Four stock-up Huskers from Spring 2024

Proven players set the baseline for the season ahead, but expectation-free guys might be the key to greater heights.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

This is a football offseason for optimism in Nebraska.

But wait, you might be saying. Isn’t that every offseason? Nothing is impossible in the spring. Things are “night and day” different and “light years ahead” of where they were. The practice quotes are all glowing, and so are the stories that they produce.

You’re right to raise these points. You are a diligent consumer of college football with a healthy level of spring skepticism, which tells me you must already be a Counter Read subscriber. (No hard feelings if not, but we’re all waiting for you to come hang out and have fun.) Realistically, not every offseason earns the optimism that’s almost inherent to the calendar.

The most-recent example of an offseason not for optimism was probably 2017. Nebraska was losing its three-year starter at quarterback, its leading rusher for the past two seasons, three of its top four receivers, its best and criminally underutilized tight end, three of the top four tacklers and the four leaders in tackles for loss. On top of that, the Huskers had gone 9-3 in the regular season with a scoring differential (+48) that was worse than the previous season (+57), when they went 5-7. Nebraska entering 2017 was a classic “SELL!” stock.

None of that really applies to the 2024 Huskers here in the spring, which culminates this Saturday with the Red-White game. There are defensible reasons Nebraska should be a “BUY!” stock right now. But that’s all based on the “knowns” we think we know five months from actual football. If the players we’ve seen play well previously continue to play well—think Ty Robinson, Nash Hutmacher, Ben Scott, to name a few—Nebraska has a good chance to improve upon 5-7 in 2023.

If the Huskers are to take a leap instead of a step towards excellence, however, that’s more about players we haven’t seen much from yet. The players that are tough to quantify offer more room for growth. Conveniently, they are also the players we’re likely to see more of on Saturday.

Based on coaches’ comments and a few other data points, who are the relatively unknown players who are trending up as Nebraska’s spring winds down? Here are four who’ve stood out.