Predicting the talking points of Week 3 of Huskers' fall camp

Nebraska is already almost halfway through its preseason practices. Here's what we'll be talking about in the week ahead.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Tom Osborne got to watch Nebraska’s scrimmage on Saturday, parents didn’t.

Coach Matt Rhule decided to close ranks around the Huskers’ first scrimmage of fall camp, and he’ll do the same for the second this Saturday.

“We love when parents come. We love when former players come. We love when high school coaches come,” he said. “I wanted the players to have this space of ‘no one’s watching, just go play.’”

Rhule noted, adding “not that it matters,” this was the approach he had entering year three at Baylor. Not that it matters,¹ but Baylor improved to 11-3 from 7-6 the previous season.

Somehow it caught me be surprise, but we’re entering week three of fall camp. The Huskers have held almost half of the practices allowed before the season-opener. Real football doesn’t feel all that far away.

Here’s what I expect Husker nation to be talking about through week three.

Go, Go, Gunnar

Turner Corcoran is presumably the guy at left tackle following the season-ending injury to Teddy Prochazka (and Corcoran might’ve been the guy anyway, though it’s always good to have options). That puts an intense focus on two things: 1) Corcoran staying healthy, and 2) what’s behind him.

To point one, Corcoran was held out of Saturday’s scrimmage. He could’ve gone, but he’s a fifth-year player who has started 30 games and if NU wants to benefit from that experience it has a huge incentive to keep him healthy. Corcoran is effectively behind glass at this point. I’ll be surprised if we hear much about him for the next couple of weeks.

That means, to point two, we’re likely to hear a lot about redshirt freshman Gunnar Gottula. Nebraska didn’t really have Corcoran and Prochazka available at the same time last year. They were like ships passing in the night, which meant Gottula, as a true freshman, spent most of the year listed at No. 2 at left tackle though Nebraska didn’t have to use him.

It might this year, and I liked how Rhule boiled it down after Saturday’s practice.

“Gunnar’s excellent in the run game, it’s just the confidence in the pass-rush game,” he said. “And I say ‘confidence’ in the pass-rush game, not ability.

“If that guy was in the portal, we’d all be scrambling for him. He’s played against good players for a year, year-and-a-half now, so it’s time for him to go.”

Time to go. Seasons swing on whether a player is or isn’t because every team faces this somewhere along the line. Gottula might be one of the most closely-monitored players in the weeks ahead.

Beyond him, it looks like redshirt freshman walk-on Grant Seagren (6-6, 305) might be next in line. As a converted high school tight end/defensive end, Seagren might offer some athleticism upside, but that’s a pretty big wild card to play. There’s more certainty in keeping Corcoran healthy and banking on Gottula’s continued development.

Ain’t that a kick

After missing the start of fall camp due to injury, sophomore kicker Tristan Alvano is back on the 120-man roster. I already wrote this offseason about what Alvano was and wasn’t in 2023, but Rhule offered his own definition of what Nebraska needs in the kicking game.

“In my opinion, in college football, you want to be reliable with the ball inside the 30, and you want to be reasonable out to like the 35, 36,” he said.

Rhule later said he hopes his kickers are “automatic” inside the 25.

While the sample size (15 field goal attempts) is still small for Alvano, that’s an interesting context for last year’s performance. Here’s how he compared to the national average in 2023 at each of the yard markers Rhule mentioned:

I came out of my initial Points Added Above Replacement (PAAR) analysis of Alvano somewhat optimistic but knowing a bit more about Rhule’s expectations have me even more intrigued.

Alvano’s biggest gap compared to the average kicker in 2023 was in the kicks that should be “automatic.” He hit 60% when the line of scrimmage was inside the 25 compared to an average of 84%. Maybe you can chalk that up to true freshman jitters. If you can’t, Alvano will probably be replaced, but I’d assume he’ll improve on the short ones.

Beyond that, the gap narrows. If Alvano had made one more field goal “inside the 30” he would’ve been above average. He was above average when the line of scrimmage was the 35 and beyond, though you might as well throw that one out because it’s based on one kick—a low-pressure, why-not, 55-yarder early in the fourth quarter against Purdue when Nebraska already led 21-0.

That’s still enough room for either kicking contender—Iowa Western transfer John Hohl or true freshman Nico Ottomanelli—to win the job in the weeks ahead, but it’s reasonable to think Alvano will be better in 2024.

Whether he is or isn’t will be a topic for a team that had small margins a year ago and, if it’s to improve, probably has small margins again in 2024. Kicker probably makes a deference for this team.

TOs, but not that TO

Selfishly, I’d like to cover a team where turnovers were a secondary concern. That’s usually reserved for a team so good where turnovers luck is just a footnote. The worse fate is what Nebraska has experienced recently where it’s easy to blame turnovers, and turnover luck, as the reason the Huskers have consistently struggled.

That “luck” is real, and Nebraska is on a nearly 20-year streak of bizarre turnover behavior, but it feels like a side effect at this point.

If we have a season where the Huskers go +20 in turnovers, yes, it will very likely coincide with a special season (while barely balancing the scales since 2003). Eventually you’d expect Nebraska’s turnovers to even out, but there’s no promise it all happens this year.

Rhule may have, intentionally or unintentionally, cast some doubt on that for the season ahead by saying the quarterbacks in Saturday’s scrimmage delivered “turnovers in places I wouldn’t like to see them.”

It’s a topic that won’t go away until nobody notices it went away.

Ad hoc hypothetical

What would you give for Nebraska basketball, football and volleyball to go undefeated over these two days?

1. I write that earnestly. It doesn’t matter, but the fact Rhule is pulling out year-three tactics for year-two Nebraska caught my attention enough to include it. Obviously, it doesn’t guarantee double-digit wins for the Huskers in 2024.