There’s a six-hour difference between Central Time and Dublin, Ireland time.
Last season, there was a seven-touchdown gulf separating the Nebraska and Northwestern football teams, as the Cornhuskers romped to a 56-7 home victory.
Both of those realities figure to be on the minds of the Wildcats as they meet Nebraska in the season opener in Dublin on Thursday.
“We’re going to have fun experiences, but we’re definitely business,” Northwestern defensive back Cameron Mitchell said. “We all saw the game last year. We’re going in, we’re trying to be gritty. We’re going to get that back.”
Both Nebraska and Northwestern finished 3-9 overall and 1-8 in Big Ten Conference play in 2021. Whether overseas or stateside, the programs aspire to bigger, better and closer-to-.500 things this time around.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, but the guys are putting it in,” Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald said.
Cornhuskers counterpart Scott Frost is equally bullish about his players’ energy.
In the case of the offensive line, charting progress means more than assessing players’ output via the eye test, thanks to strength and conditioning coach Zach Duval and his use of modern technology.
“The guys wear monitors that track overall output and many other statistics,” Frost said. “They are more than doubling in a lot of cases in the amount of effort they put out than in the last couple of years in practice. They are doing an unbelievable job. I’ve been pleased with the way they’re playing.”
Quarterback Casey Thompson, a Texas transfer who passed for 2,113 yards and 24 touchdowns while starting 10 games for the Longhorns last season, hopes to benefit from bolstered line play as the program works to grow its depth in the skill positions.
Nebraska’s defense returns standout linebackers Garrett Nelson and Luke Reimer to a solid unit. Eight of the team’s nine losses last season came by one score.
While Fitzgerald was not tipping his hand on the quarterback competition between Ryan Hilinski – who made nine appearances last season – and Brendan Sullivan, Northwestern looks to jell around offensive tackle Peter Skoronski, who is receiving buzz as a prospective first-round pick in the 2023 NFL Draft.
Running back Evan Hull, who rushed for 1,009 yards and seven touchdowns last season, also returns.
Fitzgerald called the opener “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to go play internationally,” adding that players will “especially remember it if we go play well and win, and that’s the goal.”
He said the game plan for Nebraska will be well in place before the team heads overseas, and is optimistic any jitters will be out of the way by that point, too.
Northwestern tackled the novelty of playing abroad early in camp, when Fitzgerald used the icebreaker of asking players who hadn’t left the country to raise their hands.
“A ton of challenges for the operations staff, right, logistics. We’ve got to ship a ton of stuff. I mean, the list goes on and on with that,” Fitzgerald said. “But from the standpoint of our team, it will be just a little bit longer flight.”
