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This just in: Nebraska is not going to a bowl in the 2018 season.
Fine, fine. We have known that for weeks. We probably knew after Week 2 when the Cornhuskers lost at home to Troy.
Nebraska woke up a little bit in the previous two weeks but Saturday’s loss at Ohio State just confirmed the obvious: At 2-7, Big Red is staying home for the second consecutive postseason because this team just is not good enough.
So now what?
Do the Cornhuskers just turtle and try not to get injured in their meaningless three remaining games?
That does happen to some teams but it does not seem to be in the DNA of the culture that Nebraska coach Scott Frost is building. Remember, 20 non-seniors have left this program since Frost took over. So a lot of the players who might have been malcontents in this situation are not in Lincoln anymore.
Aside from nebulous things like playing spoiler or playing for pride, here is something more concrete that Nebraska has to play for: Testing out some things that Frost and his staff will try to implement for next season. Frost loves his offense to run at a high tempo.
And here is perhaps a surprising thing: The Cornhuskers are getting closer to the look they want even in losing efforts.
Nebraska ran 82 plays against the Buckeyes, the fourth time this season that Big Red has surpassed 80. Nebraska possessed the ball for 33:33. Those numbers are pretty close to what Frost is looking for.
Sure, the Ohio State game was a blown opportunity. The Cornhuskers led a good chunk of the game but made too many mistakes, including a couple of really silly ones, to beat a team as talented as the Buckeyes. Even on a day when Ohio State was not at its best, and it wasn’t, Nebraska simply did not execute well enough consistently enough to win.
Look at the 450 total yards Nebraska gained. Sure, that seems like a decent total. Except it only works out to 5.5 yards a play, the worst average for the Cornhuskers since that September debacle against Michigan when Nebraska averaged 2.4 yards on 54 plays.
Had the execution and efficiency been better, Nebraska might have not only come close, it might have beaten Ohio State. Plays like the botched kickoff early in the game and the ill-advised backward pass by Adrian Martinez proved costly, and might have made the difference between victory and defeat.
That is the biggest takeaway for Nebraska to remember about the game in Columbus: This should not be a moral victory. The players should be mad because the Cornhuskers truly could have won that game, sent shockwaves through the Big Ten and made a statement about where this program is going. Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer knows how close Nebraska is to winning games like this, calling Big Red a “two-win team people don’t want to play.”
So here’s what Nebraska has to play for in the final three games: Total effort. Better concentration. Putting an entire four quarters together. Having young players better understand the system on offense and defense. This is a very young team and the learning process should never stop even when there is no bowl to shoot for.
That kind of mentality will carry forward and show those players that there is reason to believe more wins are to come in 2019.
Perhaps enough for Nebraska to return to a bowl.
Longtime newspaper veteran Jim Tomlin is a writer and editor for saturdaytradition.com and saturdaydownsouth.com.