Three & Out: Blackshirts are back, weekend visitors, annual NW tight tussle

This is HuskerOnline.com’s feature in which recruiting analysts Mike Matya and Bryan Munson give their weekly takes on topical issues concerning Nebraska football, baseball and recruiting.

Today in our next installment of “Three and Out” we hit on the Blackshirts are back, weekend visitors, and annual Northwestern tight tussle.

Five games into the 2021 season, I think we can safely say by now that the Blackshirts are back and in good form. The Huskers’ defense has been carrying the team as the offense struggles to score points and the special teams continue to self-destruct in various ways.

There’s no doubt that returning “super seniors” like Ben Stille, JoJo Domann and Deontai Williams have been worth their weight in gold in getting the defense solidified and trending in such a positive direction.

But the Big Ten has a lot of stellar defensive units this season, which the below graph demonstrates. As well as they’re playing, Nebraska is mostly sitting in the middle of pack in the conference when it comes to team defensive statistics.

NU is also rated No. 7 in 4th down defense and No. 51 in tackles-for-loss, but the most important defensive statistic is scoring defense, in which Nebraska is No. 26 nationally in spite of being only No. 7 in the Big Ten conference.

Once again, this 2021 version of the Blackshirts is worthy of the name and it’s one of the best Husker defenses we have witnessed in quite a while. But there is still room for improvement through the remainder of the season and in coming years.

NU defensive coordinator Erik Chinander himself stressed to the team this week that there was still plenty of room for improvement. He said he would never let his guys “read their own press clippings” and start feeling too good about themselves.

Let’s hope they do keep improving and are up to the task.

– Mike Matya

The Huskers are back at home for the first time in three weeks. NU has night games each of the next two weeks with one confirmed official visitor coming in each weekend that we know about already. The Huskers have just five spots remaining in their 2022 class with the most likely spots belonging to two offensive linemen and three defensive backs.

With such a small class there is an opportunity for Nebraska to potentially start working ahead and getting a jump on 2023 and 2024 recruits. There will be a number of heralded recruits from both of the next two recruiting years in Lincoln over the next two weekends, including what could be safely assumed as the No. 1 quarterback recruit for each of the next two years.

We will absolutely have more names to add to this weekend’s visitor list, at the very least around Thursday. There was definitely a need to bring these names to you as soon as possible.

Also, some more quarterback recruit injury news to pass along. Richard Torres is set to have surgery on his knee on Wednesday. Additionally, Mooney let me know that his season is likely over unless his team makes a deep run without him. He said that the timetable for his return is 5-8 weeks with no surgery required.

– Bryan Munson

On paper, 2-3 Nebraska looks superior to the 2-2 Northwestern Wildcats this season, but you can throw out the records and disregard the stats when these two programs meet on the gridiron.

These two teams have split the 10 divisional games they played since the Huskers joined the Big Ten conference, and the contests are usually decided by less than a touchdown. In fact, six of the games the two programs have played over the past decade were decided by less than a field goal.

Cumulatively, the Wildcats tend to have the edge regarding turnovers and penalties in these games.

In the 10 times Nebraska and Northwestern have played each other since the Huskers joined the B1G, NU has won the turnover battle in only two of those games: the first time they played in 2011 and again in 2018.

Nebraska has also had fewer penalties than Northwestern in only one of those 10 contests, in 2014.

Northwestern has won three of the last four meetings between these two West Division rivals, but Nebraska will have the benefit of a night home game and a raucous crowd to hopefully garner a much-needed victory Saturday.

– Mike Matya