Nebraska has always been known for it’s walk-on program. However, over the past two decades I would say the coaches have merely been giving the walk-on program lip-service. They would check the box and the move on to more “important” things.
As Max Olson of The Athletic reported in his extensive article about the Nebraska Walk-On Program, before the arrival of this coaching staff many of the walk-ons would lose hope as they were merely used as practice dummies by the scholarship players and were hardly noticed by the coaching staff.
I would not blame them for losing hope.