The Nebraska football team has been having enough success on the recruiting trail that it has been moving right up the list as far as team rankings. Despite that recent run of great success, including two more commits last week, the Cornhuskers also suffered a couple of losses.

On Friday, defensive tackle Tony Fair announced he was reopening his commitment. On Saturday night, punter Ben Kiernan announced he had committed to North Carolina.

Ben Kiernan becomes first showdown loss in months

The Nebraska football team has been having so much success winning over targets they've singled out, losing to another school is something they just haven't had to deal with much.

Even when the Huskers have lost out to someone like Wandale Robinson they have managed to win him back. It seems unlikely that Ben Kiernan is one that is going to be won over now that he has committed to North Carolina.

While the Huskers were the first team to offer Kiernan, he is from North Carolina, and it appears now that he was just waiting for the Tarheels or even North Carolina State to give him an official scholarship offer. It seems that once he got that offer, there was no chance for any other school to reel him in. Because he's a punter, there isn't an idea of just how significant a loss this is. Indeed, it's not as big as the loss of Tony Fair might be considering he is a JUCO defensive tackle at a position that the Cornhuskers badly need.

It's still a loss as Kiernan is regarded as a talented punter and the Nebraska football team has had problems (to put it nicely) with special teams.

Nebraska football likely won't target another punter this class

This late in the game, it's hard to imagine the Huskers are going to be going out of their way to bring in a new punter. They will have both punters returning in 2019 and that means they have a little time. It should also be pointed out Scott Frost and company have had some decent success when it comes to turning walk-ons into competent special teams players already. Isaac Armstrong managed to take the starting punting job away from scholarship player Caleb Lightbourn.

The Cornhuskers appear able to deal with the loss of Ben Kiernan but that doesn't mean they really wanted to have to deal with this kind of a recruiting loss. Mack Brown used to be quite the problem for the Nebraska football team when he was at Texas. It appears he's still a thorn in the Huskers' side at least when it comes to recruiting.
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