hitting me up.
10:56 As long as it's quality stuff, I love to have it on my site.
11:00 So it's Carriker Chronicles.com.
11:01 Alright, ladies and gentlemen, as always, I will be putting out more shows, more content
11:08 throughout this week.
11:09 I'm curious to see what Rule has to say about the quarterback position, okay, and you know,
11:14 Louisiana Tech coming up.
11:15 Can we get back to 2-2?
11:16 Heading into Big Ten play, good old Michigan, okay, and maybe headed towards a bowl game,
11:23 potentially, potentially.
11:24 Alright, until next time, Husker Nation, Go Big Red, and always remember to THROW THE
11:29 BALL!
11:29 BUUUUURP!