How do we fix this Nebraska team?

[C N Red]

A lot of us have known that our D-Line is slow and can't get pressure. Today's Hail Mary culminated all our fears and validated what all of us already knew. You play that style and you will get burned. This came at one of the worst times possible and may have cost us a Capital One Bowl victory. Our team never recovered.

 

The DL scheme must change next year or expect more of the same. If its a personnel issue then go out and get speed guys off the edge. Cam should move to DT IMO, too slow for DE.

Yes, yes, yes! We have to be able to get preesure from our front four esp on passing downs. I miss seeing the DEs that rush up the field hard and try to beat the tackle on the outside. You see other teams do it well. I think you're dead on with scheme or personell need to change.

[C N Red]

dp

[It'sNotAFakeID]

They tried to knock the ball down. They couldn't jump high enough. We probably should have put Stonehands Kinney in there. he's good at knocking the ball to the ground. Same reason Wisky should have had Nick Toon in against MSU at the end of the game instead of a short receiver.

 

Okay the d line tried to get to Shaw then.

 

Heh??

 

Well you say the secondary tried to knock down the ball to prevent the play and use that as an "excuse". I'm using the same reasoning for the defensive line. They tried to get to Shaw.

Ah, I see. Well, I'll take the play of the secondary today over the D-line play. Afterall, they did have to hang with their coverage for well over 5 seconds and did pretty well most of the day.

 

You know really, the defense didn't do all that bad. We had 4 sacks and the secondary covered well. Don't recall many missed tackles, either. Against South Carolina, they played pretty well, especially for being on the field more than necessary.

[Axl_sued_me]

Pay Bill Callahan 4 million a year to do coach the O-line and most importantly.............................RECRUIT.

[beanman]

But those were all coverage sacks. The LBs and secondary played fine with exception of a couple plays. The Dline was consistently crap.

[Axl_sued_me]

D-line looks SLOW

 

 

Everybody is slow.

 

Compton, Thorell, Andrew Green.

[chamrocck]

D-line looks is SLOW

Fixed it for ya

[Treand3]

A lot of us have known that our D-Line is slow and can't get pressure. Today's Hail Mary culminated all our fears and validated what all of us already knew. You play that style and you will get burned. This came at one of the worst times possible and may have cost us a Capital One Bowl victory. Our team never recovered.

 

The DL scheme must change next year or expect more of the same. If its a personnel issue then go out and get speed guys off the edge. Cam should move to DT IMO, too slow for DE.

 

I even would be alright with getting DEs, if we can't get the ones that are the ready to play out of HS types that we see in the SEC, then we should go after those that have good to great athleticism and undersized, but can put on weight to be big enough handle B1G offenses, JMO. I too am tired to watching Cam appear as if he has cement is his shoes. I know they were instructed to play contain on Shaw, but as soon as I saw them pursue him I became disgusted by the athleticism.

[AFhusker]

I see a pattern that I don't like. I first saw it in the A&M game where we were penalized like 15 times to their 2. I saw it against Washington, and again (lesser) against Michigan.

 

When things start to go wrong, the 'spirit' or 'attitude' that starts to take over is one of, "We're getting screwed...AGAIN, what next!!!!" , so it happens, something else, and it magnifies and grows like a cancer and it's contagious. I can feel it from my living room, and it has to affect the team. Instead of a General who exudes confidence and ability to overcome adversity, ours screams WTF! Instead of feeling like, "OK, we can do this, settle down, play sound football, we can do this, " I feel like "It's over. we're screwed, F***ed again...." and I ask myself where is that feeling coming from? Then I see Bo on the sidelines, and realize its coming from him.

[Big Red 40]

Seems like the teams of the last couple of years start making mistakes and cant stop. Dropped passes, fumbles ,stupid penalties, tons of missed tackles and blown pass coverages. Coaches? Partly yes. Players Absolutely. If the players cant execute simple things we cant beat quality teams. Biggest disappointments this year for me were this game and the northwestern game where i thought we were the better team and still lost. I remember a couple games like that last year also.

[Count 'Bility]

Yeah we were outmatched in nearly every aspect of the game today. Especially up front, we were dominated on both sides of the ball.

 

Didnt watch any of the game did you? You must be one of them that see the score on sportscenter and automatically assume a team was dominated. Nebraska gave this game away on a few plays. Half time at worst shoulda been a 20-7 lead for us. dominated up front? we were manhandling their lines AND getting to the quarterback thanks to our coverage. It's just the darn mental errors time and time again.

[Norhusker]

I will say that we must get better play from our front four on defense. We have not had a consistent pass rusher at defensive end in some time.

 

Interesting that Iowa has a better front four than us. We typically recruit better athletes, but they are better at these positions. I think coaching and schemes are a big factor here..... It will be inteersting to see how our new DL coach does with these same guys.

[3rd and long]

I don't see how we can judge our players' apparent "lack of motivation or emotion in the game" Unless you are there and physically hear them say, "Man, I really don't care about that game," you have no grounds to judge motivation or emotion.

 

What would you call it? It's a semantic argument more than anything. It appears the team lacks something, whether you call it motivation, chemistry, "swagger," whatever. Choose a different word and go with that, if it's a more apt description for you.

 

I just don't think it's fair to accredit our players as having no emotion to win a ball game. Those guys give their all out there and for us to sit in our armchairs and declare that they have no desire or passion to win the game is ridiculous.

 

We had eleven penalties, most of them procedural. One of our star players got ejected for fighting in a game we needed him to play. We missed blocks, missed tackles, made mental errors galore, and we got blown out in a game where we should have, at the very least, been competitive, if not won.

 

I don't know what you want to describe that as, or what description will make you feel better, but you cannot state with any conviction that you think this team played this game with heart, motivation, whatever. South Carolina gave us many, many chances to win this game. Instead, we gave it away.

 

You call that motivated? I don't. So what would you call it?

 

And you can say with 100% certainty that we didn't want to win this game. You have some inside information as to the psyche and the drive of the players. You apply a product on the field and claim that we didn't want to win this game. Don't think for one damn second that those kids didn't want to win this game. Don't think for one damn second that they weren't committed 100% to this game. Don't think for one damn second that just because they committed 11 penalties that it was due to their lack of heart.

 

Without fundamentals and without the discipline you have no chance to see visible shows of emotion because there is absolutely no reason for them to be shown. When we started coming back against Ohio State you saw that emotion and heart because the fundamentals and discipline were there. When we thrashed Michigan State you saw that emotion and heart because the fundamentals and the discipline were there.

 

It's not entirely fair to say these guys have no emotions because they committed penalties and this and that. The heart is there, the emotion is there. Things just went wrong fundamentally today and they have in all of our losses.

 

Sorry, but those two wins were not the result of fundamentals and discipline. Fundamentals, and to a lesser extent, discipline, do not come and go on a game to game basis. If you are a fundamentaly sound football team, you are so every game. You may have a occasional breakdown, but fundamentals are something that are instilled (hopefully at a younger age) in practice, and if you have solid fundamentals, they don't come and go. As long as you continue to practice them, fundamentals stay with you. Watch teams that are solid in those two areas, and the vast majority of the time, they will be so every game. Watch LSU's defenders break down to make tackles and you'll see fundamentals, and you'll see it time after time.

 

I would never say they didn't want to win the game, but there have been numerous times this year where the heart and passion have been lacking on this team.

[Goal-line]

In football, like all other sports, there are simple fundamentals that must be executed to win games. These simple fundamentals are blocking and tackling. I do not care how many 5 star QB's, RB's, WR's you have, if you can't block and you can't tackle, you simply cannot win. What does this mean? It means we need better players in the O line and the D line. Until that happens, don't blame any of the other players. Recruiting is a coaching responsibility. When you do not have quality position coaches, you will not have quality recruiting. Hiring friends as your assistants (or because they are from your home town) is just bad ploy, ask Bill Callahan. Actually, Callahan's teams could score points, but the defense could not stop anyone because of the D coordinator. Actually, just moving the same inept coaches to different coaching positions on your staff does nothing for your cause. Get rid of the dead wood and hire quality coaches, no matter what the costs. Are any of you so naive as to think the new D coordinator will up the level of this defense? Very bad choice. How about taking your wide receiver coach and making him your running back coach when he has never coached that position before! Bad Choice. It has been light years since we have had quality offensive line coaching, how about addressing that void? All of this is accountable to the head coach. Either make the moves that produce success or move on.

 

Simple fact is that until we recruit better linemen on both sides of the ball, we will continue to get our rears kicked in bowl games or against other quality teams during the regular season.

[krc1995]

I may have to start a topic on this and make its own thread. THE BIGGEST THING NEEDED TO BE FIXED IS LACK OF SPEED AND PRESSURE OFF THE EDGE BECAUSE WE CANNOT GET TO THE QB. With that amount of time I could complete passes against our defense. The Hail Mary play is exactly why this is vital...don't give the QB all day to throw it. I am over with the slow-prodding, huff-puffing, never going to get there D-Line we have...T Moore was the only one I saw today actually play with energy. Our DL is bad and it then exposes the weak links in our secondary...this has been going on ALL YEAR. Pelini needs to look at South Carolina's DL and get a clue.

 

Uh, we sacked the QB 4 times today and Connor Shaw ran for about 52 yards. He's a mobile QB and we bottled him up better than we had any mobile QB this year or in recent history.

again- all coverage sacks.