Report Card: Penn State Nittany Lions 56, Huskers 44

The score wasn’t indicative of how bad this game really was.

This one ended being one of those games where the final score wasn’t really representative of the game. Penn State cleared their bench and the Huskers scored three touchdowns in the closing minutes, making an epic beatdown look like a surprisingly competitive game. In fact, after Nebraska recovered an onside kick with two minutes left, I started to actually consider ways that Nebraska could actually win the damn game. Of course, that was just a false hope because Mike Riley doesn’t mess around with clock management; he’s only going to use timeouts to savor a beating by Minnesota. (Certainly not to pull off something like a Plano East comeback against John Tyler High.)

This game more closely resembled the Oregon game, where the Huskers got massacred in the first half, played better in the third quarter and actually looked competitive in the fourth. But let’s not overreact to the comeback; it was against the subs. Penn State’s star running back Saquon Barkley didn’t touch the ball in the fourth quarter, and quarterback Trace McSorley only threw two passes. So let’s not get too excited about that fourth quarter, except to say this:

There’s a lot of things wrong with this Nebraska football team. They don’t really play good football, and frequently, not even mediocre football. They struggle with the basics: blocking, tackling and assignments, and because of that, they also play tentative. But one thing they HAVEN’T done is give up. It’s easy to think that they have, when you see Minnesota hang 54 on the Big Red and then see Penn State hang 42 in the first half. (Row the boat, then race the boat. Sigh.)