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Mike Riley avoided a complete disaster by beating Rutgers, but that shouldn’t change anything
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Somewhere between Gabrielle Union’s nervous guarantee in the second quarter and Tanner Lee’s third pick-six in two weeks, it should’ve hit you.
Mike Riley isn’t any closer to turning around Nebraska than he was when he lost to Northern Illinois last weekend.
The Huskers overcame a second-half deficit to Rutgers — that wasn’t a given — but Saturday shouldn’t have changed any opinions you had of Riley or the current state of Nebraska football.
Riley’s days in Lincoln are still numbered. All Saturday’s victory against Rutgers did was extend his stay at least one extra week.
That was the sad reality for a fan base that was energized by the firing of Shawn Eichorst. The Huskers celebrated their 357th consecutive sellout crowd on Saturday, which might not have been the case had Eichorst still been on the job.
But they weren’t treated to a revamped football program. Instead, they had to suffer through 60 minutes of asking themselves the same question.
“How can we not dominate against Rutgers?”
For what it’s worth, Rutgers is a better football team than it was last year. I won’t deny that Chris Ash’s program isn’t a complete train wreck like it was last year.
But consider a couple other things.
The Scarlet Knights got unfortunate pregame news that they were without Janarion Grant — by far their best player — because of an injury. Also, Rutgers had lost 14 straight B1G games entering Saturday afternoon. And oh, Eastern Michigan went into Piscataway and won a couple weeks ago.
So yes, it was pretty telling that Nebraska trailed late in the third quarter. At home.
How did that happen?
Well, Riley hitched his wagon to the train wreck that is Tanner Lee. His quarterback threw his eighth and ninth interception of the season (that’s already more than Tommy Armstrong had all of last year), and one of which was returned for a touchdown. He watched Lee make back-footed throws to the middle of the field, alligator-arm screens and have zero sense for pressure.
But what about the practice reports that Lee was “practicing on another level?” That’s what the Big Ten Network crew said about Lee.
Nothing changed with his performance. If there was a “come to Jesus meeting” between Lee and Riley, it didn’t show.
What did show was Riley’s refusal to let Lee throw the ball for most of the fourth quarter. Even Big Ten Network’s Glen Mason said that every time he threw the ball to the middle of the field, it made him nervous. He doesn’t even have a dog in the fight!
You know Riley feels the same thing, which is unfortunate because he went all in with Lee. Riley named Lee the starter back in the spring, and he took him to B1G Media Days. Not that either of those were poor decisions, but Riley is obviously invested.
That was why Riley sent Lee back in after his third pick-six in three weeks, which was received by a chorus of boos.
Fortunately for Riley, Lee delivered arguably his most important drive of the season. He capped off the 97-yard touchdown drive with a touchdown pass to De’Mornay Pierson-El that gave the Huskers the go-ahead score they needed.
But don’t be fooled.
Two B1G cellar dwellers played football in Lincoln on Saturday. One of them had to win. If the home team really was significantly improved, it would’ve had that game put away in the third quarter. Instead, Nebraska had to grind just to get a third-quarter lead.
The Huskers are going to spin Saturday’s performance as progress. And to a certain extent, it was. The defense played lights out in the second half and the ground game finally got going. Shoot, almost anything was going to be progress after losing to a MAC school for the first time in school history.
Still, Nebraska did not look like a team that turned a new leaf. It had an opportunity to fend off its “dumpster-fire” association it picked up in the previous seven days.
Riley fended off complete embarrassment by beating Rutgers. But that never has been, and never will be the standard for evaluating a coach’s future at Nebraska. Saturday told us everything we already knew.
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Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.