Final take: Georgia Southern does its own tribute to Nebraska's Scoring Explosion offense in their 45-42 win
Georgia Southern missed the memo on Saturday.
In a 45-42 win over Nebraska, Clay Helton’s squad decided to tribute NU’s 1983 Scoring Explosion offense. On a night when the Big Red wore commemorative throwback jerseys to honor one of college football’s all-time best offenses, the Eagles were the ones that decided to have a record-breaking night.
Georgia Southern’s 642 yards of total offense were the most ever allowed by the Huskers in Memorial Stadium history. The previous stadium record was 633 yards by Ohio State in 2017.
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Is this the beginning of the end for Frost?
Did we perhaps see Scott Frost coach his last game at Nebraska on Saturday? The short answer is no, but I think it’s inevitable that this is the beginning of the end. We all know what needed to happen this season, and we all know Frost’s buyout of $15 million cuts in half on Oct. 1.
There were already warning signs this season was heading in the wrong direction. A bad loss to Northwestern in Ireland was followed by a shakey win over North Dakota last week.
That was followed up by a poor performance from the Wildcats today, which made the season-opening loss look even more questionable.
Then fast-forward to Saturday. We witnessed one of the worst defensive performances in school history, as Helton’s team carved up the Blackshirts after being paid just over $1.4 million to play the game in Lincoln.
“Certainly didn’t expect that tonight,” Frost said following the defeat. “I thought we would perform a lot better than that. I felt really good about our defense going into the season. Felt good about our offense. I knew it would take a while as an offense to start clicking. I thought they did pretty well tonight. I thought the defense made a lot of progress last week. That was a major setback.”
Before Saturday, NU was 214-0 in games at Memorial Stadium where they scored 35 or more points.
I’m not sure I’ve seen a game like this before. The Huskers had zero turnovers on offense and six-touchdown drives of 75+ yards but still lost. The issue was on defense where the Eagles had seven scoring drives that ranged from 74 to 80 yards. They also turned it over twice, but it didn’t matter.
On a night when Memorial Stadium was packed and ready to party, it felt like we were seeing the beginning of the end of the Scott Frost era.
Nobody thought we’d be at this point five years ago, but here we are. Now on to the grade out.
The final grade out
| Grade | HOL Take | |
| Rushing offense | A | Nebraska rushed for 257 yards and scored five rushing touchdowns. Anthony Grant had 138 yards rushing on 27 carries. This was enough to win the game. |
| Passing offense | A | When scoring 35 points or more, before Saturday, the Huskers were an all-time 214-0. Casey Thompson did enough to help the Huskers win this game, finishing with 318 yards of offense and no turnovers. NU had six touchdown scoring drives of 75 yards or longer. I’m not sure in football history you will see a team lose a game with offensive numbers like that. |
| Rushing defense | F | Georgia Southern finished with 233 yards rushing as an air-raid offense. That was more than enough. They had 67 and 47-yard runs from running back Gerald Green and five total runs longer than 10 yards. |
| Passing defense | F | Georgia Southern’s 642 yards of total offense is the third-most ever allowed by a Nebraska defense in school history. Kyle Vantrease threw for 407 yards and was 5-of-6 on third-down passes for 72 yards. He completed eight passes for 15 yards or more. |
| Special teams | B- | Punter Brian Buschini was fantastic again, averaging 50.5 yards on four punts. The return game was a non-factor though, and the big downgrade is on Trey Palmer’s decision to run a kickoff out on NU’s final drive that cost the Huskers 6 valuable seconds. Those 6 seconds would’ve been huge to help Timmy Bleekrode get closer on his game-tying field goal. Bleekrode missed from 52 yards out on that field goal. Another 7 to 10 yards with one more play may have been the difference with those 6 seconds lost on special teams. |
