Jonathan Rose was dismissed from the Nebraska football team on Tuesday due to his third incident of violating team rules. His dismissal shines a light on the biggest flaw in the 2015 Huskers: a horrible senior class.
Jonathan Rose Dismissal Cements Nebraska’s 2015 Senior Class As Worst in History
In case you haven’t noticed yet, college football is becoming a world dominated by underclassmen. High school prospects are coming into college more prepared for collegiate football then ever before, and more prospects every year take advantage of early admission to college. This has led to a steady decrease in senior stars since the turn of the new millennium.
But while underclassmen are getting better and better, seniors are still a vital part to most football teams’ success. Teams that aren’t able to consistently field top five recruiting classes rely on the steady development of their recruits and pray that they will play their best football as seniors before moving on to the professional ranks. That has been Nebraska’s formula for years, evidenced by the Pelini era from 2008 through 2014. Joe Ganz in ’08, Ndamukong Suh in ’09, Prince Amukamara in 2010, Lavonte David in 2011, Quincy Enunwa in 2013, and of course Ameer Abdullah & Kenny Bell in 2014 are all examples of talented juniors who took their game to another level to lead the Huskers to victory.
That’s what has made the 2015 Nebraska Cornhuskers so frustrating. Its not the close losses; those can be dealt with. What is so mind-numbingly frustrating is the fact that this senior class had a golden opportunity to be the team that led Nebraska out of the angry days of Bo Pelini into the pleasant era of Mike Riley, but they failed to do so. “Failed” isn’t necessarily the right word. They self destructed and scorched all the underclassmen and coaches unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast radius.
First lets concentrate on the Huskers’ seniors and their on the field performance.
On offense in 2015, the Huskers had eight seniors on their two-deep. These seniors accounted for 0 passing yards, 623 rushing yards, 202 receiving yards, and eight total touchdowns. They accounted for 0% of Nebraska’s passing yardage, 30.9% of Nebraska’s rushing yardage, and 6.1% of Nebraska’s passing yardage. Imani Cross was the best senior of the group with 389 rushing yards and five touchdowns. The only other senior to account for more than 100 yards of offense was fullback and former walk on Andy Janovich, who accounted for 234 rushing yards and two touchdowns.
On defense in 2015, the Huskers had four seniors on their two deep. Three of these seniors, Jonathan Rose, Daniel Davie, and Byerson Cockrell, were members of the 122nd ranked secondary in the nation, giving up an incredible 288 passing yards per game. The only other senior on the two deep was Jack Gangwish, a former walk on and fan favorite. Despite his revered status among Husker fans, Gangwish did not have a great senior year, missing four games with an elbow injury and accounting for just 15 tackles and 1.5 sacks on the season.
Not exactly a pretty sight is it? Lets compare this season to another Husker coaches first season. In Bo Pelini’s first season at Nebraska, seniors on offense accounted for 3,600 passing yards, 816 rushing yards, and 2,071 passing yards. Percentage wise, that’s 98.5% of the passing yardage, 37% of the rushing yardage, and 56.7% of the receiving yardage. On defense, seniors like Ty Steinkuhler, Zach Potter, and Cody Glenn made huge strides to turn one of the worst rushing defenses in the country in 2007 into one of the best in 2008. It’s not hard to tell which team went 9-4 in a feel good bounce back season and which one went 5-7 and infuriated Husker fans, is it?
Now let’s go through the mind-boggling run of idiocy this senior class put their team through in 2015. First day of fall camp, then senior defensive tackle Kevin Williams (he has since been granted medical hardship to play one more year) demanded that the media call him a starter or else he would not be doing interviews with them. Okay, not the greatest start, but the rest of the seniors would pick up the leadership slack for him right? Well about a week later we found out that a group of Husker defenders would be suspended for the first game of the season due to a violation of team rules. One name among that group: senior and starting cornerback Jonathan Rose.
Okay, we couldn’t count on the defensive guys to show great leadership. So let’s turn our attention to the offensive seniors. Well in game three, senior left tackle and captain Alex Lewis had a terrible late hit on a Miami defender that put Miami at the Nebraska 15 yard line for their overtime possession. Miami would win the game on a field goal, and afterwards Lewis went on a bizarre Facebook rant in which he stated he was done playing for the state of Nebraska.
Oh boy, this just keeps getting worse.
After the Miami game, Coach Riley had a chat with Lewis about not letting his temper get the best of him, Nebraska rebounded with a victory over Southern Miss and everything seemed alright in Lincoln. Then Nebraska lost an infuriating 14-13 contest to Illinois. After the game a senior was seen blowing kisses to Husker fans and calling out “sorry that we suck!” until a freshman teammate escorted him off the field. Who was that senior you might ask? If you guessed Alex Lewis again you are correct! All of these things happened in the span of about five weeks, and somehow Nebraska fans still had hope that the senior class would turn things around.
