What seemed like a potentially exciting season for the Nebraska Cornhuskers has quickly seen its luster fade.
The Huskers started 2024 at 3-0 with an impressive win over Colorado, but now they’re 5-4 and riding a three-game losing streak. They’ve lost to every ranked team they’ve played, and even though they took No. 4 Ohio State to the wire two weekends ago, the Huskers suffered an unthinkable loss against UCLA this past weekend, which came into the contest with just two wins.
The luster has been lost, indeed, but head coach Matt Rhule isn’t fazed. More than anything, he’s excited about the future of his program.
“We have a great thing going here, and we have recruits all across the country that want to come here. And there’ll be kids lining up if we said, ‘Hey, we’ll take you’ to the kids lining up to come here. So I don’t worry about any of that,” Rhule said in a recent news conference (h/t On3). “I care deeply about my players. I care deeply about their character and their growth. And you know, if they’re good enough, some guys … if they want to play, they should go down a level. But if a little bit of adversity causes you to turn and run, then, you know, you don’t see me running. I’m not running.”
Rhule isn’t running from this season even though they’re not yet bowl-eligible, but he’s also not running from the disappointment of the past month.
“We have to show progress. And the reality is, we were building this team from the very beginning,” Rhule said. “We’re obviously all frustrated about the last three games but we have a bye week, we have to go play. So we’ll see how we stand against USC. We’ll see obviously and against Wisconsin we’ll see how we stand with Iowa. But yeah, we’ll have a lot of good players next year here.”
The Huskers have three games to win one to be bowl-eligible for the first time since 2016. That’s a terrible dry stretch for a fan base that is as die-hard as they get in the college football world, but USC, Wisconsin and especially Iowa won’t make it easy on the Huskers.
