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Nebraska Offense Idea - The Ski-Gun Offense


The Duke

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LONG POST WARNING!!!

If you don't want to read the whole post just scroll down to see videos of this potential offense that Nebraska could run.

 

 

Now that the off-season is officially upon us I have been doing some in-depth research over the past several weeks on different football offenses and offense philosophies to see what Nebraska could use for the 2012 season and potentially into the future.

 

There is no question that our offense returns a load of talent next season. The problem lately has been that either that talent hasn't seen the field nearly enough, or we are not using the talent we have to the best of each player's potential.

 

A few rules are true for having a successful offensive team:

1) You're only as good as your offensive line. (At the end of the day, most games are won in the trenches).

2) You're only as good as your QB's decision making & accuracy.

3) Speed kills.

 

 

 

 

In his 25 years of coaching at Nebraska, Tom Osborne & his staff developed an offensive philosophy that helped produce some of the most lethal offenses in college football. The following is the Offensive Philosophy Rules that Tom Osborne and Nebraska went by:

 

Tom Osborne Offensive Philosophy:

 

1) Multiple Sets and Motion

 

2) Strong Running Game

  • Option football
  • Power football

​3) Physical Football - WR's must be blockers first

 

 

 

 

4) Emphasis Execution

  • Low turnover ratio
  • Minimum mistakes
  • High reps in practice

​5) Efficient Passing Game

  • 55% + completion rate
  • 1 or less sacks per game
  • Emphasis on Play-Action Passing

​6) Control The Football

 

 

 

 

7) Have A Strong Kicking Game

 

 

The one thing that is very evident when you look at Nebraska's returning offensive roster for 2012 is that we have a lot of speed at key positions:

 

QB-Taylor Martinez

IB-Ameer Abdullah, Aaron Green, Braylon Heard, and even Rex Burkhead to some extent. (I would classify Rex as more of a power back.)

WR-Kenny Bell, Jamal Turner, Tim Marlowe, Taariq Allen

TE-Kyler Reed

 

If Nebraska can find a way to get all of this speed or mostly all of this speed on the field at the same time I think it would cause nightmares for defenses.

 

The other thing Nebraska needs to do if Taylor Martinez is going to continue to be the starting QB, is they need to develop a passing game that fits his skill set. The young man is a competitor, but more often than not he has trouble throwing those perfect timing routes that other offenses use. Nebraska needs to develop a strong play-action passing game to get receivers wide open into space, so that even if Taylor's throw is off just a little bit he can still have a high success rate of throwing a completion instead of forcing many of his throws which turn into interceptions.

 

 

 

 

With all of this being said I think I have found an offense that could suit Nebraska very well next year:

The Ski-Gun Offense

The Ski-Gun Offense is basically a hybrid between the Flexbone Offense and the Pistol. It is named after Muskegon, Michigan where it was first developed there by one of the local high schools. You can run power football, spread elements, and option football with this offense. The first word that came to my mind when I saw highlights of this offense was "deceptive."

 

 

Watch these short 1 minute video highlights below and see if you can envision Nebraska running such an offense. I truly think this would give Big Ten defenses headaches. I also think this offense fits very well into Taylor Martinez's skill set as an excellent runner and just an average at best passer. Please Note: I could only post 1 video in this original post, so I will try to add more videos in a reply posts below.

 

 

Ski-Gun Triple Option--Pitches

 

 

Anyone who has more in-depth access to the program that wants to show these videos to Tim Beck to give him some ideas for next year by all means feel free to do so.

 

 

Anyway, I am curious to hear what you all think of this offensive philosophy, and I am curious to hear if you think this could work at Nebraska with the current talent that we have coming back next season? Enjoy the off-season Husker fans and let the discussion begin.

 

:bigredn:Go Big Red!!! :bigredn:

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Once Beck finds his "mojo" as a playcaller, I suspect he will do quite well. I'm led to believe there are some plays Beck has in the play book that we haven't run simply because TM isn't comfortable with it. I can't recall the exact quote or which newspaper it was from, but it was about a month ago Beck was quoted to the effect of: "I only dial-up plays that TM is comfortable running. Sometimes I might suggest this play or that play and TM will shoot it down. But I'm glad he's honest with me about it."

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I think we should stick with what we are doing. Once the O-Line is more consistent and the receivers catch the ball better, it will be pretty potent with the weapons that we have up and coming. But that is a cool formation. I love how it gets to the edge super quick. I could definitely see it giving opposing defenses fits.

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I don't think this is all that different from what he have been doing. It still uses some of the Pistol and Zone-Read concepts that we ran this year. Where it is different is in how it brings the receiver in motion to where he then becomes the triple option threat.

 

Transitioning to this would not be as drastic as when we went from option football to the west coast. I honestly think that based off of what we ran last year that we could easily transition into this offense.

 

The thing that I really like about this offense is how we could potentially have Martinez, Turner, Burkhead, Abdullah & or Green, or Heard, all on the field at the same time.

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I think we should stick with what we are doing. Once the O-Line is more consistent and the receivers catch the ball better, it will be pretty potent with the weapons that we have up and coming. But that is a cool formation. I love how it gets to the edge super quick. I could definitely see it giving opposing defenses fits.

 

Actually, this offense (that looks somehow familiar) would probably help the O-Line achieve better angles for their blocks.

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I don't think this is all that different from what he have been doing. It still uses some of the Pistol and Zone-Read concepts that we ran this year. Where it is different is in how it brings the receiver in motion to where he then becomes the triple option threat.

 

Transitioning to this would not be as drastic as when we went from option football to the west coast. I honestly think that based off of what we ran last year that we could easily transition into this offense.

 

The thing that I really like about this offense is how we could potentially have Martinez, Turner, Burkhead, Abdullah & or Green, or Heard, all on the field at the same time.

 

That's true. It's really similar to what we have been doing, and I think it does a lot of the same thing that the diamond formation does that we have all fallen in love with. I'm definitely not opposed to any variation of the pistol/triple option/zone read offense as long as it works.

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