Weight room

[Eric the Red]

Is Brian Bailey off of the staff. He was a casuality of Pederson and was demoted in order to bring in Dave Kennedy?

 

LINCOLN - There's no "closed" sign on the Nebraska weight room despite the Huskers' football season ending early for the first time since 1968.

 

Dave Kennedy, NU's strength and conditioning coach, said Wednesday that his staff won't waste the three weeks before the Huskers are turned loose at the semester break. Without practice for a bowl, Nebraska players will face an aggressive lifting program, with no conditioning work.

 

"If we were practicing for a bowl, obviously we would maintain the in-season lifting routine," Kennedy said. "But right now, we can make some gains with strength.

 

"The way this ended up is the fact of the matter, so you adjust and change the program to what you think is best at this particular point."

 

Coach Bill Callahan said after the 26-20 loss to Colorado last Friday that he would turn to Kennedy to improve the Huskers' strength and speed in the offseason. The strength part started immediately this week when players were required to be in the weight room on two days.

 

The Huskers will step up scheduled workouts next week and then wrap up the following week during final exams. After finals, players are free until the winter conditioning program begins Jan. 10.

 

"First of all, we've got to be smart and recover from the season," Kennedy said. "We're not going to pound on them or do anything like that. But we also can't give them six weeks or eight weeks off, and then start the winter at a great disadvantage."

 

Kennedy said Nebraska players have done a "tremendous job" carrying out what the strength and conditioning staff has asked. Kennedy has been with the Husker program since Callahan hired him away from Pittsburgh on Jan. 19.

 

Asked if he thought his impact showed this season, Kennedy said he felt very comfortable with the progress that was made.

 

"Certain things that were obvious showed up," he said. "Cory Ross did a tremendous job being better at finishing long runs. He really learned how to run strong. He felt it and understands it now. That's Jerry Rice-type stuff. Jerry Rice wasn't a 4.3 guy, but nobody ever got him."

 

Last season, Ross' longest run was 23 yards. This season, the junior I-back had 10 runs and six receptions of 20 yards or longer. That included three runs of 20-plus yards against Oklahoma, and dashes of 86 yards against Missouri, 52 against Southern Mississippi and 36 and 33 yards against Iowa State.

 

What happens when Nebraska returns Jan. 10?

 

"Just pure player-development time - work on speed, power, burst," Kennedy said. "And we'll work pretty hard."