Nebraska making unusual stop at Twin Cities high school before facing Gophers

Before the Gophers and Nebraska go to battle at Huntington Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Friday night, the Cornhuskers will conduct their gameday walk-through at a local high school.

The 5-1 Cornhuskers, ranked No. 25 in the country, will be using the facilities at Academy of Holy Angels in Richfield. That’s where Nebraska running back Emmett Johnson went to high school, where he was named the Mr. Football winner as the state’s top senior football player in 2021.

“He’s a guy that could easily be a captain for us based on the voting, and he’ll be a captain next year. I’m just excited for him to have a chance to go back home and play in front of those people. Our Friday walk-through will be at his high school, which I think is really cool,” Nebraska coach Matt Rhule said this week.

A spokesperson from Holy Angels told Gophers On SI that an operations employee from Nebraska reached out to the head coach at Holy Angels to organize the walk-through, which comes during MEA break in Minnesota.

Johnson is the Big Ten’s second-leading rusher through six games, having totaled 650 rush yards and seven touchdowns. Michigan’s Justice Haynes (705 yards) leads the Big Ten in rushing.

“My only thing to him is just keep it football. Don’t get too high or too low, stay neutral. Just play each play the way Emmett is capable of,” Rhule said. “If you look at the last two games, when it comes to carries with all of our backs, not scrabble, but carries, we’re averaging 7.1 yards a carry. We’re versus an excellent run defense, so we’ll need Emmett to be at his best.”

Johnson isn’t immediately thought of as a local recruit who got away from the Gophers. Minnesota has always been flush with talent at running back, and when Johnson graduated from Academy of Holy Angels in 2022, he simply wasn’t on Minnesota’s radar. In fact, the Cornhuskers were the only major program that offered him a scholarship, according to 247Sports.

At Holy Angels, Johnson rushed for more than 2,500 yards and scored 42 touchdowns as a senior. In his high school career, he finished just shy of 5,000 rushing yards and nearly 6,000 all-purpose yards.

Johnson has been awesome the last two weeks, blasting Michigan State for 83 yards and three touchdowns on only 13 carries, and then lighting up Maryland for 176 yards on 21 attempts. He’s now tasked with facing a Gophers run defense that ranks seventh in the Big Ten, allowing 108 yards per game on the ground.

“It was an elite environment,” Rhule said of playing at Minnesota. “The crowd was electric. We’ve prepared all week with insane crowd noise, and we’re counting on Husker Nation to show up and even out the volume to a degree. It will come to a time where, like last game, where silent cadence was done inside the ten, and it’s just what it is in the Big Ten and big-time football. We’ve prepared since camp, so we’ve done sound all the time. We’ve done sound this week, so we’ll be ready if needed. The rest of it, when the game starts, is going to be who blocks and tackles better.” 

Nebraska will certainly need to tackle better. Their run defense is allowing 151.3 yards per game, which ranks 17th in the 18-team Big Ten. However, that number is a bit skewed by Nebraska allowing 286 yards in its Sept. 20 loss to Michigan.