Nebraska heads to New Jersey to face Rutgers in the final football game of the season.
The Huskers are coming off of a disappointing loss to a COVID-depleted Minnesota team. While the defense played a decent game, it was hard for the offense to get going and turnovers proved to be once again be costly for the Huskers.
Rutgers is coming off of a 27-24 overtime victory over Maryland last week. In the past two seasons Rutgers was winless in the Big Ten, but this year they have three wins.
The Scarlet Knights are led by a familiar name, Noah Vedral. Vedral has 1,257 yards and nine touchdowns on the season. Bo Melton is the top receiver with 41 catches for 547 yards. Johnny Langan leads the Knights with four rushing touchdowns.
Defensively Rutgers is led by Olakunle Fatukasi with 99 tackles, including 11 tackles for a loss.
Date/Time: December 18, 2020. 6:30 PM CDT
Location: SHI Stadium, Piscataway, NJ
Surface: Fieldturf
Opposition Blog: Check out On The Banks
Series Record: Nebraska leads the series 4-0 all-time and 3-0 as Big Ten opponents. The Huskers won their last meeting 27-17 in 2017.
TV: The game will be televised on BIG Network. Eric Collins will do the play-by-play, with Ben Leber as the analyst. It can also be streamed on the Fox Sports App with your cable or dish log in.
Radio: Huskers sports radio network. The audio can also be streamed live for free at huskers.com. The crew will be: Greg Sharpe, Matt Davison, and Ben McLaughlin. XM 382
More streaming options: The official Huskers app is available on iTunes and for Android users. Another option is the TuneIn app for game audio.
Weather: Sunny with a high of 34.
Odds: Nebraska is favored by 6.5.
Trivia
This is only the second time that Nebraska has played at Piscataway.
With this third December game, this marks the first time in school history that Nebraska has had three games in December.
Quotables
Head Coach Scott Frost on struggling in the passing game
“There’s a little thing here and there again, and that keeps plaguing our offense. You know I said it after the game. You know, I really felt like we were kind of turning a corner ‘cause practice had been really sharp for the last three weeks and last week was really sharp. Just a little thing here and there. We started the game off so bad by not hitting a simple play that killed the drive, had a tipped interception that killed another drive, a bad punt. We didn’t protect well enough and we missed some open guys. We had some guys running open. I think the receivers are doing a lot better job this year of getting the spots and getting there fast and being where they’re supposed to be. We gotta protect a little better and we gotta make sure we don’t miss him.”
On good practices not translating into wins
“The improvement of practice this year led to better play. We played better, executed better at Iowa, we played better, executed better at Purdue. Maybe take the way we started the game when we’re not a team confident enough yet when we start the game. The way we started it. You know, sometimes guys can maybe just look around and wait for somebody else to fix it or think here we go again, mistakes. That being said and you know after the first quarter we ended the first quarter we turned it on and scored on two straight drives and executed well. It’s just one little thing here and one little thing there, and it’s gotta be more consistent. A lot of it Saturday was some of the young players, I called a lot of those guys last night. For young guys in the Big 10, I think some of those guys are doing an exceptional job, but it’s just not consistent enough yet and that’s what killed us Saturday.”
Tight End Austin Allen on Noah Vedral
“Noah is still one of my best friends. I’ve played basketball with him since middle school. We’ve been on the same team, same AAU teams and we talk every week. I mean, just ’cause he went to another school, it’s not like I’m going to just completely put him off to the side. He’s still one of my good friends. We chat football all the time. He’s been doing great things at Rutgers. He’s been ballin’ out, and that’s good for him because he’s an athlete. I think he really deserved in a lot of ways to be an athlete somewhere. We had three great quarterbacks here competing for the job. Noah went on to Rutgers and he’s doing great things for them, so it was good to see.”
Linebacker Garrett Nelson on his missing teeth
“I’m missing two teeth. That’s from Penn State, actually. I don’t know what play, I can’t remember when it was but a tight end put a shoulder in my jaw and broke my two teeth out. So I’ve been missing them for a while, [been] putting some straws in there once in a while, it’s pretty fun.”
Defensive Lineman Casey Rogers on knocking down passes
“Putting your hands over something that Coach (Tony) Tuioti expresses all the time. If you’re getting a pass rush, you might not be able to get to him if the quarterback throws the ball quick, which we saw on Saturday with the RPO’s. The next best thing is to try to get your hands up in passing lanes. As a young kid in football, I was taught that, so that’s something I’ve kind of carried with me all throughout the years. But it’s also something that they coach here too. We noticed right away that they were throwing the ball pretty quick. And even if we weren’t able to get to the quarterback, the next best thing is at least getting in his vision and trying to get in your hands in a passing lane. I think we saw that we saw that on Saturday. We gotta turnover on downs off of one. Pheldarius (Payne) got one that was big in and I think I got another one too. Those could be a game changers really.”
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