brophog

Nebraska is why people have had to resort to those tactics. Rival teams stay up at night dreaming of ways to keep Husker fans out.

They haven't installed the vanilla package yet.

The longer this week goes on, the more this line just feels wrong. A combination of too little information (1 week) and potentially misleading information (the mismatch between Oregon's performance and their results).

I like honesty, myself. Optimism isn't really all that healthy, life doesn't tend to fit the optimistic view point, and we can end up just disappointed and sad as a result. If you're honest with your expectations, though, you find the effects you were looking for in the optimistic approach!

Or none.

They're the Bizarro 85 Bears.

My opinion shifted quite a bit after being able to see the game. Generally speaking, putting up those kinds of lopsided numbers, even against a poor team, is pretty meaningful. After seeing the game, though, I was rather shocked. Lots of self imposed mistakes, a pretty darn poor game by the offensive line, and very questionable decision making by the QB. But, of course, lots of big plays. Reminded me a lot of a couple of Nebraska offenses in recent years. Big plays are important, and every team needs to find ways of scoring easily, but they can mask mistakes, too, and we know that all too well. I still think Oregon's offense can give Nebraska fits both because of Freeman's ability to turn 5 into 50 and the sheer number of looks they can give a defense that is not yet assignment sound. But if I were an Oregon fan, I'd be deeply concerned on how little my offensive line controlled an FCS team that should have been outmatched there. Thanks for stopping by.

I don't know if I've ever seen a less impressive 77 point, 9 rushing TD game. The stats in this case definitely do not help paint a picture of what happened.

Why? This is a progam that is near infamous now for firing 9 win coaches and the scenario being painted is that a guy that wouldnt have won 9 games in any of his first 3 seasons is still brought back. What's changed, or has it changed?

I can't sit in my dry house and blame anyone for anything when it comes to a hurricane this powerful.

I can see Nebraska holding Oregon well below expectations. I would not describe Oregon's offense as exactly sharp in their debut, and frankly, their offensive line was very underwhelming given the competition. Meanwhile, I think Nebraska's defensive line performed better, given their role, than they are given credit for. But Nebraska getting anything less than 3 TDs....well, Oregon spots you that many just for showing up.

Given all the statements made about this program, both from the inside and outside, since 2001.....there is a strange calm this week about being a program that is a 2 TD underdog to an unranked team.

Sometimes that was the case. It's not always. You get out angled at times. But I agree, allowing yourself to get blocked and not getting off the block has been an issue for several years. There was a play right before half where Nebraska was in a 2 man stack and an Arky St player beat the block and made a great play. There is a lot of opportunity for that on that play, with that coverage. Arky St tended to split their receivers laterally out a bit more, and we played that CB off the line more, so that sort of opportunity didn't often present itself the other way around.

To answer your question directly, yes, press coverage can present a number of problems for these types of plays. It's not a cure all, and it presents its own problems for the defense. That's putting the cart before the horse, though (as is any of this "vanilla" talk). The big problem for Nebraska was not what they ran, but that they ran it so poorly. The first quarter is a great example with these WR screen passes. The major problem on those plays is simply being outnumbered. Whether it was in 2 receiver or 3 receivers to a side, on multiple occasions Nebraska had 1 less defender than they had receiver. This happens for a lot of reasons, but communication is the big one. This isn't really 3-4 vs 4-3 mularky, just coverage principles. Arky St was often in 10 personnel (1 RB, 0 TE, 4 receivers). Those personnel packages present problems for a defense because as a defense you always want to have 1 more player than they have potential blockers (whether we're talking the perimeter on a WR screen or in the box against the run). 10 personnel though means the defense is often in the situation Nebraska was in whereby there are only 5 defenders left in the box. The way a defense will try to account for this is to have a 6th player, often an OLB, flex or hedge between guarding a slot receiver and being present in the box. That position was played poorly all night, as was the Safety help often far too late. Because of this, you have 2 receivers against 1 CB. All Arky St was doing was throwing to that outside receiver, the inside receiver blocked that CB, and they had a relatively easy gain. Any team that has the most meager of WR screen packages in their playbook would be able to replicate what Arky St did.

I'm pretty sure we fired the guy responsible for those results. I'm not sure if some of you are really making the argument you think you're making.

The coverage decisions made that caused so many issues on those screens don't change with front. Coverages are coverages and fronts are fronts. Put 3 down in an odd front with 2 bubbles or 4 down in an even with a single middle....don't make any difference on those screens. The coverage math, which is the real issue, is the same either way. The offense is trying to get 5 defenders in the box while the defense wants 6 to account for the back. Call the defense whatever you want, you still have to deal with the same problem.

This is a great question, and the answer is counterintuitive. On the surface, "keep me guessing" sounds like the right answer. Yet, so many teams (in so many sports) do the opposite to incredible success. Human psychology is powerful. If a defender doesn't know what's coming, he's more reliant on scouting and reading his keys to determine the play and then execute. But, when you give a person what appears to be a pattern, like calling a play multiple times, they begin reacting to that pattern. Humans simply love to look for patterns, even if they are not there. Their reactions can become very predictable. Case in point, those seemingly annoying screens Arky St ran last night. They're not hard to stop, it's just a numbers game. Even Nebraska eventually stopped them. They're effectiveness is in forcing you to stop them and then using complementary plays to exploit your tendency to put numbers in places you don't want them, like near the boundary where you can become isolated. I say this Arky St offense wasn't very good because they simply didn't have much to flow off of those screens. The best offenses, regardless of what form they take, do. Running, passing, none of that really matters one way or another if plays don't cause defenders to think. Thinking makes you slow. Reading your keys, staying disciplined, and flowing to the football makes defenders fast. The defenders that seem to play that little bit faster aren't that way because they knew what was coming, but rather because they read the play and used their momentum towards making a tackle rather than think they knew the play and had it used against them.

It's a number that is almost completely irrelevant and gets in the way of proper analysis. "Balance" is just a really poorly used concept in this sport. The ability to give various looks and to create complementary plays is what is important. If the rules of football weren't written around the concept of one forward pass, we wouldn't even write the damn number down. The only number in the box score more irrelevant is time of possession.

I don't think last year is a good comparison. That was a quite poor Oregon team last year. They were likely to bounce back this year, at least to some degree. While we don't know by how much, early expectations were much higher. 77 points and 9 rushing TDs is formidable, even against low tier opposition. Thats what is scary. For all the hassle Arky St gave us, they really played very poorly on offense. Their execution was, at best, mediocre and their play structure abysmal. Passionate Arky St fans should be livid at losing this game because, offensively, they didn't package plays together to take advantage of that screen game. That's what Oregon does well. All of those times we have 5 in the box, where Arky St couldn't take advantage of us, Oregon will. They put so much pressure on that OLB that gets flexed and we were appalling last night at that position. You can find good and bad at times in the coverage and defensive line, but that's one spot that was consistently very poor. Frankly, unless this is somehow a really low possession game or they go apesh#t with turnovers , I feel good holding them under 40.

Yes, against the SUN BELT. Look at their record the past few years, especially against P5 teams, and especially in the early part of the schedule. That's not the profile of some overachieving small program, that's the profile of a team that gets into bowls because the bar is very low and they play in a low tier conference. This was a team that lined up poorly, had to take unnecessary timeouts, unnecessary penalties, bad snaps, bad tackling, turned the ball over, gave up points on special teams, gave up points on offense. I dont care what their shirt says, this was not a good performance they put up today.

If he makes it a habit, maybe, I dont know. I don't give a rat's ass what a coach does behind a microphone, to be perfectly honest. Sometimes after a sh**ty performance, particularly one that was so bad from an assignment standpoint, you'd rather just go fix the problems than waste your time with a reporter.

We kept in a lot of blockers and ran very simple progressions all night. We weren't going to allow them to be much of a test for us.

If you want results, pay attention to the performance and ignore the W/L column.

We keep seeing the same things and year after year we come up with this same excuses. If Mike Riley were any more consistent, someone would tell him to see his doctor. And dont get me started on Langsdorf. This site may run out of bandwidth.

I've said it before, and it bears saying again: Too much is made of what you call your defense. Fronts Alignments Coverages That's what it's about. Generics like 3-4, 4-3, etc are outdated static terminologies that dont really apply to modern football.