So... it's been a week or two for this, so I apologize. Seems like there was a lot of analyzing and I wanted to just sit back and see what was happening. Going into this season, I thought we would be at one loss to Oregon right now. Turns out they are a complete dumpster fire and the Huskers are 6-0. Undefeated and in the top10 after just beating a very good Indiana team. Things are great right now, in fact, there's literally no way on the scoreboard and in the standings things could be better. Keep in mind in this write-up that I feel that way, but i'm going to put some things on here that we need to be cognizant of moving forward.
Special Teams
I am just going to start here, screw it. So let me start by defending him here, on punt return if you still see us in our "4-3", it is punt safe that isn't even called by Read. That means, our guys are defending against a pass fake and a run fake, so the front 7 are not blocking at all. They are watching for a run fake and covering anyone going out into the flat, if the guy releases vertical it is being released to our DBs. That's why there is no blocking half the time on punt returns. That being said, I am by no means defending Read here as the special teams are awful right now. Our net punting is terrible because our kicker is scared to get things blocked, we are getting penalties on special teams plays. It's just a disaster. I have no problem having Tavita or someone else take over for him. However, he does have a major impact on recruiting in terms of talent evaluation, so we can't just get rid of him. But he can do that from an administrative role, and who knows if that's something he is even interested in. I think a lot of coaches were getting passes with Riley because they were at lesser programs. Were they bad coaches or could they just not get the talent to compete? Williams showed he just needed some talent and he's a heck of a coach. Hughes showed he probably wasn't a good coach. Is Read closer to Hughes or Williams, you tell me? That being said, let's lay off Lightbourn a bit. Go look back to some threads about Drew Brown as a freshman and how much the fan base was uneasy, he's about as automatic as it gets now.
Tommy Armstrong
So I hate to tell everyone this, but we probably lose that game if not for Armstrong. Think of how many sacks there should have been that Tommy's athletic ability helped us out of. That scares me for next year. Heck, that scares me for the month of November with how his ankle is right now. The kid was 10/26 with 2 TDs and 2 INTs, not that great, but sometimes it goes beyond the stats. That kid won us the game. And Fyfe, O'Brien, or Lee are getting sacked close to double digits that game.
Offensive Line
It's scary... really scary for me. But are they underperforming? At one point I think they were on their 10th OL and that's with now having to redshirt some extremely talented freshmen that would have been able to help out. I think we are actually playing real well with the hand we are dealt, the problem is we aren't going to get Illinois, Indiana, Oregon. We have Wisky, Ohio State, and Iowa coming up. You heard it here first, Wisky's 3-4 defense is going to make more tackles for losses and sacks than Huskers fans livers can handle. That game may be 17-7.
Play Calling
So we ended up beating Indiana 27-22 where one of our TDs was a pick 6 and one of them was a YOLO-bomb Tommy threw into triple coverage where there were so many defenders around our WR that they all ran into each other and fell to allow him to score. It was seriously like a scene in a poorly made football movie. And some people were upset about the play calling, I get it. But I want to bring something up... go watch the first 6 plays on offense in the second half. We are up 17-8, a 2 score game, here's how it went:
1 - Inside run where the DT splits the double team which should never happen, 1 yard loss
2 - Speed option for no gain
3 - Dropback pass and we get pressure, incomplete
following series
4 - Rollout pass that was almost grounding
5 - Jet sweep for four yards. BOOOOOOM! YARDS!
6 - Straight dropback for a completion because it was finally a clean pocket.
What i'm getting at is the first 5 plays were all different, and none of them worked. There's an old saying for defensive coordinators that you can't stop everything. You basically hope that the things you scheme to stop work, and then the stuff you aren't lined up the best against that are the offenses 2nd or 3rd options, that your "average" is better than their "average." Well, Indiana did stop everything those first five plays. if you are running an inside zone play and a sophomore splits the double team of your all conference LT and your fifth year senior LG, there's pretty much nothing you will run that will work. So i'm not all that mad at Langsdorf. Because as a play caller you can't see one DT take on 2 OL and win, then say "i'm going to run more" because you're screwed. You can't pass because that's one on one blocking. It's up to your players to figure it out. And all of a sudden they did in the 4th quarter with a 12 play drive. Sometimes, players just have to be better. And i'm scared we won't get the luxury of being up 17-0 in Madison or Columbus to figure it out.
Defensive Line
These guys are doing so well and growing up in front of our eyes. I started a thread during the game that Carlos Davis is going to be an absolute monster. He's better than Suh right now as a freshman. Not sure if his ceiling is as high, but that kid played really well Saturday. I was pretty worried during the bye week, because the 3 games prior to Indiana not many people know we were giving up close to 6 yards per carry on the ground. Not gonna cut it. Against Indiana we held them to less than 3 ypc, and dialed up some great blitz packages. This line will only get better, and they need to for what's ahead of them.
Back 7
First, some props, Banderas and Gerry played some of their best games of their careers Saturday. And Banker dialed up some great blitz packages to get some free rushers on the QB. With that being said it will be interesting moving forward what we do with personnel as AWilliams, KWilliams, and Gerry are some of our best players out there. But nickel against an Iowa or Wisconsin could be not the best option. We still have to figure out a way to stop Wisky's jet sweep. Here's how Ohio State did it:
Rest Players Against Purdue
Look.... Purdue is bad. But they were last year too, and we were down 42-16 at one point and eventually gave them their only win against an FBS opponent. How sad is that? I do think you gotta beat them up real quick and get guys out to rest up. But I just don't think you can afford to take them lightly. I get the thought process, but we just aren't a good enough team to do that. Especially with the blocking I saw this past Saturday. The most dangerous team is the one that has nothing to lose, and that's Purdue. They are going to blitz us to death leading to some big plays for both teams. We gotta keep the momentum going heading to Madison.
Summary
All in all, we are 6-0 and should be happy. I don't care if we deserve to be there or not. It's where we are now. I wasn't mad at Iowa last year and I most certainly am not mad at us this year. It will all shake out as we are pretty beat up now and have our toughest games ahead of us. But it's nothing to apologize for. We have some flaws, but every team does. Enjoy this. Be happy. "Don't really care, we are undefeated" has been my favorite line to an Iowa fan trying to downgrade what we have done.
Quick Hits:
- Heard a great Johnny Manziel story over the weekend. Friend of mine was friends with Chris Tabor who was the Browns special teams coach while Johnny Football was there. He went to Cleveland to visit and they let him basically do whatever while there, luckily he was there for Manziels first start. First thing he's told when he's picked up is "we're so screwed this weekend just so you know. Manziel is awful and the front office is making us start him." Long story short the OC was literally puking after watching film from practice knowing he had to play him. Johnny is out practicing the 2 minute drill and has literally no clue what's going on. Hoyer is behind the OC laughing hysterically while Manziel doesn't know the cadence for the 2 minute offense and is basically sounding like a tecmo bowl qb:
- Iowa starting to pick up momentum, their defense is still atrocious though.
- UCLA still thinking they are good and practicing on the Cougars part of the field but losing for the second year in a row to Wazzu:
- We want Iowa to beat Wisky, correct? Iowa will lose again to Michigan giving them 2 losses in conference.
That's all I got for now.
