Come Sept. 5, 2009, FAU will open its season against Nebraska at Memorial Stadium, one of the top-15 toughest places to play college football. But things might not be as tough as originally thought, as Nebraska QB Patrick Witt transfers. According to the Associated Press (AP): "Nebraska Cornhuskers quarterback Patrick Witt, who was expected to compete for a starting job next season, has decided to transfer to another school."

"Witt was the favorite to win the starting quarterback job for the 2009 season. That's why Witt's decision to leave the program a month before the start of spring practice is a head scratcher."

Witt served as the primary backup to Joe Ganz in 2008.

Junior QB Zac Lee will likely be named the starter for the FAU game.

Zac Lee #3
Height: 6-foot-2
Weight: 210 pounds
Class Year: So
Experience: RS
Hometown: San Francisco, CA
Prior School: San Francisco City College

2008 STATS
Passing                                             Rushing
Att  Comp Pct Yds TD Int Rating Att Yds Avg TD
2      1     50.0 5   0 0   71.0   2 17 8.5   0

Other KEY LOSSES for Nebraska:
OFFENSE: Joe Ganz-QB, Marlon Lucky-IB, Todd Peterson-WR, Nate Swift-WR, Mike Huff-OG, Matt Slauson-OG, Lydon Murtha-OT
DEFENSE: Ty Steinkuhler-DT, Zach Potter-DE, Tyler Wortman-LB, Cody Glenn-LB, Armando Murillo-CB, Dan Titchener-P

I hope people on here don't start getting their hopes for the Nebraska game like they did for the Texas game last season…..

The said

I hope people on here don't start getting their hopes for the Nebraska game like they did for the Texas game last season…..

Texas 08 and Nebraska 09 are comparing apples to oranges…Nebraska better come ready to play.

The said

I hope people on here don't start getting their hopes for the Nebraska game like they did for the Texas game last season…..

I'm with ya on that one. They're still a BCS team and they will be ranked when we play them. Regardless of whether its Texas or Nebraska it's still going to be hard to go there and win. I think we need to come ready to play or we're facing another loss to a BCS team

Agree,

After getting my hopes up for a Texas shocker, Im not buying into the BCS OOC win for 09.

Unfortuanetly as Ted Hutton has often said, FAU has NOT gotten it done YET against a team like that and untill we do saying we will is a bit like Monaco claiming they could beat the USA in a war.

I hope we do, but Im counting it as a loss.  :-\

My OOC hopes are to come out of it at 2-2 with loses to SC and NEB. UAB will be tough (they got a whole lot better) but I think we will beat them and whoever the other TBD game is (Please make it a FCS or Mid-Major)

Without a doubt, Nebraska will be an extremely tough and intimidating game for the Owls, but a win isn't that far-fetched.

Yes, Nebraska finished the 2008 season 9-4, ranked 28th overall and WAS the 17th highest scoring team in the nation.

But in 2009 Nebraska has to rebuild its offense: they lost a majority of their offensive line, both their starting and backup QBs, and their top-two receivers. Their running game is terrible!!! Their leading rusher finished 70th in the nation with just over 800yrds.

Nebraska also has a penalty problem (as does FAU). Nebraska had 94 penalties, the 15th most in the nation. FAU had 96 penalties, 13th most.

Granted…Nebraska regularly plays against a higher caliber of team (Big 12 conference), but defensively, they aren't a good team. Not a single defensive player on Nebraska ranks in the top-100, and give up just as many points per game as FAU's defense.

The toughest aspect of this game, will be the crowd. Their fans and that atmosphere is crazy! If FAU can ignore that stuff, and focus, they have a chance at winning.

If we lost to Nebraska by a close score like 27-24, 30-28, 15-14, etc, I wouldn't jump for joy but I would feel much better about the progress.

I don't get a good feeling with scores like 52-7.

We also lose some offensive lineman and have to replace two running backs and that is only the offense, on defense we will have new personnel in our front seven. Saying Nebraska does not have a good running game and them being able to run on us are two different things. Go and look back at last season’s stats against the run and you will see that we could not stop it either.

We were saying the same about Texas. "Oh they're starting a true freshman and a RS freshman as the DB's on defense, Rusty will have a field day" I remember hearing that a lot "No one wants to throw it to Small and Polo will definitely pick off McCoy." Polo is lucky if he picks his nose. Not getting my hopes up for SoCar or Nebraska until they can prove that they can knock off a team like that. Like someone else stated we also had a pretty bad D for most of the season, new RB's, we have a TE who's coming off of surgery so we won't know how he'll perform as well as a new center working with Rusty and there's bound to be some miscommunication there.

The common trend in most of our games last season is what happened on the first drive. We almost always got the ball first and in the Texas game the ball was snapped over Rusty's head, he runs after it separate's his non throwing shoulder. In Michigan State we hand the ball off to CP20 he runs with it for 80+ yards it's called back because of a hold on Gent and that was the end of that game as well.

If we can get the ball first and score first and have it go smoothly I think we can do better than 52-7

We will win.


*Offer not valid if Nebraska shows up.