3RD Down

[GBR62]

The offensive's inability to pick-up 3 third down's have resulted in 3 of the four loses. The defense played well enough.

[zoogs]

 

 

Food for thought on the critical failure that was the 3rd quarter.

[admo]

Wasn't the passing game around 5-20, or whatever is nearly thought of as non-productive? And do we know if they saw a formation that calls for an audible to run in those situations? I know there were some swing passes in the third where Tommy was actually walking backwards while throwing forward. I'd be interested to know what kind of interesting and thought provoking tweets about that would be?

 

Oh well what can you do.

[Hunter94]

Wasn't the passing game around 5-20, or whatever is nearly thought of as non-productive? And do we know if they saw a formation that calls for an audible to run in those situations? I know there were some swing passes in the third where Tommy was actually walking backwards while throwing forward. I'd be interested to know what kind of interesting and thought provoking tweets about that would be?

 

Oh well what can you do.

i don't think Langs lets Tommie call audibles.......

[zoogs]

Yeah, the passing game was unproductive. Still, I guess my view on TA and his throwing is you never know when he'll start hitting a few completions, so in a passing down, keep giving him the opportunity.

 

It's interesting, I see no clear "do this" for the offense to fix the woes they've shown thus far in Big Ten play. I wonder what kind of tweaks they'll try for next week to fix what has to be acknowledged has been poor.

[stargazer]

With Tommy at QB, if you have a lead, best not have him throwing the ball on your side of the 50.

[admo]

 

Wasn't the passing game around 5-20, or whatever is nearly thought of as non-productive? And do we know if they saw a formation that calls for an audible to run in those situations? I know there were some swing passes in the third where Tommy was actually walking backwards while throwing forward. I'd be interested to know what kind of interesting and thought provoking tweets about that would be?

 

Oh well what can you do.

i don't think Langs lets Tommie call audibles.......

 

Thanks, I didn't think so myself but I threw it out there just in case someone actually knew.

[zoogs]

With Tommy at QB, if you have a lead, best not have him throwing the ball on your side of the 50.

Perhaps that's indeed how the coaches feel, and perhaps it's the right call.

 

But man. Hard to put teams away before the closing minutes, taking that route.

[admo]

Yeah, the passing game was unproductive. Still, I guess my view on TA and his throwing is you never know when he'll start hitting a few completions, so in a passing down, keep giving him the opportunity.

 

It's interesting, I see no clear "do this" for the offense to fix the woes they've shown thus far in Big Ten play. I wonder what kind of tweaks they'll try for next week to fix what has to be acknowledged has been poor.

Yeah zoogs, it's unfortunate because we just don't know who we are going to get: Good Tommy or Bad? I think he's had his best season so far. There have been improvements. And there have been clankers and poor decisions. But he definitely struggles with wind. He did last year as well.

[stargazer]

 

With Tommy at QB, if you have a lead, best not have him throwing the ball on your side of the 50.

Perhaps that's indeed how the coaches feel, and perhaps it's the right call.

 

But man. Hard to put teams away before the closing minutes, taking that route.

 

 

Exactly. Whether it was Pelini or Riley, we need a better QB. I like Tommy, he's done some great stuff, but he hasn't shown an ability to make consistently good decisions/high percentage passes (and the 'mechanics' seems to be a favorite topic of the national media, in fact, when hasn't that been the case for a Nebraska QB??), to be a quarterback at this level. I don't think we've had a really good QB, since Joe Ganz.

 

Where's our Joe Ganz now?! I really thought Darlington looked like that guy (well, at least until he gets hit hard, I guess), but apparently he didn't pan out in the Fall?

[Mavric]

 

 

Food for thought on the critical failure that was the 3rd quarter.

 

This is a pretty lazy generalization of what happened. Just an attempt to say "Look! We tried to run the ball and it wasn't working."

 

But lets look a little closer.

 

Here are the two plays on the first series:

 

1-10 WIS 36 Newby, Terrell rush up middle for 4 yards to the WIS32 (Edwards, T.J.).

2-6 WIS 32 Newby, Terrell rush up middle for loss of 3 yards to the WIS35 (Schobert, Joe;Biegel, Vince).

 

On both these plays we were in 21 personnel (2 backs, 1 TE) and Wisconsin walked a safety up into the box. So we had seven guys (5 OL/TE/FB) to block eight guys on a straight run up the middle. No misdirection, no nothing. A run straight ahead. Newby never had a chance because about half our run plays are about as basic as you can get.

 

And all that ignores on critical note - this was after Riley's unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. We got a first down after the penalty and you can't know what would have happened without it but at the very least you have to think we'd have a much better chance to make a 37 yard field goal than a 52 yard field goal.

 

So surely we learned from that the next possession, right? Here's the plays Sam's talking about.

 

1-10 WIS 47 Newby, Terrell rush up middle for 2 yards to the WIS45 (Edwards, T.J.).

2-8 WIS 45 Newby, Terrell rush up middle for 2 yards to the WIS43 (Hillary, Darius;McEvoy, Tanner)

 

Nope. Apparently not. Still just running straight ahead. 21 personnel on first down and a run straight ahead into a seven man box. At least we tried a little on second down by running a Jet Sweep fake to DPE but all that did was bring the LB out covering DPE into the box and he came unblocked and made the tackle. So we basically screwed ourselves there.

 

I'd love to see the stats on runs between the tackles and outside the tackles for the entire year. We seem to be split about 50/50 on them but having much more success running to the outside. You have to run inside here and there to keep them honest but we spend a lot of plays running things that don't have much chance to succeed.

 

Also, kind of shows what I've been claiming about Newby for at least three games now. He's not getting much of a chance to show what he can do. These are the kinds of runs that he's getting a lot. Right here is over 25% of his carries for the game and he literally had no chance to do anything with them. Ameer couldn't have done anything with those four carries. Would be nice if he got more chances to use his speed.

[Count 'Bility]

And again Mav, like ive been preaching about for a while now. Where was the qb run game. What happened to experienced ability to adjust to players skillsets? Tommy Armstrong is our best running back. Give our mediocre oline angle advatages with misdirections of read options and qb counters and such. Yhese are ghe things that have me on the dark side. Its really just elementary stuff that these coaches are forgoing.

[brophog]

You have to run inside here and there to keep them honest but we spend a lot of plays running things that don't have much chance to succeed.

I don't know if outside runs are necessarily the answer, at least in general. Wisconsin really started stretching those out.

 

We talked a little last week in a thread about this. It was speculation on our part, but there are many plays like this where the pre-snap suggests a play won't work and we do it anyway.

[84HuskerLaw]

Frankly, I think if tommy completes half of his incomplete passes, we win the game by 10 points or more. With so many incompletions, drives are stalled and our punter contiunes to be our MVP. Our running game is better when we complete passes as the defense is not loading up the extra safety or crowding up and shooting gaps and swarming all over the backfield. Wisconsin is fast enough on defense to keep us from running wide (we don't have any RBs with 4.35 speed to get to the corners) and have trouble blocking on the outsides with our smaller receivers. Our TEs block well sometimes but it is not consistent. IMO

[Mavric]

And again Mav, like ive been preaching about for a while now. Where was the qb run game. What happened to experienced ability to adjust to players skillsets? Tommy Armstrong is our best running back. Give our mediocre oline angle advatages with misdirections of read options and qb counters and such. Yhese are ghe things that have me on the dark side. Its really just elementary stuff that these coaches are forgoing.

 

Absolutely. The QB counter that worked great a couple times in the first half would have been a great call - on any of those four plays or on any of the three on our last possession. But apparently it worked too well to try it again.