Cornerbacks to Match Up with Certain WRs?

[Mavric]

Nebraska coaches have indicated to senior cornerback Daniel Davie that he’ll likely match up against the opponent’s top receiver all season long. His first test comes Saturday.


BYU’s Mitch Mathews is a 6-foot-6 senior who caught a team-high 73 passes last season. Nine of those receptions went for touchdowns.

It’s unclear if Davie will actually end up isolated on Mathews for the entire game Saturday. Davie said spent much of the time in practice lining up on the strong-side of the offensive formation.

OWH

 

[Mavric]

I'll be interested to keep an eye on this on Saturday - and perhaps all season. I like the idea if you have a lock-down corner. I'm not sure it makes as much difference if your guys are pretty even.

Davie really came on last year and had a great season. I'd like to think Kalu, Rose and whoever else might play the other spot are basically on the same level. Really want to see what Kalu can do with more playing time.

 

[lo country]

I am hoping they (CB's) play like Sanders had them. Aggressive at the line. IIRC, Sanders philosophy was knock them down at the LOS, drive them out of bounds or simply jam them off their routes. Either way, hard to catch passes. Since Sanders left, it seemed we gave way too much cushion and no longer played physical.

With Hill being a runner, the key is pressure and not let him run around in the backfield. Regardless of DB talent level, no one can cover for an extended period of time. Hit him and pressure him and any QB starts to get gun shy.

 

[VA Husker Fan]

I'll be interested to keep an eye on this on Saturday - and perhaps all season. I like the idea if you have a lock-down corner. I'm not sure it makes as much difference if your guys are pretty even.

Davie really came on last year and had a great season. I'd like to think Kalu, Rose and whoever else might play the other spot are basically on the same level. Really want to see what Kalu can do with more playing time.

The other advantage is that Davie can really focus on studying the #1 receiver's moves all week in film, and the other CB can study #2, for whatever that may help. Maybe it'll up their odds on finding a "tell" on a head fake or something that gives away a route.

 

[Redux]

All sounds good in theory. Just don't think the Secondary philosophy we have been using needed much tweaking. Hope we can continue to be strong there.

 

[BigRedBuster]

All sounds good in theory. Just don't think the Secondary philosophy we have been using needed much tweaking. Hope we can continue to be strong there.

If all you want to do is limit pass plays, you are right, we didn't need to tweak our secondary philosophy. The problem was we were doing pass coverage at the detriment of run defense.

So, I guess if you are OK giving up 400 yards to one guy in two quarters then....yep....we didn't need to tweak our secondary philosophy.

We probably will give up more yards in the passing game but our overall defense has a chance to be much better.

 

[StPaulHusker]

If it works, it will be the greatest idea ever. if it doesn't, we will want to fire Banker by years end.

 

[Redux]

All sounds good in theory. Just don't think the Secondary philosophy we have been using needed much tweaking. Hope we can continue to be strong there.

If all you want to do is limit pass plays, you are right, we didn't need to tweak our secondary philosophy. The problem was we were doing pass coverage at the detriment of run defense.
So, I guess if you are OK giving up 400 yards to one guy in two quarters then....yep....we didn't need to tweak our secondary philosophy.

We probably will give up more yards in the passing game but our overall defense has a chance to be much better.

Yeah, the pass protection would be what I was refferring to jmfb Jr.

 

[Mavric]

I am hoping they (CB's) play like Sanders had them. Aggressive at the line. IIRC, Sanders philosophy was knock them down at the LOS, drive them out of bounds or simply jam them off their routes. Either way, hard to catch passes. Since Sanders left, it seemed we gave way too much cushion and no longer played physical.

With Hill being a runner, the key is pressure and not let him run around in the backfield. Regardless of DB talent level, no one can cover for an extended period of time. Hit him and pressure him and any QB starts to get gun shy.

I'm fairly certain that we will be less aggressive at the line. The corners are basically "on an island" now with much less safety help over the top. Thus, if they get beat off the line, it's likely a touchdown. So I'm guessing we'll play back a little more and try to keep things in front of us.

 

[Redux]

If we give up the occasional long pass, but are more committed to stopping the short to mid gains we should see a lot more wins in the end.

My thought on Davie is even if he is going to be stuck to WR1 every game, why give that tidbit away?

 

[Bigred_inSD]

#davieisland

 

[Landlord]

All sounds good in theory. Just don't think the Secondary philosophy we have been using needed much tweaking. Hope we can continue to be strong there.

If all you want to do is limit pass plays, you are right, we didn't need to tweak our secondary philosophy. The problem was we were doing pass coverage at the detriment of run defense.

So, I guess if you are OK giving up 400 yards to one guy in two quarters then....yep....we didn't need to tweak our secondary philosophy.

We probably will give up more yards in the passing game but our overall defense has a chance to be much better.

I don't think this is true. After the 2012 season, Bye Bye Big XII (what the heck is his name these days) and I did the math on our defense. We found out that despite our poor run defense, teams run/pass ratio was the same as it was against other opponents through the season.

I'm no football savant so I don't know exactly what contributed to our run defense, but I don't think it was because we were just choosing our poison.

Count me in the camp that will miss how good our secondary was, though. I think the days of holding future NFL draft picks to sub-50% passing are probably going to be much fewer and far between, but if it gets us more wins, cool.