Win Over Baylor Still a Win and That’s About It
Coming off of two consecutive losses and with the November schedule looming large in front of them, Nebraska almost desperately needed a win today over Baylor. And, they got it. Nebraska looked every bit like the stout defensive and offensively limited team they have been recently, but this time with a different quarterback at the controls. Every win is still a win, even in a fairly vacant stadium in Waco. But, Nebraska looked downright brutal on offense today.
Cody Green got the start for Nebraska at quarterback. Though, I'm not entirely sure it was a change for t he better. Green was an unremarkable 12 of 21 for 128 yards. He didn't throw a touchdown but did through an interception to Baylor that gave them their only touchdown. At best, you could score his performance as a net neutral, as my colleague Steve pointed out.
Good
Nebraska won. For Husker fans, that is the main good news. Other positive notes coming out of today's performance:
As always, Nebraska looked stout on defense. They only gave up 3 points to the Baylor offense today. The refrain continues: don't blame the defense...or the special teams. Eric Martin's block of a first quarter punt led to a huge touchdown for Nebraska. Hey, points are points.
Jared Crick looked like an un-blockable mass of humanity today. Yes, Suh gets a lot of attention from opponents and pundits, but Crick absolutely took full advantage of his one-on-one match up today. He collected 13 tackles, sacked the quarterback a school-record 5 times and recovered a fumble.
Nebraska won the turnover battle today. Hey! That's great. If you win the turnover battle, you win the game. Weird.
Nebraska managed to gut out and scrape together 145 rushing yards. At times, they appeared committing to running the ball and did so effectively. They showed a few signs.
Alex Henery is a money kicker. He just is. He might be the most consistent thing about Nebraska's entire offense. NU just needs to keep putting him in position to score points.
Neutral
Now for what could be called "neutral" observations:
Folks, Baylor is not a good football team. They were playing their third team quarterback. They might not win a conference game this season.
This was not a true "road" game, considering there were (ahem) plenty of quality seats still available.
Bad officiating continues to plague this year's football season. The game was poorly called today, and that is shame for both teams. It makes me really wonder about the usefulness or effectiveness of replay. Is it making officials tentative or causing too much second guessing?
Downright Bad
Now, the not very good news for Nebraska:
Excluding the eight (8!) turnovers from last week, I honestly think the offense looked better last week than this week. I know that is a lot to put aside. But, consider this list of outcomes from Nebraska's second half possessions - Punt. Punt. Interception (pick 6!). Punt. Punt. Fumble. Punt. Punt. It just doesn't get much uglier than that.
Nebraska is limited offensively. Inserting Green for Lee makes NU - almost by default - a running team. Right? Here's the problem - Nebraska has almost no reliable option at running back. Helu is clearly hurt. Robinson ran hard, but also left early with an injury. Forget about Castille. Burkhead is still two weeks away, at best. Mendoza was MIA. Jones and Ward looked fairly pedestrian in trying to close out the game. We want to line up with tight ends and fullbacks and mash it. I get it. But who are you going to give it to?
So if NU is a running team, it is fair to question the way Green was utilized today. He's much more of a runner than Lee, but NU appeared insistent on making him a thrower today. It wasn't until after the unfortunate pick six did you see Nebraska start calling more designed runs for Green.
Also on the personnel issue, I like that they are willing to try to get new people like Kinney and Cooper involved. But, Holt and Gilleyen going from starters to non-participants almost makes the coaches' decision making look silly. They were either foolish before (for playing them) or foolish now (for shutting them out). Pick your poison, folks.
Second Team All-Big 12 tight end Mike McNeil - no catches; thrown to once. Jeez.
Moving Forward
It is clear that Nebraska has married itself to Cody Green at quarterback. The merits of that and other personnel moves can be debated. But, that's who Nebraska is offensively. This team, first by lack of execution, and now almost by design, is one that will put up somewhere between 7 and 24 points, play stout defense, and hold on.
If Nebraska is to win the North division of the Big 12 (and don't kid yourself, that is still the goal), they must win at least 3 of their next 4 games. Even then, they would need some help. So, they really need to run the table. Every game is their most important game, starting next week with a little team called the Oklahoma Sooners coming to town.
10/31/2009
Bo knows head coaching.
10/31/2009
I hate to be critical after any win but it is so obvious on 3rd and short what NE will do that teams just load the box and leave us 5 for 15. I guess I don’t understand fb but I would like to show some willingness to ‘go wild’ and try an end around or reverse or something that would make them and others think twice about loading the box. Its disgustingly obvious what they will do on third and short and really a little boring. Am I too critical after a win or does this make sense to anyone out there in cyberspace world?
11/1/2009
O-Line play in the 2nd half seemed to deteriorate and continues to be inconsistent. It’s tough to commit to the run, or any identity for that matter, with a dysfunctional OL.
Kansas City, MO
11/1/2009
Had a friend point out that if our opponents wanted to get a 3 and out against us, that they should let us get eight yards on first down then stuff the next two run plays that the Huskers would try.
11/1/2009
I got a few answers for my own questions validated yesterday. What I thought was a funk the offense was in, appears to not be a funk. NU’s offense is not very good and it isn’t any one position. Playing Green yesterday only reinforces that. My biggest concern is and has been the play of the O line followed closely by the wide receivers. I too cannot figure out why the TE hasn’t been used more either. I would’ve thought 8 wins would come easy at the beginning of the season. This is going to be a very difficult task to get to looking at what this team can and cannot do. There were opportunities all over for some player to step up and it didn’t happen. What ever happened to Will Henry?
11/1/2009
And that’s about it is right. The offense played better in the loss to ISU. Absolutely mind boggling. I was certain with a 20-0 halftime lead Wats would coach up Green and turn him lose in the 2nd half. He actually played worse, but I don’t think they schemed to his strengths.
I don’t know what to expect for the remaining games. I hate to think we’ll be fighting for the last bowl scraps in Boulder, but it may come down to that.
11/1/2009
I am really looking forward to the OU-NU game this weekend.
After 6 months in Saudi, it’s the only thing that matters.
No matter how our school’s seasons have gone it’s still the big game (OU-NU), right?
11/1/2009
OU7,
Glad you made it back. I hope that you were in Jeddah instead of Riyadh. I have a little experience working with Saudi’s that I can’t get too much into in a public forum. Yes sir, it is always a big game, even if one or the other might not be up to standard. Seems that you guys are starting to click right now. Score aside, Kansas State is not a bad team and in watching that game I wish that Ron Prince was still in charge of that program. It’s a much different team and program. Jones is going to be a very good QB for yall but the running game is a little lacking at the moment. Again, glad you made it back. This is going to be a tough game for us offensively. . .
11/1/2009
Worried about next week without Dennard. West is just a liability. Dennard is going to be the first shut down corner in the Pelini era. But West just wanders mentally to much. Next week you can’t afford to drift mentally. . .
11/1/2009
@ James,
Thanks!
Unfortunately, it WAS Riyadh.
And don’t believe every ‘OU7times’ post you see on BRN. Someone spineless has obviously infiltrated.
11/1/2009
Any predictions this week?
I’ll say:
OU-23
NU- 9
11/1/2009
OU7,
I won’t throw a score out there but I think that both teams will be hard pressed to score many points in the first half. I just think that your offense will make more plays than ours and will probably put something together in the 2nd half forcing our offense to play from behind (scares me a little). Nothing to lopsided in terms of margin of victory but I think that your front 7 will beat our O-line and I’m not sold on our WR’s being able to separate against your secondary. . .
HOWEVER I really like our front 7 defensively against your O-line and if our secondary is healthy we match up very well there too. I’m just not sure that your O-Line can handle one-on-one assignments with us up front, and you need that to run your “2 minute drill/no huddle” tempo. If the interior line assignments break down then the wheels come off. The play tempo will have to be a bit slower, so I don’t envision a scenario where you get to that “2 minute drill/no huddle”. I can also see you guys being one dimentional for long stretches of the game. You’ll definetly have to work for your yards and since it is Oklahoma and it’s at home I’m pretty sure that our guys will be there for the game’s duration. Murray and Brown were awfully effective last year but I don’t see them being factors against us. Landry’s good but he’ll have to be a stand-alone QB for a good bit of the game. Again, yards will be hard to get against us. . .
Turnovers, who can establish a consistent push resulting in an effective run game, and special teams will determine the winner of this game. . .
I’ll part with this. Suh is a lot better than McCoy and McCoy is pretty good. Mr. Suh is a special ballplayer and I think you will enjoy watching him, and his partner Mr. Crick play this weekend. . .
11/1/2009
There are no easy answers for this offense. Our running game is absolutely no threat to any team, much less the Sooners. Zach Lee and are receivers are going to have to step up. Green has potential, he’s definately not ready to face OU.
Did anyone catch Oregon’s thrashing of USC and nearly 600 yards offense? They did it with a brilliant spread option attack and a dual threat QB. They run 70% of the time and can pass when they need to. I hope Watson was taking notes, if not, Scott Frost sure the heck was - he’s their WR coach.
If Watson were to take a head coaching job at some point (I am NOT insanely calling for Watson to be fired), I wonder if Bo would consider Frost as a candidate? I know it might sound crazy, but give him a few more years under Brian Kelly and he might be good to go with the advantage of having worked under two offensive geniuses Osborne and Kelly.
I am convinced that Nebraska is going to have to get back to being a true power running/option attack (not necesarily the Osborne version). Why? Because we simply can’t consistently get the recruits it takes to run west coast. I think our problems right now on offense are reflective of a personel/recruiting problem. To run west coast, we need 2-3 quality WR’s, 1-2 pass catching and run blocking tight ends, a line that can pass block and run block (preferably 6-5 or taller), a QB who can pass on a dime and do dammage with his feet, a RB who can run inside and catch out of the backfield. That’s a lot to ask for from a re-developing program trying lure top caliber recruits.
Compare that with recruiting as an option team. In the Osborne era, we would get the best running QB in the nation, because other schools were looking for a pro style passing QB. Then we would get the best run blocking o-linemen in the nation, simply because we did not need them to be pass blockers, short squatty guys, 6-4 and below - the Pipeline. Tight ends and WR’s just had to block and catch a pass once in a while. They didn’t have to be speedsters. All of this allowed us to utilize home grown talent as well, especially at FB. And in the end, we would get our pick of the nations best RB’s, because they knew we were going to run, run, and run some more. The brilliance was that we had two skilled positions, QB and RB. Everyone else were relentless run blockers. And once in a while the o-line would have to pass block and the TE’s or WR’s would have to catch one.
I am not saying its the best offensive system in the world. I am just saying it worked at NU because its the offensive system that most readily aligned with the recruiting challenges NU has always faced.
11/2/2009
I would say that Cody had a good day at Baylor. He is a young QB that really only made one mistake on the day. Now that mistake did cost us 6 points, but with the way that the defense was playing it didn’t hurt us. I didn’t expect him to come into the game and get 300yds passing and 150yds on the ground, I was hoping for him to learn how to make sound decisions. Minus one play, I think that he did that all day. Zach has thrown a few interceptions this year as well.
For the first time I will say that the second half belongs to Coach Watson. Clearly different play calling in the second half from the first. Cody isn’t Zach, he shows a different scheme then Zach does, and if they use that against teams, it will cause problems for other teams. Just maybe not this year. I liked the idea of starting Cody this past weekend, it won’t only help him, but it may push Zach to become a better QB. How cool would it be for NU to have two QBs that are interchangeable during a season that they are struggling offensively? If the O-line can handle the pressure of playing to both of their strengths (and that is a big IF), then that alone could give them a great advantage.
What gets me is that NU is really hurting at the RB position. I can’t remember another year that we didn’t have someone that would really step in and clock off 150yds in a game. There have even been walk-ons that have been able to do this in the past. Even with the “West Coast Offense” we have had good RBs in the back field. That is what we lacked in Saturday’s game, no one to carry the ball out of the backfield with dominance. That is what helps the QB step back and pass. You always have to make the other team respect your running game. Even Roy when he is health runs lightly in the first part of game, it is at some point that he will start to run through tackles and then the offense starts to fire at that point.
OU is the game that I have been waiting to see all year. Now we get a true test to see how good the defense really is. I only wish that Bradford was healthy, as I wanted OU to be firing on all cylinders. The offense is going to really need some help to get through this game, maybe a QB catching a pass for a touchdown as well.