@ShortSideOption said...
OL still makes young player mistakes on occasion but I expect when they are juniors and seniors they will be stout.
I am interested to see if they can close on some of the top players on their board. While I feel they can develop under rated players and find diamonds in the rough, there is still a need for top athletes. Just getting a few would be great and already having a 4* commited for OLB makes me feel good. Unless Nick does not pan out of course, any other OLB recruit you see possibly being that guy other than moving Wright to OLB?
C
Just some stuff i've been thinking about/working on over the course of our adventure with the new staff.
Know where you can miss, part 2: If you remember, I told you that one of the things that our coaches preach, is knowing where you can miss defensively. Further, if you "do your job", how much faster can we play on defense? I have two examples for you.
First play, watch Aaron Williams here. There's a lot of people that still think we should be running a 4-3 to get a better pass rush and help stop the run (i'll get to the pass rush thing later down the way). I love the 3-4 Chinander runs, because your "edge setters" or people that are responsible for turning the play back in to where all the "help is". Think against Wisconsin, when they ran that jet sweep against our 4-3 and killed us. Our safeties were responsible for "turning it back in" from 10 yards deep. Here's a great example for us. Aaron Williams has to set the edge, now he gets a bit too far up field, but that's ok. He sets the edge, and the RB sees there is nowhere to run inside, so the he tries bouncing outside. Aaron Williams knows his only job is to not let it outside of him. What does he do. He TURNS AND SPRINTS TO THE SIDELINE because he either has to make the tackle outside, or turn it back in to the cavalry coming. This is outstanding:
So our next play involves our OLB setting the edge, and allowing our safety to play so fast he gets a massive hit on the Ohio State player. Here, you see Luke Gifford knows that his only job is to turn the ball back inside to where his help is. Further, Antonio Reed knows that his aiming point is inside of Luke Gifford, he doesn't have to worry about anything outside, as #12 would get that (like Williams the play above). So he can come flying in like a missile inside of Gifford, because if he misses there, it doesn't matter, that means it bounces outside to Gifford who is "doing his job."
Luke Gifford doesn't get a tackle recorded on that, but he's every bit the reason Antonio Reed gets one and was able to lay the wood. Sometimes stats don't tell the whole story.
Did Ohio State look faster? Are we developing guys now?: To go along with those two clips, did any of you think that Ohio State really looked that much faster, bigger, or better than us? And that's a team that per 247sports has the #1 ranked team in the country for talent on the roster (Nebraska is 26th).
https://247sports.com/Season/2018-Football/CollegeTeamTalentComposite/
Scheme and development can go a long ways in making your players look better than their ratings may indicate. It's why teams like Iowa and Wisconsin are sitting 36th and 43rd in that ranking, but have dusted us pretty much since entering the B1G. In years past, it was really tough to point to players that I thought were "getting better" throughout the season. But now, i'd have a tough time keeping it to just 5, wouldn't you? Dicaprio Bootle, Lamar Jackson, Dedrick Young, Mo Barry, Carlos Davis, JoJo Domann, Tanner Farmer, Boe Wilson, Matt Farniok, Brendan Jaimes, Mike WIlliams, Devine Ozigbo, all those guys have gotten better from Colorado to now in my opinion. While I won't celebrate a loss as a victory, there's no doubt in my mind with what my eyes saw Saturday we are a completely different team right now than we were in September. We aren't losing to Colorado or Troy in November. I don't think we can win out and have a chance to get to a bowl, but I think we can win 2 of our last 3 games. And that's something I would have never thought after how we started.
Offensive Line: Have to give props here. How much better have our guys gotten? I also have to point out, that this is about the 10th year in a row that who we started with game 1 didn't end up being our best line in November. The move of Tanner Farmer to center has been outstanding. Boe Wilson is holding his own at guard, making it so that we are only replacing Farmer and Foster for next year. With a ton of interior linemen to choose from, the ability to slide Farniok inside for 2019, and Desmond Bland penciled in somewhere from our recruiting class, I like what coach Austin is doing. We look night and day from the Troy game to now. Kudos to these guys.
Scheme, or is the Vedral news helping the offense too?: If you remember, the coaches said "we aren't going to change what we do because Gebbia transferred, we are still playing to win." If you also remember, I said "well you better, because there literally is no 'next man up' when you only have one scholarship QB". In the past couple weeks, I have seen an increase in QB designed inside runs. Where before it's been mostly speed option and zone reads that let Martinez keep it if "it is safe". Here are two plays that we have started to run more of.
The first is one Frost and Walters LOVED to run with Milton at UCF. It's the empty set QB draw with a pulling lineman. If they are playing one on one outside, you can throw it there, but most times this is passing downs so you have a box that is favorable to run against.
Another one we are starting to see is the "dash" or "bash" look, where the RB is sweeping across the QBs body (not downhill like a true zone read) to get outside. Here, Martinez can read B gap defender and choose to keep it and lower his head up the middle. Again, this is stuff we didn't see early, either due to scheme not allowing it, or us reluctant to call it due to only having Martinez. Here he is reading the LB with the safety lined up over him, if they even somewhat head towards the backs direction he pulls and lowers his head as he does here.
Clock management: I feel I need to give props here for how we orchestrated things at the end of the first half. We made it so that Ohio State couldn't get the ball back with any time to score, all while getting a touchdown of our own. That is so huge, I was texting a couple buddies about how we have grown up since the Colorado game. How we seemed to figure out we can help get ourselves W's from a coaching standpoint that has nothing to do with "Jimmy's and Joe's". Then all of a sudden we do something I couldn't believe, with 3 minutes to go in the 3rd quarter on 4th and 1 from our own 14 yard line, we line up to go for it. We can't get them to jump, so we waste a timeout in the 3rd trying to draw someone offsides in a one score game. We ended up needing that timeout, but luckily it wouldn't have mattered since we couldn't stop them. It's little things like that our coaches can clean up, and has nothing to do with on the field stuff. They got it right in the first half, and we took the lead to the locker room.
"We need a pass rush/pass rusher" - I was shocked when I actually looked up our team sacks for the year. We are 40th in the country, top 33% of all FBS teams, with 2.50 per game. Last year we were ranked 118th, and currently we are averaging more sacks per game than UCF did last year when they went 13-0 and had Griffin. The improvement Chinander has done for us here is outstanding, so I really think we are just nitpicking when we say we need to do better. There are numerous things that we need to fix before we start talking about our pass rush. I'm not saying we shouldn't strive to be #1, i'm just saying I think people are a bit skewed and always think back to the plays of us just rushing 3 guys and see how little rush we get. We are actually doing quite well there.
In regard to who we have. The last 3 classes, we actually brought in 3 guys who everyone at some point on this site were excited about the "premier pass rusher" we just got. Caleb Tannor, a four star out of Georgia who chose us Auburn and Florida. Guy Thomas, a four star out of Florida who chose us over Louisville. And Quayshon Alexander, a four star out of New Jersey who had something stupid like 20 sacks in one season in high school. We even had Javonte Jean-Baptiste committed before he flipped to Ohio State on signing day. My last point on this subject... with all of those premier guys getting taken from outside our radius, who is leading our team in sacks? Luke Gifford (Lincoln Southeast) and Ben Stille (Ashland-Greenwood). The top 5 career sack leaders in Nebraska history, 2 are from Lincoln and Omaha, 1 from Iowa, 1 from Missouri, then of course Suh. To sum this up, scheme can get us where we want to be as a pass rush. We can get into the argument that if we had more premier guys we would be top 25 for sacks, and that's fine. Trust me, i'll take more Randy Gregory's and Ndamukong Suh's every recruiting class. But we have shown this year, and in our dominant run, that if you have scheme/culture in place, we will be ok.
Adrian Martinez is a true freshman - Sometimes when he does things like throwing the ball 5 yards backwards to JD Spielman who is 4 yards from him, I have to remind myself of that. But he's currently sitting at 66% completion percentage, with 12 TDs and 6 INTs. If I would have heard those stats before the season as you telling me that's what he was in November, I would think we only had 2 losses, 3 max. The best completion percentage we've ever had by a Nebraska QB for a season was Joe Ganz, with 67%. Pretty special.
The emergence of Domann: When Ferguson went out with injury and Breon Dixon was struggling to do the right things. It got really worrisome that Alex Davis was playing so much for me. Before the Ohio State game, Davis had 232 snaps and only 4 tackles. That is not good. But here comes Domann off his injury, and in only 90 snaps, he has 9 tackles, a TFL, a sack, 2 forced fumbles, and 2 PBUs. Davis is sitting at 5 tackles in 243 snaps. Domann is giving us life while Ferguson heals. Now, what will we do next year? Bulk Domann up and replace Gifford? I expect to see more of Ferguson against Iowa and the likes, but Domann is a play maker. We need him healthy.
Recruiting: We are currently sitting at 22nd in the country while only having 2 wins. That gives me a ton of excitement. My areas of concern currently are DE (the 2 guys brought in last year had their development paused due to injuries), and we lose Akinmoladun/Stoltenberg. The year after we lose the Davis twins. I don't know if we need a JUCO DE, but it would be nice. We have Neal (knee), Thomas (arm), Rogers (arm), Wildeman (knee), all who we were planning on developing in 2018 for bigger roles in 2019, and we are stunted there. Will our staff trust they can develop often injured guys, or will we get an immediate impact guy? This all depends on if we reel in Robinson or not in my opinion.
ILB, I was talking with another poster in the recruiting forum, and all my concerns about ILB next year after Honas got injured have gone away. With the way Barry and Young have developed this year, I can't help but be excited. We can find someone next year to play alongside Barry. Honas, Weinmaster, and Miller are all going to be there and were improving. Joey Johnson almost made the staff play him in fall camp when Avery Roberts and Will Honas weren't grasping things, and oh yea, we probably have one of the best ILB recruiting hauls for 2019 in the country (thanks Ruud).
But we do need to find a dominant OLB. Even tho I said it isn't necessary, we need someone. Randy Gregory isn't someone i'll turn my nose up at. Could Javin Wright turn into that guy?
DBs - while I think Lamar Jackson is all of a sudden turning into something, and Bootle is holding his own, if we can finish the class with Pola-Gates (still a long shot in my opinion) and Mayo (better shot), that would be outstanding.
All I got, have a good week!
OL still makes young player mistakes on occasion but I expect when they are juniors and seniors they will be stout.
I am interested to see if they can close on some of the top players on their board. While I feel they can develop under rated players and find diamonds in the rough, there is still a need for top athletes. Just getting a few would be great and already having a 4* commited for OLB makes me feel good. Unless Nick does not pan out of course, any other OLB recruit you see possibly being that guy other than moving Wright to OLB?
C
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