Hey everyone, I apologize that I have not made any posts this spring, I have been extremely busy with work and school. I hope you all enjoyed the Spring Game today, because I most certainly did! With my Sports Communication class, I was able to go on a special tour of all the media game day operations. I was able to go down onto the field, see the Husker Vision studio, up into the TV & Radio broadcasting booths, and was able to watch Coach Riley in his post-game press conference. I got a lot of great information to discuss in this post, and learned a lot from being behind the scenes.
We'll start with my impressions from the Spring Game itself and what I learned about from Coach Riley's press conference. First off, we are going to be a very, very young team. Apart from Tommy, Ryker, Terrell Newby and our wideouts, this team has a very large amount of youth that will get significant playing time come this fall. My biggest concerns are with the Offensive and Defensive lines. The O-line clearly has a lot of work to do before we can make a run at any conference titles. A couple of injuries kept key players like Dylan Utter out, but Michael Decker stepped in well at Center. During his press conference, Coach Riley mentioned that OL Paul Thurston would most likely be leaving the team and looking to transfer. On the defensive side of the ball, Coach Riley notified us that both Greg McMullen and Kevin Williams would not be returning in the fall for the Huskers. McMullen is moving on to go to graduate school and Kevin is looking to transfer for his 6th year of eligibility. That's two more experienced players that will no longer be part of the Huskers' D-line next year. Kevin Maurice and Freedom Akinmoladun look to be the anchors of a very young group that will have a large number of redshirt freshmen and sophomores in the rotation. Ross Dzuris and Alex Davis should provide some more speed on the edge while the Davis twins and Mick Stolenberg clog up the middle. There's a lot of raw talent, but not a lot of experience, so the learning curve will be pretty steep.
Moving to the rest of the defense, it looks like we finally have a healthy linebacker corps, so hopefully that will stay true throughout the fall of 2016. The Linebackers are another group that has a lot of youth, but due to the injuries last year, there's a good deal of experience to go around. I thought they played well today and stuck with their assignments. Wrapping up the QB seemed to be an issue on the scrambles, and the draw plays torched them over and over. Look for that to be a big focus this fall if the coaches want a strong run defense again.
Finally, we look to the secondary. Easily the biggest question mark heading into this season, and the biggest concern. They weren't great today, and were often beat on the long ball again. Luckily, the QBs couldn't hit their wideouts in stride (main concern on offense apart from O-line). Listening to Coach Riley and Nate Gerry talk after the game, I could tell that the secondary was going to be a major focus over the summer and into the fall. The Huskers have a lot of young talent coming in, and in my opinion, the door for rotation in the secondary is wide open. Gerry and Kalu have a couple spots locked down, but I would say that the others are up for grabs. Look for a lot of competition this summer and into the fall.
On the offensive side of the ball, our young receivers looked good, and the running backs ran strong. Newby and Ozigbo have definitely broken away from the pack and are my top two backs in the rotation. Coach Riley, Tommy, and Newby all said that the draw plays and the option would become a bigger part of the run game. We'll see how that progresses into the fall. Now to try and survive until August until football comes back.... ugh! Hopefully we can keep up with the great recruiting success throughout the summer!
#CollegeFootballKnowItAll
Alex Fernando
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