Breaking down 260 yards

knapplc

knapplc

International Man of Mystery
Lots of talk about the defense this week. Biggest area of concern on the team? I think that's fair to say after that offensive onslaught against what should have been, at the very least, a well-coached (if not overly experienced) defense.

Much has been made of Nebraska only giving up 260 yards to the Golden Eagles. While that number is respectably low (Charlie McBride's benchmark was 250 yards made for a good performance), what should give us some pause is the manner in which they got those 260 yards.

Southern Miss ran 66 plays - 17 of which went for 8 or more yards, or 25% of their total plays. All but four of those big plays came on the ground, including rushes for ten or more yards seven times.

The secondary had a pretty good game, limiting Southern Miss' three QBs to a combined 7/19 (37%) for only 75 yards and one TD. But it was on the ground where we got gashed, most notably by Anthony Alford, Southern's all-everything freshman QB, who had several of Southern Miss' 8+ yard runs.

This is why so many of us are left wondering how 260 yards allowed by the defense can look ugly. While we had a ton of tackles for loss and three sacks (a fantastic improvement over last year), this game - the first game - had some defensive lapses.

 
Aye. But what I've taken from it is that they had to gameplan for an offense they had little/no film on (lot of possibilities on what style of offense they would run), had to gameplan for 3 potential quarterbacks with different styles & different strengths, and they still only gave up 13 points, only 3 in a second half after adjustments, and only 260 yards total. For a first effort, I'm not going to complain. While I won't give it an A effort, I will give it a strong B-, with a load of potential for improvement. That's why I think much of the what appears to me to be overwrought handwringing over the performance isn't justified. Even Bo said he thought they probably through too much at the players for what USM ended up using, but I also think they had to provide for many pieces that didn't end up happening as well. The rest of the season isn't going to present any situation that will be that tough to gameplan for again. Good first effort, and I think we'll see improvement as the season goes on.

 
Missed tackles seemed to be the majority of the problems on the rushing attack. There were so many times during the game where it looked like we had the RB or QB stopped for 3 yards at most, only for Whaley or Meredith or some other defensive player to miss the tackle leading to an 8+ yard play. That was the most worrisome thing I noticed.

A couple of times we read the play wrong. Then there were also the plays where the RB or Alford would make a great play. There's a difference between missing a tackle and making guys miss. Alford made our guys miss a few times, and I don't think there's much we can do to avoid that. Certainly we can lessen the frequency of it happening, but preventing it altogether is simply not going to happen. Even Alabama allowed Denard to run.

 
I hope/pray that Santos and Anderson will get some meaningful snaps this Saturday against UCLA. No knock on Fisher or Whaley because they have their strengths but Santos and Anderson have alot more athletic ability and would really help against a mobile QB. They will make their mistakes, but take your lumps and let the youngsters see some action.

 
aspeedlin4589 said:
I hope/pray that Santos and Anderson will get some meaningful snaps this Saturday against UCLA. No knock on Fisher or Whaley because they have their strengths but Santos and Anderson have alot more athletic ability and would really help against a mobile QB. They will make their mistakes, but take your lumps and let the youngsters see some action.
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I'm betting they get brought in on the DeJon Gomes Plan. Gomes got a bit of PT against the Sun Belt foes in OOC play, then had major field time against Missouri, recorded a crucial INT, and started either the next game or the following game.

These guys should see some time against Ark State and Idaho State for certain, then vie for starting time as the season progresses and they understand the defense.

 
knapplc said:
aspeedlin4589 said:
I hope/pray that Santos and Anderson will get some meaningful snaps this Saturday against UCLA. No knock on Fisher or Whaley because they have their strengths but Santos and Anderson have alot more athletic ability and would really help against a mobile QB. They will make their mistakes, but take your lumps and let the youngsters see some action.
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I'm betting they get brought in on the DeJon Gomes Plan. Gomes got a bit of PT against the Sun Belt foes in OOC play, then had major field time against Missouri, recorded a crucial INT, and started either the next game or the following game.

These guys should see some time against Ark State and Idaho State for certain, then vie for starting time as the season progresses and they understand the defense.
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Same could be said for Seisay.

 
Along with the missed tackles there was a good deal of over pursuit by our defense. It bit us quite a bit on screen plays and even on a few running plays and QB scrambles. I will give credit to USM because is seemed like they really used our speed against us, and at the right times, when they would throw those screens.

 
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Glass half full: We didn't play that well and only gave up 260 yards! We can fix a few things and be pretty good!

Glass half empty: We only gave up 260 yards but we didn't play that well. Those thing could hurt more later and we could be pretty bad.

 
Mavric said:
Glass half full: We didn't play that well and only gave up 260 yards! We can fix a few things and be pretty good!

Glass half empty: We only gave up 260 yards but we didn't play that well. Those thing could hurt more later and we could be pretty bad.
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Exactly. And it's impossible to tell what we have yet - further, as we've discussed about Santos, Anderson and Seisay, the defense could look really different in a month. Different bodies in there, different capabilities.

 
My prediction....

The offense will look good but not quite as good as the season goes on as it did this week. They can still be pretty dang good with out racking up over 600 yards of offense.

The defense will look better than we saw on Saturday as the season goes on. They will make adjustments and improve.

 
I think you summarized it very well knapp. The end result and stats were very good but the manner in which we gave up those mere 260 yards was concerning. We seemed to get manhandled on the DL and also seemed slow. I hate to pick on any one player especially when nobody on the DL stuck out as having a good game but it always seems to be Meredith that I'm watching when I am thinking how slow we are in pursuit. If the USM coach had decided to go with Alford for more of the game, I think we'd have cause to be in meltdown mode over our rush D. I just hope Pelini's apparent lack of concern with our subpar DL play is for some other reason than he really felt it was acceptable.

 
BigRedBuster said:
My prediction....

The offense will look good but not quite as good as the season goes on as it did this week. They can still be pretty dang good with out racking up over 600 yards of offense.

The defense will look better than we saw on Saturday as the season goes on. They will make adjustments and improve.
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Sounds like a classic Bo Pelini team...

 
If the offense had struggled, I'd be a lot more worried than I am right now. Beck is untested and unproven except for a rather dismal performance last year.

Bo will have the defense looking much better within a couple of weeks. It's what he does best.

IOW, the apparent weakness of our football team is in the same area where we have the greatest coaching expertise to turn them around.

GBR!

 
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