Featured Player: Brett Maher #96 - Nebraska Punter

     Someone was missing from the Nebraska game on Saturday against Chattanooga and it was Alex Henery.  Remember him? As in college there comes a time to move on and it is called graduation. Henery was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles, where he will be under the scrutiny of the always-hard-to-please Eagles fans, hungry for their first NFL title since 1960.

     In fact, as the Cornhuskers’ 40-7 win over Tennessee-Chattanooga unfolded, it was as though Henery had never left but had only changed jersey numbers

    That’s how impressive the debut of Kearney native Brett Maher was Saturday in Memorial Stadium. Maher picked up exactly where Henery left off, punting the Huskers out of danger from his own goal line on the game’s first series, nailing all four of his field goal attempts, including a 50-yarder into the wind on his first try, while averaging 52 yards on four punts, including two inside the Chattanooga 20-yard line.

Back in Lincoln, a lot of Husker observers expected scholarship freshman Mauro Bondi to win the placekicking job vacated by Henery, but on Saturday, there was Maher, looking rock-solid on all his kicks – every last one of them. He even had three touchbacks on kickoffs.

It’s not as though the conditions were ideal. Maher had to deal with winds that swirled in generally from the northwest at 15 to 25 mph. His field goals of 50, 48, 34 and 21 yards, plus his touch as a punter, show that Nebraska has another weapon worth at least 10 points a game, if he can maintain his consistency.

How good was Maher’s first outing? He was the only Husker to receive effusive praise from the hard-to-impress Bo Pelini.

“I’ve been saying all along, we feel really good about Brett and what he brings to the table,” Pelini said in his postgame press conference. “I don’t know if you can have a better start than he had. He really hit the ball well. He hit a couple punts into the wind that were big time. He had a good day. Great day.”

I’m not sure why Pelini also used Bondi on kickoffs. Since Maher is a junior, it seems like the right strategy would be to redshirt Bondi this year, then use him for three years after Maher graduates.