Season Opener Rarely an Eye-Opener

Let’s try to imagine the best-case scenario come Saturday at 7:00 pm.

--The Cornhuskers have just vanquished Nevada 59-0.

--Sam Keller shows that he truly does have the strength and accuracy of Odysseus and the killer instinct of Ares, throwing for 376 yards on 50 attempts with 5 touchdowns.

--Cody Glenn and Marlon Lucky take some big shots and seem no worse for the wear. Together with the newcomers, who are, of course, brilliant in their brief stints, Nebraska nets another 200+ yards on the ground and two more scores by land.

--Throw in a touchdown for the Blackshirts, who silenced the Pistol all day long, and a 52-yard field goal for Adi “Thunderleg” Kunalic and I think we could all fall asleep confident that a national title is but another 13 short games away.

Almost none of that is likely to happen, at least not all in the same game, and there are a couple of reasons why:

1) Nevada is the best 1^st game opponent Callahan has played thus far. After 1-AA warm-ups in Callahan’s first two seasons, Nebraska moved up with Louisiana Tech last year. This year they’ll face a Wolfpack team that nearly beat Miami (who nearly lost to Houston and Duke) last year. Most people rank Nevada just a step behind sudden stalwarts Hawaii and Boise State in the WAC.

2) Keller won’t get that many attempts. In his three home openers, Callahan hasn’t put it up more than 36 times. Rather, the Cornhuskers have achieved an almost stunning balance, rushing for an average of 245.3 yds/game and passing for 247.3 yds/game in the first game of the season in the Callahan era.

3) They just did it last year. With a returning quarterback Nebraska did almost everything you could’ve asked for in their first game of 2006: 252 rushing yards, 332 passing yards, only two turnovers, seven touchdowns, etc. The defense was a little leaky but outside of that I can’t really imagine a season opener that would be more satisfying.

It seems unlikely that lightening will strike twice. In Callahan’s three years at the helm, Nebraska has outscored their first opponent by an average score of 32 points but the games themselves have really run the gamut.

We had the good last year against Louisiana Tech (585 yds. total offense), we had the bad in 2005 against Maine (4 turnovers, 1 offensive TD) and we had the ummmm in 2004 against Western Illinois (Joe Dailey 4 TDs and 4 INTs).

So what should we expect come Saturday? During fall camp anxious fans are left to drag junk comments out of the trash and inspect them for any future value, canned responses taste like farm-fresh vegetables in those few weeks leading up to the first game of the season, but after this week all bets are off. We’ll have objective data to work with but what should we do with it?

My suggestion is enjoy it for what it is: a cliché. One game one season, the first step of a long journey, a drop in the bucket, these are all true. Whether Keller is awesome or awful against Nevada may not have any bearing as to what he’ll eventually do against the Longhorns.

Knowing this won’t likely stop anyone from trying to do just that but if modern magic—looking at you Criss Angel, David Blaine—has taught us anything it’s that you can do a lot of stupid things as long as you know they’re stupid beforehand. In fact, our desire to analyze and savor this first morsel of football probably prevents us from doing that very well. I’m no different.

In my mind, the biggest question Nebraska faces heading into 2007 is backfield depth. If Lucky and Glenn can’t go, now or down the line, how simple will the running game become to accommodate the newbies? Will Keller get to run the full version of the WCO or will he be forced to work with the free trial edition? That question won’t be answered on Saturday, but I’ll look like hell for it anyway.

What we’ll probably get is this: an equal mix of running and passing plays, a good to great performance from the defense, at least two things to be really excited about and two things to be very wary about and, ultimately, a Nebraska win.

After all, Nevada might be good but they’re not Florida State.