Post Week 7 – S&P+ Outlook on the rest of our season

I used to be a big fan of S&P+ before it went behind the ESPN paywall. Happens that with Disney+ membership I have access to S&P+ again this season. It's been interesting to watch. I was curious how the rest of the Husker's season stacked up from an S&P+ perspective.

Huskers: 13.5 rating (higher is better), 22nd Overall

• 24.8 offense rating (higher is better), 83rd
• 10.9 Defense rating (lower is better), 1st (blink.gif)
• -0.4 Special teams rating (scale appears to go form -0.4 to +0.4), 126th

Week 7: Indiana, 16.2 rating, 15th overall

• 35.8 offense rating, 15th
• 20.0 Defense rating, 30th
• 0.4 Special teams rating, 1st

Week 8: Ohio State, 28.3, 2nd overall

• 39.9 offense rating, 7th
• 12.0 Defense rating, 3rd
• 0.4 Special teams rating, 16th

Week 9: UCLA, -2.4, 79th overall

• 22.2 offense rating, 98th
• 24.8 Defense rating, 53rd
• 0.1 Special teams rating, 53rd

Week 10: USC, 12.4, 27th overall

• 38.9 offense rating, 9th
• 26.8 Defense rating, 62nd
• 0.3 Special teams rating, 29th

Week 11: Wisconsin, 11.2, 32nd overall

• 28.0 offense rating, 64th
• 16.8 Defense rating, 16th
• -0.1 Special teams rating, 77th

Week 12: Iowa, 13.8, 19th overall

• 25.4 offense rating, 81st
• 12.0 Defense rating, 2nd
• 0.4 Special teams rating, 9th

There are a few things I think are worth observing:

• We're functionally tied with an Iowa team, but with bad special teams. Which is not the way we want to be built.

• If we won all the games against teams ranked worst than us, we would finish the season 8-4. Which I would totally take today. But, as we all know, that's not likely how things will go down.

• Overall, the Iowa and USC games look to be toss ups. You could argue that Indiana and Wisconsin are toss ups too.

• Not going to go into details on our past games, but we've beaten the 131st best team, the 54th best team, an FCS Team, the 82nd best team, and the 58th best team. We've lost to the 47th best team. As you can see from above, other than UCLA, the toughest part of our schedule definitely lies ahead of us.

• Our special teams is far and away our biggest liability.