Nebraska Offense Idea - The Ski-Gun Offense

Goal-line said:
Option football requires offensive line blocking, which in turn requires athletes that can actually have the talent to do that, speed, agility, smart, and agressive. I recently watched some clips with the teams of the 90's. The simple difference between this current Husker offensive line and the line in the 90's is light years apart. None of the current players could have started on those teams. Football is a rather simple game. If you cannot block and you cannot tackle, you cannot win no matter what kind of super stars you have at the skill positions.
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Yeah, I agree that's the real bottom line. You can talk skill players until the cows comes home but at the end of the day the game is won or lost by the big uglies. It's also a real stretch to imagine Reed, Turner or Bell ever blocking anybody which puts even more pressure on the Oline dominating.

The upside is that we've been recruiting road-graders the last two years so we should start getting a push from them soon.

 
This is very similar to what we currently run with one major difference. The trap play! I feel like that's biggest thing our current offense doesn't do. Even if we run outside, the little misdirection of the rb/fb going up the gut means the LBs are 1 step slower getting to the edge.

I would like Beck to incorporate more misdirection into his offense. That's really my only complaint...I like the direction we are headed.

 
I think this might be a pretty good package, but I don't think you could design an entire college offense around it. I would think you would need to have some more variation, or else it would be too predictable.

 
As the OP who started this conversation I wanted to say that after reading all of your comments, many of you have swayed me. I am in agreement with most of you now that while this "ski-gun offense" has a lot of potential in attacking a defense, I agree that you probably cannot focus a whole offensive philosophy around it. Could Nebraska incorporate many of these "ski-gun" ideas into our current offense? Yes, absolutely, but I don't think we should design our whole offense off of it. So to the people like SnowBigRed & dutch91701, and the others that I am forgetting to mention...Congratulations...you changed my mind!

With that being said, let's continue the discussion a bit further. What elements to our offense do you want to see added going into next season?

SkerChicago has said he wants to see more trap plays and misdirections. I think we did run a small amount of trap plays this year with Tyler Legate, but I agree more trap plays, and counter misdirections would be nice to see next year. This video is for you SkerChicago:



So to continue the discussion:

1) What elements to our offense do you want to see added/ or fixed going into next season?

2) Are there any schemes out there that other teams are using that you wish Nebraska was?

....share some video examples if you have them.

This is an honest & fun discussion. I will stand aside for a while and see what you other Husker fans have to add. Thanks everyone!

 
Man I miss that soooo much!

I really think utilizing misdirection with trap style plays takes Beck's offense over the top. I like the direction of both our option offense (execution needs to be better) and our play action game.

More misdirection and counters outside of what we do in the zone read will completely eff with defenses.

 
In my opinion, Nebraska's biggest downfall will be to continue running offenses like this. The elite players in the country want to play for more pro style offense. Balanced attacks, with the ability to line up and run the ball, as well as throw the ball from under center and shotgun. If Nebraska wants to recruit top talent and contend with the big boys we will atleast have to develop that part of our game. Not saying that we can't mix in some pistol formation and option football but Beck would gain from bringing his knowledge from his time as a passing game coordinator. Which leads to my most important point and that involves recruiting Quarterbacks. When is Nebraska going to figure out that the best teams in the country have QB's that can pass first and run second. You don't go the other way. Looking at some of the guys we seem to go after, it looks like they are run first throw second guys. You don't recruit like that. You go after guys that throw great and if they can run too, that's a bonus.

 
True to the Red.......Always said:
In my opinion, Nebraska's biggest downfall will be to continue running offenses like this. The elite players in the country want to play for more pro style offense. Balanced attacks, with the ability to line up and run the ball, as well as throw the ball from under center and shotgun. If Nebraska wants to recruit top talent and contend with the big boys we will atleast have to develop that part of our game. Not saying that we can't mix in some pistol formation and option football but Beck would gain from bringing his knowledge from his time as a passing game coordinator. Which leads to my most important point and that involves recruiting Quarterbacks. When is Nebraska going to figure out that the best teams in the country have QB's that can pass first and run second. You don't go the other way. Looking at some of the guys we seem to go after, it looks like they are run first throw second guys. You don't recruit like that. You go after guys that throw great and if they can run too, that's a bonus.
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See I thought this was the reason for the fall off in recruiting. More school's were going pro style and we were still running the option.

 
SkerChicago said:
Man I miss that soooo much!

I really think utilizing misdirection with trap style plays takes Beck's offense over the top. I like the direction of both our option offense (execution needs to be better) and our play action game.

More misdirection and counters outside of what we do in the zone read will completely eff with defenses.
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A few more counter plays would have been nice to see, get the defenses guessing where they should be going. And definitely get the FB trap going. I remember actually seeing it once early in the season and we probably ran it a couple more times, but never agains stiffer competition. With a guy like Legate it could have been deadly with the amount of option that we sprinkled in. That is one guy who I think was underutilized in his career, excellent blocker but was a pretty versatile FB catching and running too.

 
That offense is really fun to watch. Who is the QB in that system (#3)? He runs that system really well. He is a fine runner too. He has a slow wind-up delivery throwing the ball, but is accurate, has touch, and leads the receiver well. I wish NU had a QB who could pass that well.

I very much appreciate the OP in putting this stuff forward. NU could adopt some of this well with the people we have available (Turner, Abdullah, Green, Rex). Our QB might struggle with this though. Still... fun offense to watch.

 
The Duke said:
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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Agree. This is actually a lot closer to "what we do" than is some of the stuff that we do...if that makes any sense, lol. It is closer to our "standard" offense than when we have our RB take snaps under center and pitch the ball to our QB.

 
The Duke said:
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 would be for some of these packages for this reason alone. Offenses with heavy fire power have their best players on the field most of the game...they get enough player rotation to keep high energy and wear the defenses down. Recruits are attracted to get on field time and play in offenses that can break off exciting plays at anytime. We are not Oregon on offense but we certainly have some talent in the backfield and some speed at WR in Turner and Bell to make things exciting. Defenses have figured TMart out...if we open it up a bit more then you'll start to see some big runs by TMart again. Rex can be a decoy on a lot of these plays and let Green, Abdullah, and Turner do some burning too.

 
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JJHusker1 said:
This "ski-gun offense" and with the diamond formation both seem pretty similar to Osborne's old double wing package. Look at 3:23.

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this right here

give us that line again and you can run whatever kind of offense you want, ain't nobody stopping it

 
robsker said:
That offense is really fun to watch. Who is the QB in that system (#3)? He runs that system really well. He is a fine runner too. He has a slow wind-up delivery throwing the ball, but is accurate, has touch, and leads the receiver well. I wish NU had a QB who could pass that well.

I very much appreciate the OP in putting this stuff forward. NU could adopt some of this well with the people we have available (Turner, Abdullah, Green, Rex). Our QB might struggle with this though. Still... fun offense to watch.
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Thanks for the compliment robsker! I do think this is a fun offense to watch, just as Tom Osborne's offense was fun to watch. I think what many have said on here is true, at the end of the day no matter what we decide to run next year and into the future, it will all depend on how well our QB plays and how strong our offensive line is. But I really do hope we see some wrinkles next year like this Ski-Gun offense or formations to get our speed guys on the field a little bit more than what we saw this past season.

 
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