OWH: Huskers Struggling with Two-Minute Offense

[Mavric]

With 52 seconds left in the first half, NU started a drive from its own 32. No points.

 

In the fourth quarter, with the teams tied at 17, the Huskers started a drive with 1:43 left from their own 27. The Huskers had to gain about 40 yards to have a good chance at a Drew Brown field goal.

 

No points.

 

NU made it to its own 49 before attempting three passes — two of which were incomplete — that gained zero yards. The Huskers punted and pocketed a couple of timeouts in the process.

 

That failure to score continued a trend of troubles.

 

In two-minute drill situations against Illinois, Indiana and Purdue — all at the end of the first half — quarterback Tommy Armstrong threw interceptions. Heck, against Indiana, Armstrong threw the pick on a drive that started at the 2:23 mark of the second quarter. NU got the ball back at the 1:18 mark and didn’t score any points.

 

OWH

[Nebfanatic]

We seem to be much better at an 8 minute drill

[zoogs]

I think there's some good insight there -- how the approach you take affects what kind of plays are available to you and how effective you are at running them. Plays and formations existing in the playbook don't mean they can all be put in seamlessly at any time.

 

Every approach has its tradeoffs. And teams have to be able to adapt on the fly when they need to.

[cm husker]

What would be helpful here would be some context.

 

For example, in cases where a spread is less than 7 points, on what percentage of 2 min drives does a team score points. It'd be even more interesting if you could control for the number of points needed. At halftime, you'd like for any that resulted in TDs or FGs; at the end of games, you'd look for the scores needed to close the gap and you'd discard the numbers for teams that held a lead with 2 minutes left in a game.

 

Scoring points in the 2 minute scheme is hard against good competition.

 

 

That said, going into halftime or OT with timeouts in hand is pretty frustrating. There's a statement by Riley about needing yards, not big plays, during 2-minute drill, but then he excuses Langs not going for yards with the run game because it'd been "not dynamic" to that point - despite Newby averaging 4.5 yards a carry and having showed off the ability to break long runs when given the type of space you'd expect against a 2-min D.

 

I found the comment about not going up tempo for the same reason a little odd, too - up tempo is not the same as 2-minute drill. I wish NU would go up tempo more because of the stress it puts on D's. It often requires D's to stay in a "base" look, which would help our QB, OL and receivers with their pre-snap reads.

 

It's not like we have dumb players, so it's a little puzzling why the coaches can't coach it up.

 

 

I think questions about the way we practice, particularly on offense, will start to arise. On more than one occasion, I've seen statements along the line of "we don't rep that as much as we'd like or need to." That begs the question, why.

[HuskerMav11]

We struggled to quickly score points on one of the top defenses in the country? I'm shocked...