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00:00 Welcome to the Carriker Chronicles, the people show.
00:03 Checking the pulse of Husker Nation.
00:05 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to be doing a lot of off-season content.
00:08 There's a lot of things to talk about.
00:09 You got transfer portal quarterbacks.
00:11 Obviously we got to go after one of them.
00:12 We got transfer portal in general.
00:14 We got early national signing day, which has really just become national
00:18 signing day here coming up soon in November.
00:20 What's going on with Tony White?
00:22 Uh, Matt Rule's going to do a press conference at some point this week.
00:25 I'd like to interview some folks and get back to doing that even more frequently.
00:28 Ladies and gentlemen, there's going to be a ton of off-season content here
00:31 on the Carriker Chronicles, not just football, but volleyball and all Husker sports.
00:36 So do me a favor, hit that subscribe button if you're interested in what I have to say.
00:39 And if you don't know hard feelings, I, so today's show, I'm just going to be honest with you.
00:44 My wife's like, you're doing another show.
00:46 What are you going to talk about?
00:47 And I was like, do you really want to know?
00:49 She goes, well, yeah, I got to edit the video.
00:51 I was like, all right.
00:51 The most commonly asked question I've received since last Friday, since the
00:57 Iowa game, sorry for bringing it up, is Adam, are we cursed?
01:00 Now, most of these are via text or something like that.
01:03 So I can't hear the tone, you know, that little voice in your head where you know,
01:07 if someone's joking or it's tongue in cheek or they're serious.
01:10 I don't know.
01:10 I think that's kind of a joke, but I think there's a lot of seriousness to it too.
01:14 So today's show is about, is Nebraska football a curse?
01:19 And, and I'm going to, I'm going to answer that question right away, but stay tuned.
01:23 The answer to the question is no, we're not cursed.
01:27 Okay.
01:27 I think the question is really what has happened?
01:31 Why are we losing so many close games?
01:33 And I'm not going to go through the stats again about how many close games we've
01:37 lost and how many games we've lost to ranked teams, because it just makes me
01:40 want to vomit and I've talked about it a million times.
01:42 No, Nebraska football is not cursed.
01:44 What people are asking when they ask that is why do we keep losing these
01:48 games, close games, tight games, games of the way it's almost unbelievable
01:52 type fashion that we're losing.
01:53 Why does it keep happening?
01:54 How do we fix it?
01:55 So that's what this show is really about.
01:57 Now, real quick, if you think back to teams like SMU, who at one point in time
02:02 had the death penalty, now, okay, they've been invited to join a power five
02:07 conference, the ACC.
02:09 Now, a lot of that has to do with the fact that they've got the Dallas TV market.
02:12 I understand all that.
02:13 Okay.
02:14 Football is a lot about TV markets, TV deals.
02:16 I get that, but you're not going to get invited to the ACC if you're not halfway
02:19 decent.
02:20 In fact, they're going to play Tulane this weekend for the AAC, not to be
02:24 confusing championship, but if they win, they're probably going to go to a new
02:27 year's six bowl game as the highest ranked group of five team, probably.
02:32 That's where their football program is at.
02:34 If they're not cursed, we're not cursed.
02:36 Penn state with the Jerry Sandusky thing.
02:39 They've had top 10 finishes.
02:40 They've won a big 10 title.
02:42 They've been in the conversation year after year for being one of the best
02:45 football programs in the country since the Jerry Sandusky scandal.
02:49 If they're not cursed, we're not cursed.
02:52 So if you're like me and you think that the idea of Nebraska football being
02:55 cursed is crazy and we really just have things that we obviously need to fix,
03:00 and that's really the problem, smash that like button.
03:03 Now, Adam, why?
03:06 Why do we lose the way we do?
03:08 Why does it keep happening?
03:09 How do we fix it?
03:11 I don't have all the answers.
03:12 What I have is my experience and my opinion.
03:15 Now, my first thought is not every situation is the same.
03:19 Not every team loses for the same reasons.
03:21 Not every program loses for the same reasons.
03:24 You think about Michigan and Ohio state right now.
03:26 Okay.
03:27 I have a big 10 show that I do.
03:28 So I talk about them all the time and I guarantee Ohio state fans feel cursed
03:33 right now when it comes to losing to Michigan.
03:34 I know that sounds laughable to Nebraska fans.
03:36 Trust me.
03:36 Ohio state fans are angry right now.
03:38 Okay.
03:39 It's really not that complicated if you're Ohio state.
03:42 It's the fact that Michigan is a more physical team every year.
03:45 This is really the first year Michigan's almost been able to
03:49 match them athlete for athlete.
03:50 I would still say Ohio state has the edge just because of guys like Marvin
03:53 Harrison, Jr., Emeka Ibuka, their wide receivers, but it's because Michigan
03:59 is the more physical team three years in a row.
04:01 Now this year, Michigan didn't just outright push Ohio state around in the
04:05 second half and the fourth quarter like they did the past couple of years, but
04:08 even still, okay, Ohio state scores and gets within a field goal with 8 0 5 on
04:16 the clock, Michigan gets the ball.
04:18 Okay.
04:19 And keep in mind, they scored on six of their last seven possessions.
04:23 The Wolverines did.
04:23 Michigan gets the ball at 8 0 5.
04:25 Ohio state doesn't get the ball back till 1 0 6.
04:28 Michigan kept that ball for darn near seven minutes.
04:31 So that's Ohio state's dilemma with Michigan.
04:34 Now you look back through Nebraska's history.
04:36 It took seven years.
04:39 Okay.
04:40 Tom Osborne lost his first six games to Oklahoma, and then finally he
04:44 beat him in that seventh try.
04:46 Okay.
04:47 Osborne has talked, okay, about how after they lost to Georgia Tech in the
04:54 Citrus Bowl, Georgia Tech shared the national championship that year.
04:57 Okay.
04:58 1990 with Colorado, but after they lost to Georgia Tech after the 1990 season,
05:02 that Citrus Bowl, Osborne gathered his coaches and he's like, you might want
05:05 to start looking for jobs and we might be let go.
05:07 Okay.
05:08 There was a point where Nebraska had lost seven straight bowl games and they
05:12 couldn't seem to get over the hump of beating the Florida teams, whether it's
05:15 Miami, whether it's Florida state, whatever the case may be, for Nebraska,
05:19 it was about speed.
05:19 Okay.
05:21 They changed to an attacking style, four, three defense, and it was about speed.
05:25 And there were other things, other factors along those lines too.
05:28 But every situation's a little bit different.
05:30 Here's what I see as to why Nebraska has struggled in close games and people
05:37 feel cursed up to this point and what we can do to try to remedy that going forward.
05:42 There's really three things.
05:43 The first thing is we've got to be more balanced on all three phases.
05:47 When you watch in Michigan, when you watch a Georgia, when you watch a Bama,
05:50 when you watch these teams that are really good year after year, when you
05:53 think back to when Nebraska was rolling, okay.
05:56 Yeah.
05:56 Maybe the offense was better than the defense one year.
05:58 The defense was better than the offense or something like that, but there
06:01 wasn't a gaping hole.
06:03 You think back to Pelini's early years, his defense was incredible.
06:08 The offense struggled.
06:11 Pelini's last couple of years, the offense was way ahead of the defense.
06:14 Okay.
06:15 You think to this year, really good defense, mediocre special teams, bad offense.
06:20 Okay.
06:20 You think back to when Frost was here, the special team struggles.
06:23 We had the one game where we punted it to one side of the field and the whole
06:27 entire team ran to the other side of the field and Michigan State ran it in for
06:30 basically the game when he touched down.
06:32 Okay.
06:33 This year, there's multiple games where we have zero kickoff returns, not even
06:38 tried to return the ball on a kickoff versus Iowa, we averaged three yards,
06:42 four punt returns, one fumble, and we averaged three yards per return.
06:45 And that wasn't the only game like that.
06:47 I might add.
06:48 My point is we've got to be more balanced across all three phases.
06:51 You're going to have a phase that's stronger than the other phases, or
06:55 maybe it's the strength of your team, but you can't have a glaring hole because
06:58 that glaring hole will be exposed and it will cost you games in crunch time.
07:02 We've got to be better and more balanced at all three phases.
07:06 Okay.
07:06 Whether the offense is stronger, defense is stronger, you can't have a glaring
07:09 hole on special teams or whatever the case may be, we've got to be more
07:12 balanced across all three phases.
07:15 Number two, and I know people are sick and tired of hearing this.
07:17 It's the C word.
07:19 Not that C word, the other C word.
07:21 It's culture.
07:22 I know people are sick and tired of hearing it.
07:24 Okay.
07:25 But if consistently year after year, we have the fourth most talented
07:30 roster in the Big Ten.
07:31 We just do.
07:32 Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State, Nebraska.
07:34 Yet we're nowhere near the fourth best team in the Big Ten.
07:36 Not even close.
07:37 Well, how does a team that consistently has more talent than somebody
07:41 else lose to other teams?
07:43 Okay.
07:43 We consistently have higher ranked recruiting classes than Minnesota and
07:46 Iowa, and more often than not, Wisconsin.
07:48 Yet we know how those games have gone.
07:50 It comes down to, it really does.
07:53 It comes down to culture.
07:54 If you've got, and I'm not saying this is the case, I'm not in those locker rooms.
07:58 I know conversations that I've had with people, but conversations that I have
08:03 with people doesn't mean I understand exactly what's going on in the entire
08:06 locker room, but just as an example, if you've got a bunch of really talented
08:10 individuals that don't play as a team, you're going to lose to a less talented
08:13 team that plays as a team.
08:14 As an example, if you've got a certain team that's bought in and working
08:19 harder and working longer, and they're bought into what's going on versus
08:23 another team that's not, that's a culture type thing.
08:25 Okay.
08:26 If you work harder, if you are more physical, if you practice more physical,
08:30 if you lift heavier weights, if you're doing more conditioning, and I'm not
08:35 saying Nebraska hasn't done these things, but what I'm saying is the buy-in from
08:38 the team, the culture, the attitude, what reverberates through the locker room.
08:42 What is the standard that you're held to?
08:45 What is acceptable?
08:46 What is not?
08:46 I've had teams where average was acceptable that I was on, and I had teams
08:50 where if you thought average was okay, you were going to get ran out of the locker
08:53 room.
08:53 Okay.
08:54 Culture truly matters.
08:56 And if you look back to some of the cultures that we've had in the past, Mike
09:00 Riley, nicest, one of the nicest coaches I've ever met.
09:02 It was a nice guy culture.
09:04 It really was.
09:05 He was a 500 coach coming in.
09:06 He was exactly 19 and 19 while he was here.
09:09 High character guy, got none but love for him, but he's a 500 coach and we had a
09:13 nice culture.
09:14 That doesn't help you win football games.
09:16 You think back to Bo Pelini.
09:17 Bo Pelini had probably the best culture that we've had recently.
09:22 Okay.
09:23 In the last decade or so, but he had an us versus the world mentality.
09:27 That, that dude can coach football.
09:30 Okay.
09:30 But there became opposition between him and I'm not going to go down the list, but
09:36 it became an us versus the world mentality.
09:38 Now you can have a great season off of us versus the world mentality, but you can't
09:43 build a program.
09:44 It's too antagonistic.
09:46 It's too divisive.
09:47 There's too much divisiveness in that.
09:49 So you can't have a program and a culture based off of us versus the world.
09:54 It just doesn't work.
09:55 But he probably had the best culture we've had in a while.
09:58 And I've talked to Roy and Prince and Kenny and guys like that, because the
10:02 standard that Bo had was insane.
10:05 What he expected from his players was not insane.
10:08 It was why they were winning nine, 10 games a year.
10:11 But the us versus the world mentality probably contributed to why they couldn't
10:15 get over the hump of beating the really good teams and some of the tough losses
10:18 that we saw in primetime television during Bo's tenure.
10:20 Again, he's a good coach.
10:22 Play for the guy.
10:22 I love him.
10:23 You go to Scott Frost.
10:25 Okay.
10:27 At some point, it's like people didn't want to pay attention to the amount of
10:30 guys that were transferring from Nebraska.
10:32 At one point, we didn't just have the most amount of transfers.
10:35 Okay.
10:35 We had by far the most amount of transfers of any school in the Big Ten.
10:38 And sometimes two plus two just equals four, no matter how much people want it
10:42 to equal five.
10:43 There was evidence there.
10:44 Okay.
10:46 And I will share some specific conversations that I had at this point,
10:49 because every once in a while when somebody would transfer, I'd be like,
10:53 "Hey, what's going on?"
10:54 You know, just, "Why are you leaving?"
10:56 Okay.
10:57 And here's some of the things I was told.
10:59 My coach walks by me in the hallway and he won't even say hi to me.
11:02 I text my coach and he won't text me back.
11:05 Just to give you a couple of different examples from different folks.
11:08 Okay.
11:09 That's obviously going to create division.
11:11 That's obviously going to create issues in the locker room.
11:14 It's not a team type feeling.
11:15 Okay.
11:16 And when it comes down to nut crunching time, that's going to be a difference
11:19 maker.
11:20 All right.
11:21 Frost did have this no fear of failure mantra, which is interesting because I
11:26 actually think he had a little bit of fear of failure.
11:29 That's just my personal opinion.
11:31 I don't know.
11:31 I'm not trying to bury the guy.
11:32 I'm just doing my show here.
11:34 Okay.
11:35 But if I'm right, okay, and the coach felt that way, you don't think the players
11:39 felt that way.
11:40 And then you get to crunch time and you get to the big time part of a game and
11:44 the difficult part and the game's on the line and you're playing Michigan or
11:48 you're playing whoever, you don't think that's going to affect how the team
11:51 plays is the only thing that I'm saying.
11:52 Okay.
11:53 We need a true actual culture.
11:56 Here at the university of Nebraska, people who are bought in, it's a
11:59 brotherhood.
11:59 You're going to lay it all on the line.
12:01 You're giving it, going to give it all you got each and every day.
12:04 You're going to hold each other accountable.
12:05 You're going to have a standard.
12:06 You're going to have actual no fear of failure.
12:09 And if you lose, you're going to learn from it, get better.
12:11 Not why not moan, not complain.
12:13 You're going to get better from it and you're going to get ready for the next
12:16 week.
12:16 Something along those lines.
12:18 All right.
12:18 Number three is turnovers.
12:19 This is probably the biggest one.
12:21 This is probably the most jaw dropping one to me.
12:25 Now I'm going to, I'm going to read a tweet from Sam McEwen.
12:27 Okay.
12:28 Northwestern finished 13th in Russia offense and 14th in Russia defense and
12:32 made a bowl game.
12:33 That's mind blowing to me.
12:34 Nebraska finished second in Russia offense and third in, in Russia defense.
12:39 I think he's talking about, I think I'm reading that right.
12:41 And they didn't make a bowl game.
12:43 The Huskers had 22 more turnovers in the wild cats.
12:46 You can win the line of scrimmage and lose the larger battle because of the
12:50 giveaways turnovers.
12:51 Now I had these stats about three, four weeks ago.
12:54 I have not updated them just because they're so disgusting.
12:57 They really are.
12:58 As of three or four weeks ago, these were accurate.
13:00 I don't want to update them just because they're so nauseating for me.
13:03 But as of three or four weeks ago, since 2004, Nebraska had a turnover margin of
13:09 minus 111.
13:12 The next closest power five team was minus 61.
13:16 That means we're 50 worse in the turnover margin category than the second worst
13:20 power five team in the country.
13:22 Nebraska has the fewest turnovers gained, 362 of anyone tied with Maryland.
13:26 And Nebraska has recovered the fewest fumbles, 126, 25 behind the next worst
13:30 school, which is Iowa.
13:31 Again, this is as of a few weeks ago.
13:33 No, I'm not going to update that.
13:34 I just want to move on from it.
13:36 That is probably the biggest reason why we're losing.
13:39 If you're giving away possessions and you're giving teams short fields and
13:43 you're giving team points, you're going to lose to people who aren't as talented
13:46 as you.
13:46 It's that simple.
13:47 All right, ladies and gentlemen.
13:49 All right.
13:50 This show, as you know, is sponsored by DPS Concrete Construction.
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14:04 Now here are my questions for you fine folks at home.
14:06 First, what do you think is the biggest key to getting things turned around and
14:10 lifting the quote unquote curse off of Husker football?
14:14 Do you believe we're cursed?
14:15 I don't.
14:16 What's the biggest thing, biggest key to lifting the quote unquote curse off
14:19 Husker football?
14:19 Number two, is Matt Rule the guy that can get things turned around and going
14:23 in the right direction?
14:24 And number three, okay, and before I read question number three, this is a tweet
14:28 from Connor Happer.
14:29 All right.
14:30 Matt Rule is now one in 14 and one score games in his first years in college.
14:34 All right.
14:35 2013 at Temple, 2017 at Baylor, 2023 in Nebraska.
14:39 Outside of year ones, he's 12 and 10 in one score game.
14:43 So here's my third question.
14:44 Matt Rule's teams typically make a noticeable jump in improvement from year
14:48 one to two and year two to year three as well.
14:51 Will we start to see things turn around next year in year two under Matt Rule?
14:56 Let me know in the comments below.
14:57 One thing that has to be a good sign when it comes from the year one to year two
15:01 jump and the potential improvement in culture that Matt Rule has maybe already
15:05 made is the fact that Ty Robinson, a guy who played great this year, a guy who
15:11 would have been drafted, he was playing NFL type caliber football, chose to come
15:16 back when he really had no reason to, other than he just wanted to.
15:21 To me, that speaks volumes about what Matt Rule has potentially already started to
15:26 build here at the University of Nebraska.
15:28 And until next time, Husker Nation, check out CarrikerChronicles.com.
15:32 It's where all your hopes and dreams come true, football wise anyways.
15:35 It's just science.
15:35 Go Big Red.
15:36 Hey, stay tuned for all the content I'm turning out.
15:40 Football season is over for Nebraska and that sucks, but there's so much to talk
15:44 about. Go Big Red and always remember to throw the dogs out!