Five burning questions heading into the bye week

Here are five of the biggest questions facing Nebraska as it heads into its first bye week of the season…

Nebraska had already endured four other painful losses before traveling up to Minnesota this weekend, but Saturday’s latest defeat may have been the most substantial blow yet.

The Huskers were favored against a depleted and under-achieving Golden Gopher squad, and a win was critical to keeping them on track to finally make a bowl game.

Rather than be locked in ready to play, NU sputtered in all three phases through the entire first half and then missed on one opportunity after another to win the game after halftime.

If Nebraska couldn’t get itself fired up with so much at stake, how much motivation will it have coming back off the bye with a grueling four-game stretch to end the season?

The Huskers need to be near flawless the rest of the way to clinch their first bowl berth since 2016, and the optimism of that happening has never been lower.

There were a lot of issues in play during Nebraska’s ugly day in Minneapolis, but maybe the most concerning was that Adrian Martinez didn’t look like his usual self at all.

His passing was erratic, missing multiple open receivers never seeming to be on the same page with his receivers. Martinez also only ran the ball for five positive yards, and none of those came on scrambles.

In other words, the fourth-year starting quarterback never looked comfortable in the pocket and wasn’t a threat whatsoever as a runner.

Martinez said after the game that Minnesota’s defense played a big part in him being so one-dimensional. But even when he did run it, he never had the same burst that had made him such a threat earlier this season.

Talk after the game was that Martinez had been limited in practice all week, and it would make sense that he wasn’t 100 percent on Saturday. If that’s the case, will the week off be enough to get him right in time for Purdue?

For the first time in eight weeks, Nebraska will have some time to take a step back and take a close look at what has been going wrong this season and what it can try to fix going forward.

The question is, though, how much of what has ailed the Huskers this season can be solved between now and Oct. 30?

The offensive line remains a major concern, as Minnesota was the latest defense that only needed to rush four for the majority of the game and still disrupt NU’s passing from start to finish. Do they have the personnel to improve at this point?

There doesn’t appear to have been much progress made at all in eliminating the game-changing special teams blunders. Will extra practice time really make a difference in fixing the specialists’ psyches?

Now with two weeks to dwell on Saturday’s frustrating loss, will some time away be enough to rejuvenate the Huskers’ overall focus to avoid another sluggish start like at Minnesota?

As if Nebraska didn’t already have enough to worry about right now, it also needs to determine how severe the apparent knee injury Deontai Williams suffered in the third quarter.

Williams snagged a momentum-swinging interception at midfield, but when he planted his right foot to run with the ball, he immediately collapsed onto the turf and clutched his right knee.

The sixth-year senior safety was down for several minutes before walking off under his own power, but he did not return for the rest of the game.

Williams’ performance has been off and on this season, but there’s no doubt that he is one of NU’s best playmakers in the secondary.

His pick on Saturday gave him a team-high four on the year, making him the first Husker to have four interceptions in a season since 2016. Williams entered today’s game tied for sixth nationally in interceptions.

Should he have to miss any significant time the rest of the way, Myles Farmer will vault into the starting lineup in his place. Farmer played a career-high 34 snaps against the Gophers.

After an awful start to the season, Connor Culp looked to finally have settled down and play like the All-Big Ten kicker he was a year ago.

But all of the same problems with his mechanics and confidence that plagued him in the first few games came roaring back on Saturday, as he missed an extra point and a 27-yard field goal.

While Culp came in having made his past two field-goal tries and 25 extra points, he’s now missed nine total kicks through the first eight games of this season (six FGs, three XPT). He made 33 of his 35 kicks a year ago.

It’s hard for the Huskers to continue to have confidence in him at this point, and you have to wonder how that might impact their fourth-down decision-making on offense going forward?

How many more times will head coach Scott Frost turn to Culp in pressure situations, and when will it get to the point where he feels NU is better off keeping its offense on the field?