Nebraska +7.5 Minnesota
Goodbye Frosty, hello Matt Rhule. If the Cornhuskers can’t win with Rhule at the helm, they might as well drop down to FCS. Rhule has won coaching at Temple and Baylor. Both of those jobs were complete reclaimation projects. At Nebraska, he’ll be hitting the ground running. Talk about teams going in opposite directions. PJ Fleck’s Gophers are a hot mess right now with all of the chatter about his ruthless coaching practices. Talk about “row your boat”? How about “hit me on the head with an oar”.
The Cornhuskers are going back to old school football, which is perfect for the Big 10. They are re-installing a fullback and will huddle up between plays. Their QB is the starter transfer from Georgie Tech, Jeff Sims, who is a dual threat guy. He’s not named Martinez, but he’s still pretty good. Three of their four running backs also return. Overall, fifteen starters return (7 Offense/8 Defense) so Rhule has something to work with.
Last season, the Gophers won this contest 20-13 behind the legs of all world Mohamed Ibrahim but this year he’s gone. Speaking of bye bye, the Gophers also need to replace experienced NFL bound Tanner Morgan. So last year, Minnesota didn’t cover this spread with two phenomenal offensive weapons. Their inexperienced QB, Athan Kaliakmanis, only completed 54% of his passes last year. There are still starting jobs up for grabs, particularly on the O Line.
This is going to be a tough game for the Gophers. But why ask me? This is what PJ Fleck said: “They’re very talented, they’re big, they’re strong,” Fleck said of Nebraska. “A lot of guys have played a lot of years for him. They’re a very experienced team. And then they’ve added a lot of players from the transfer portal that have played a lot of football elsewhere. They present a lot of challenges and like I said, you know that I have a ton of respect for Matt and what he’s been able to accomplish in his career and, and he always gets the most out of his team, no matter what year it is.”
My expectation is a low scoring slug fest. Nebraska will certainly be better than they were last year and Minnesota has a lot of question marks. I see Nebraska doing better in this game than they did last year, which means taking the points for the cover makes sense.
For a small play I took Huskers +5.5 @ +110 back in early August. Not putting any more on it.
Saw a Husker WR being interviewed a few weeks ago. He said the new offense is NFL complicated. That gave me pause. May take a few games to catch on??? Who knows. Do know Minny looks like it is taking a step back from last year so I agree 3-4 sounds about right.
As a guy who lives in Minnesota now, I can say locally no one is worried about the things being mentioned on this thread. Minnesota's schedule with trips to Chapel Hill and Columbus are more concerning than a mostly meaningless media kerfuffle trying to turn Minnesota into Northwestern. It lasted all of five minutes.
The Gophers have been very good defensively for most of Fleck's tenure. Shouldn't be different this year and a primetime home game is not ideal to be breaking in a new offensive scheme.
This feels like Harbaugh's first game at Michigan. Nebraska isn't ready to win in Minneapolis yet. Ruhle did not get great results in year one either of his last two stops. Transfer portal should help but don't underestimate the difficulty of turning around a broken program. That's especially true on the defensive side of the ball.
The game is already sold out. Locally, people think Fleck has something special in this group. I like Minny by ten, 24-14.
Nebraska fans are a big reason for the sell out. Everyone and their dog is going to this game. I see it coming down to turnovers wit both teams trying to shift out of neutral. For Value will be sprinkling some on Nebraska ML as well as +7. Outside of Spann Ford, Minnesota has nothing scary on the offensive side and can see Sims feet being an issue for them to contain.
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