In Nebraska football’s 28-10 victory over Purdue, the first half was a disaster for both teams.

The score was 0-0 at halftime, but the Huskers missed three opportunities to get on the scoreboard. Backup kicker John Hohl, who started in place of the injured Tristan Alvano, missed all three of his field goal attempts in the game, two of which were blocked. All three of those attempts came in the scoreless first half.

Nebraska coach Matt Rhule addressed the kicking issues in his press conference Monday.

“Last week it wasn’t about the field goal protection team, it was about the snapper,” Rhule said. “We practice so much on special teams, on field goals, on punts, all those things. “If there’s a problem, we’ll fix it. But when we have to start changing things now, we panic. We know what to do. I mean this honestly, we know what needs to be done and we have the people who can do it. You have to do it. This is the phase we are in.

The snap on the first missed field goal was fine, Hohl missed the kick just wide of the left net. But on the next two field goals the snap was very inaccurate. These inaccurate snaps resulted in both field goals being blocked. It’s something that needs to be improved in the future or it will hurt the Huskers in a way that it didn’t against Purdue. It is almost unheard of for two field goals to be blocked in one half.

Rutgers head coach Greg Schiano is known for being aggressive on special teams and targeting field goals and punts, making it even more urgent to address this issue in practice this week before the game. Rhule said he expects Rutgers to come after their kicks and knows its special teams will have to be better.

“You can’t be a different guy and train than you do in the games,” Rhule said. “We do these kicks every day in training. I expect us to do them in the games. So they’ll come after us. They should come after us…we have good players. You have to play well and that was really my message to the team: If you want to be fast, you have to be tough, and that will be against a real opponent, a good Rutgers team.”

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