Huge Night for Johnson, Lateef

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sports brief. Now the Husker pozs edision and where are
big Red insider Sean Callahan live in Lincoln? Rosie Well, Seana,
it looks to me like we have a genuine quarterback controversy. Now, granted,
u CLA's defense is worthless, but TJ was almost flawless
in executing that offense. He's going to get a chance
against better defenses.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
But this is going to make for a colorful offseason
if Riola stays around.

Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yeah, I mean, you've got now games at Penn State
and with Iowa and then what looks to be a
fairly quality bowl game Nashville, Tampa or wherever the Usks go,
and TJA Tief's gonna get all those opportunities. But boy,
I can't recall quarterback in his opening start on the
road where Nebraska was a true underdog in the points spread.

(00:44):
I know it kind of went back and forth, but
they were picked by a lot of people not to
win this game, and he went out there and the
team looked as good as we'd seen all year in
terms of just the flow and the rhythm of the
offense and what he brought to the table. So I
think he's brought a lot optimism the final stretch of
this year, and we'll see where it goes.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
The last quarterback in his debut that looked that good
was Turner Gale against Colorado in nineteen eighty one when
he threw four touchdown passes. But at the time TG
was a sophomore. He was not a true freshman. This
guy is a true freshman. But the true freshman of
twenty twenty five does not look like the true freshman
of nineteen eighty five. And you might talk about how
he was prepared for a Division one football program in

(01:27):
high school.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
Well, he played in the private school league in Los Angeles,
you know, with Modern Day and John Boss and one
of the best, one of the best leagues in the country.
And you know, I mean they were I was listening
to the UCLA broadcast in the stadium and they were
very familiar with, you know, his playing background because he
was right from there. So yeah, his level play. Then

(01:49):
he graduated early and he was able to join Nebraska
in December. You know, could have played, but he was
here for the bowl game. He practiced, you know, a
good week or two leading up to the Pinstripe Bowl.
So he's been in Lincoln for almost a full year,
where yeah, you go back to the area, or for
you Jim freshman didn't arrive to school until June, in

(02:09):
some cases August.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Okay, So what this means now is a bye week,
which is good because he's going to get another week
of reps, extra week of reps with this first team offense.
But defensively, we have issues. This is a team that
just can't stop the run and it has not stopped
the run all year. And if anybody thinks that they're

(02:31):
going to stop mister Singleton, you know at Penn State,
they're out of their minds unless Penn State shuts it down.
So what can happen defensively over these last two games
because you don't want to be you don't want to
be on the field as much as we were. You
look at the total offense that Nebraska generated in that game.
It was pretty impressive, almost four hundred yards given that

(02:53):
UCLA had the ball for thirty minutes.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah it was. Yeah, the back run game with such
an equalizer because they were you know, they contained the
running back tailback game as much as you could. But
when the quarterback is able to run the way Ucla did.
It's hard to scheme that they have a you know,
it's a it's a hat on a hat. You know,
the the defense doesn't have an advantage at that point,

(03:19):
especially with Nico's athletic ability. He would have done that
to a lot of teams. I mean, he's a hard
he's a hard guy to bring down. So that was
but you know, I always going to have something very
similar in Gronowski when they play them down the road.
Penn State not as much, but Penn State will be
a more true tailback team. And I'm more worried about
Penn State's defense. I mean, you know, they've got NFL
material on that front seven, so that will be a

(03:42):
challenge on Senior Day out of Happy Valley. So yeah,
there's there's no doubt the next two games. I don't
care that Penn State's winless in the sake ten there's
still a lot of draft picks on that roster, and
you know that's going to be a very tough game
to come out of their way.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
A good time for a week off, for sure. And Sean, thanks,
So you've got the coach today, Matt right, he's doing
the news conference.

Speaker 3 (04:04):
Yeah, we'll hear from Meryloo today and that will be
the only thing we hear from all week

Speaker 1 (04:08):
From coach all right, and Sean will be back on
with more on that just after five with Emory here
on News Radio eleven ten kfa B