Offense

[Blackshirt39]

Next weeks game plan needs to be tailored to Tommy running and Ozigbo/Stevenson/Jano. You burned the shirt, use the player. Our passing game is just non-existent right now. Start rebuilding this offense with a game plan we can run next week. They seem to have really lost their confidence on offense.

[It'sNotAFakeID]

With this staff, in their system, we are a 2-10 or 4-8 team this year. I'll throw in the injuries and new system excuse, but I don't expect us to compete for anything meaningful under this staff. Maybe when he gets "his guys", we knock off a ranked team, but then lose some game to Some out of conference foe or a team that is as poor as we are now in the B1G. Finish a respectable 7-5 or 8-4 (above his OSU seasons as we have more talent and facilities) and some folks are satisfied as we suffer no blow out losses....

 

He went 10-4, 9-4, and 9-4 in a 3 year stretch. Those aren't above his OSU seasons

[Whs from cb]

We had people on husker board calling out the next play, and they were correct. Take it from there.

[Kernal]

 

It is what it is at this point. You are what you practice, and that mostly comes in the spring and fall camps. To do any major shifting in offensive identity would pretty much result in even worse struggles. I've seen it happen in the NFL with talented professionals.

Yea. There isn't a great deal of practice time during the week to make major changes. But are there some small things we can do? I don't think I have ever seen a QB completing 35% of his passes. And I don't think this is all on TA. MR emphasized the need to take shots downfield before the season started.

 

 

TA was passing well in the first four games. I'm not sure the last two games being "conference games" in particular has anything to do with his play. We've had some WR drops, and the QB has missed on some throws.

 

I think the losses and all the outside noise are really wearing on everybody. It's easy to get impatient, then execution suffers.

[brophog]

We had people on husker board calling out the next play, and they were correct. Take it from there.

Give me enough time to study a team and I can call out any team's plays with a high level of accuracy. It's not hard once you track their tendencies.

 

Many fans can call out at least some of their teams plays without even actively tracking anything just out of familiarity.

[Bball1091]

I think coach Riley is a nice guy but him saying that he will play to the strengths of the individual offensive players was a bunch of BS...that guy is forcing his scheme on a team that simply can't do it effectively.

[huskerfan92]

My main concern, as it has been all season is the running back situation. First, Ozigbo gets 70 yards last week on 7 carries. MEH let's hold him to three touches this game. Newby is all of a sudden our starting back again? What is up with this staffs love affair for him? Then you burn Stevenson's redshirt to return kicks? I figured if they burned his redshirt they were ready to use him more in the gameplan, but you only use him on returns? So now you burn his redshirt which leaves us with Ozigbo, Stevenson, and Wilbon as our sophomore backs next year and no freshmen (Alphonso Thomas is going to commit to SMU any day now). The running back situation is officially a mess.

 

But here's my absolute favorite part. Game on the line. You need 10 yards to seal the game. Who you going to count on? Hmmmm let's go with our short yardage bruiser who hasn't seen the field in 2-3 weeks Imani Cross! What? Are they serious? Cross has one ability and that is straight ahead running, something this team has struggled with all season if you take away Janovich bulldozing the entire Wisconsin squad. So obviously when Wisconsin sees Cross they know what's coming, it's a run up the middle and even if he goes outside he doesn't have the speed to do anything out there.

 

People say we've had bad luck, and it only seems that way because our coaches are making bone headed decisions. I don't know if it's Langsdorf, Davis, or Riley who says which running back to use but whoever it is needs to have those duties stripped away. The luck isn't going to change anytime soon guys unless something drastic happens, and if Banker doesn't call his "Here just have it." defense at the end of games.

[Mavric]

This is an interesting problem. Mavric's going to smile, but I think we have to call on the running game a little more. Even if we aren't getting a lot of yards per pop, it can be steadying at times when the passing game is really off.

 

Basically, it seems they have to find some way of working around Tommy's inconsistency with some of his throws.

 

That's not to say you stop throwing. Tommy has shown that despite anything, he can come back and sling it with confidence. However, maybe save some of that for a lot later in the game. Between the designed QB runs, sweeps, inside runs, FB runs, and jet sweeps, that's a lot of foundation to build on if we can just find a way to have it all come together.

 

I think Tommy was 1/6 in the first quarter, 1/11 in the third, or something like that. Something similar vs BYU, and the first half vs Miami wasn't pretty. Nor was the entire Illinois game. This can't keep happening in tone-setting quarters, so explore the alternatives.

 

The good news is we do see different things being tried. Well, keep trying them. A run game that can key off itself via the different inside/outside/QB/WR/RB/FB looks, etc, rather than the passing game ... maybe that's the solution. Wouldn't say this if the passing game were simply off, but the consistency issues seem mechanical. That's not going to simply transform.

 

[ndobney]

TA is 21-59 (35.6%) in conference play. We seem to have sporadic success running the ball. Jano is awesome. The receivers seem more than capable. We do not rotate on the OL. What do you recommend? My opinion is that we have to design the offense around TA's running ability ans scrap the WCO. If we have a mediocre offense we win the last two games easily. If the offense does not improve, we may not win another game this year.

Over 33% check him for steriods!!