Nebraska Football: 3 takeaways from upset loss vs. Northern Illinois

On the road at Northern Illinois, Nebraska football struggled to put away the Huskies. Here are three takeaways from the Cornhuskers loss against NIU.

For the second straight week, Nebraska fell in a road game on Saturday. This time, instead of falling to Pac-12 hopefuls Oregon, they stumbled against a MAC school. Northern Illinois secured a 21-17 statement win in what looks to be a wide-open MAC West competition this season.

It was a sad performance for Mike Riley’s team as they struggled on the road. They came to DeKalb as a 10.5-point favorite, but made some costly mistakes throughout the game that cost them victory. Now Nebraska falls under .500 on the season after the upset, and looks like a pretender in the Big Ten West race before their conference season even begins.

After Saturday began with this big upset, here are three takeaways from Nebraska’s loss at Northern Illinois.

3. Tanner Lee isn’t reading the field well at quarterback

We talked about it a bit already at halftime, but Tanner Lee simply doesn’t look like the answer at quarterback for Nebraska. He finished the game with 25completions on 47 passing attempts, throwing for 299 yards. But his two early pick-sixes proved costly, keeping Northern Illinois in a game where they were otherwise shut down on offense. He atoned a bit with two rushing touchdowns, but threw a third pick late in the fourth quarter when Nebraska was still in range to win.

The former Tulane recruit entered the game completing just 52 percent of his passes with a 6.7 yards-per-attempt average. Lee is little more than a caretaker quarterback for Mike Riley’s offense, but if he can’t take care of the ball it begs the question as to whether he deserves to remain the starter.

Of course, that also begs the question of who Nebraska could possibly have on the depth chart to step up for the Cornhuskers. A pair of freshman, Patrick O’Brien and Tristan Gebbia, sit behind Lee on the depth chart. Would Riley and offensive coordinator Danny Langsdorf consider throwing O’Brien or Gebbia to the fire in a season that is beginning to go off the rails?

What we do know is that Lee is not playing as well as Nebraska needs from its quarterback. The veteran now has more interceptions than touchdowns between the four he threw in Autzen Stadium against Oregon and the three he tossed this week against Northern Illinois.