Flat, pathetic and straight up awful. Those are the best 3 adjectives I could come up with for the offense after Saturday's loss at home. The opening drive looked very promising until the easy pick six off of the (way too easy to read) bubble screen. After that, to quote the kids of today, the offense was "shook". No push up front, dropped passes, poor route running, and Tanner Lee looked more uncomfortable in the pocket than a vegan at a steakhouse. All jokes aside, the offense was horrendous throughout the entirety of the game, and as usual, it all starts up front. The offensive line has been far from perfect throughout the year thus far, but Saturday was utterly horrible. Nebraska's O-line averaged nearly 30 lbs. more than the Huskies D-line, yet they were consistently knocked backwards 3 yards on every play. Starting with the run game, or lack there of, I have two big questions: 1. Why the severe drop in run blocking just because Bryant is out? and 2. Why Ozigbo for only 3 plays? Addressing the first one is a bit tougher. It's clear Tre Bryant is the number 1 back, but running him into the ground for the first two games (when he's had injury issues already) was not something I was particularly a fan of. Secondly, it just seemed like the blocking dropped off a cliff once Wilbon jumped in. Yes, his pass protection is part of that, but specifically more with the run blocking, Wilbon had to find most of those yards himself. He finished with 90 yards on 24 carries while the Huskers finished with 85 as a team. I wholeheartedly believe Wilbon earned around 75 of those yards on his own due to his lack of blocking. I might be missing something, but I think Tre had bigger holes and I just don't understand why, especially against a MAC opponent like Northern Illinois. The second question I had was the decision to finally play Devine Ozigbo, but only play him for 3 plays. Waiting until late in the 3rd Quarter of the 3rd game to play one of the arguably top RBs on roster is puzzling enough, but for only 3 snaps? There's clearly a lot more to this story, likely something big, but I don't think Riley and his staff are handling it very well. I don't know anything of the situation, but if there's a reason to sit a player for 2.5 games, either come out with it or there isn't a reason. It was clear Ozigbo has been ready for his shot, dragging defenders for 8 yards on his first carry, but if you're going to bench him, there better be a reason. I thought he provided a nice spark to an otherwise stagnant offense, but with only 3 plays there's not a lot he could've done. I'm interested to see how this story progresses in the future.
Jumping to Tanner Lee and the passing game, I think everyone is starting to realize why I haven't been overly impressed by him. I do want to put a lot of the blame on the Offensive line for the NIU loss, but regardless of the pressure, Lee holds the ball way too long in the pocket, is very inaccurate and inconsistent with his throws, locks in with tunnel vision on one receiver and just seems to panic if his man is covered. Coming out of camp, all I heard about Lee was that he could make the reads, look off the defense and hit his check downs when needed. I have yet to see that this season, and I think he's starting to get into his own head with it. As I said before, the issues do start up front. The constant lack of protection leads to Lee often getting hit when he throws the ball (partly due to how long he holds it), resulting in a few of his picks this season. The offensive line needs to improve tenfold if Lee has any chance of resurrecting this season. Hopefully Coach Riley and Coach Langsdorf can calm him down and get him to progress through his reads. His check downs were open quite a bit on Saturday, and Lee didn't even look their way.
On the defensive side, I'm going to lay off them a bit this week. Although there are still issues that need to be addressed, they held NIU scoreless for 3 quarters and gave up just 213 total yards. The big stat that impressed me was holding Northern Illinois to just 3-13 or 23% on third downs. That's a huge improvement as Oregon posted a 50% conversion rate on the Blackshirts for third downs, and Arkansas State had 54%. There was the big drive in the fourth quarter given up by the defense, right after Nebraska had taken their first lead of the game, but when your defense only gives up 7 points total and forces the opponents to punt 5 times, you can't be very upset. Tackling does need to improve though, there were some bad misses and even worse, horrible attempts where players simply tried to bump the defender to the ground. I'm not going to name names, but Lamar Jackson and Antonio Reed need to learn that they have arms for a reason, WRAP UP!! Overall though, good performance from a young defense, hopefully starting to get a grip on the system. Look for pass rush and tackling to hopefully improve as they understand it more.
Special teams (apart from JD Spielman and Drew Brown) still have yet to impress me this season. I first want to state that the blocked FG at the end of the half was entirely the fault of the offensive line. I watched that from the sideline and it was clear they were not ready to protect. Props for Drew for still getting the kick through the uprights off the bounce though! I think it still should've counted just for that! Anyways, protection needs to improve as well as coverage. It's painful to watch our punt team run right by the return man because they either over-pursue or don't break down to contain him. Switching to Nebraska's Punt Return, DPE had quite a few issues fielding those punts on Saturday. I'm not sure if he was just not paying attention or if he was concerned about getting lit up, but either way the punt return needs to improve a lot. It seems as though nearly everyone is confused on most of our special team units, and that's never a good thing. We'll see how the team improves with the fans, the AD and everyone else grumbling at them after that horrible loss.
One fun stat I learned earlier this week is that since Coach Riley has taken over, there have been 8 games where Nebraska has had 40+ pass attempts. The Huskers are 0-8 in those games, so I think we really need to establish a stronger rushing attack. Thanks for reading my reflection on the game and please comment if there's any other teams or games you'd like me to post about! Also, be sure to tune in every Tuesday evening from 7-8 pm for my radio show The 2nd String with my friend Nate as we talk about everything College Football! You can listen by clicking on KRNU2 after following the link at http://krnu.unl.edu/. Hope you're all ready for a fun week of Homecoming Celebrations at UNL! GO BIG RED!
#CollegeFootballKnowItAll
Alex Fernando
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