A couple of questions.

[3rd and long]

Really wondering. At one point we had run seven first down plays. All of them were runs and we were averaging just over one yard in those seven plays. The commentators were mentioning that they thought we had to try to open is up a bit on first down.

 

After half time we they interviewed Reilly and he stated "we have to get more aggressive in offense and defense". Which leads to question number one.

 

1: Does he communicate with the coordinators during the game? Why does thus have to wait timhalftime to be addressed? It seemed pretty evident it wasn't working early on.

 

2: In game adjustments. It was clearly evident that Gates had no chance of blocking #9. Sometimes not even a chance of getting a piece of him. He was basically almost sprinting diffectly to Fyfe.

 

Why don't we have a tight end or a back there to help? Over and over the same thing happened.

[3rd and long]

Really wondering. At one point we had run seven first down plays. All of them were runs and we were averaging just over one yard in those seven plays. The commentators were mentioning that they thought we had to try to open is up a bit on first down.

 

After half time we they interviewed Reilly and he stated "we have to get more aggressive in offense and defense". Which leads to question number one.

 

1: Does he communicate with the coordinators during the game? Why does this have to wait til halftime to be addressed? It seemed pretty evident it wasn't working early on.

 

2: In game adjustments. It was clearly evident that Gates had no chance of blocking #9. Sometimes not even a chance of getting a piece of him. He was basically almost sprinting diffectly to Fyfe.

 

Why don't we have a tight end or a back there to help? Over and over the same thing happened.

[rdwoodpecker]

Finally, it appeared on a few plays late in the game Ozigbo did stay into help Gates block. I also wondered where the help was, it was pretty obvious early on Nick was not going to block him 1 on 1.

[lo country]

From pressers, Riley, much like Beck states the obvious after the fact. i.e. Beck we got to cute, I should've tried to stick with the run more....... Everyones hindsight is 20/20. We need coaches who share a common vision, can communicate that to each other, the team and recruits, and adjust on the fly. After this many years together, I would think they could.

 

In defense of Riley and Bo, maybe it is the kids......Maybe they (staff) recruited kids who aren't nasty or meat eaters. Your a 300 lb kid in HS who dominates kids is it because you are nasty? Or because you are that much bigger? Then when you go against guys as big or strong if not stronger, that "nasty" isn't there. I don't know the magic bulet to find or fix that. I just know that we used to be rattlesnake mean all over the field....

 

Lastly, a lot of the offensive issues I blame on Langs. Our first 6-7 games he did a great job IMO. Used a play to set up another. Exploited what the D was doing. BUT when we got up against teams that were athletically on par with NU, his play calling stunk. He had no way schematically to attack a D that was "better" that our O. none.

[84HuskerLaw]

I had to 'watch' the game by listening only to the Husker radio network broadcast and of course you know who great Gary Sharp is at describing the action. Often he is lucky to have the down and distance 'close'. Many of those first down runs barely got back to the line of scrimmage. There was maybe one or two series where we had a little run success. However, those plays seemed to follow a successful pass or two.

We were very predictable and ran on first down so much that it was fairly easy to say we would be facing third and very long (8 to 13). Those are swarm and blitz downs for the defense and with a QB with dam little escapablity or rush avoidance technique and a O line that could not hardly slow them down let alone keep them out of the pocket, Fyfe was left with only the option to throw quick to anyone who might be open. This is NOT a good strategy for any offense, much less Nebraska's after a long layoff and time to prepare something new and different to come out with against Tenn.

 

I also didn't hear of any 'trick' type plays to get something going. We should have tried some half back tosses and sweeps or reverse action passes or something. Nothing 'regular' was working so you throw the kitchen sink at them and hope to find something to atleast change the field position. The first quarter field position was poor and THANK GOD our punting was dramatically improved or the game would have been a blowout by half time.

 

On a positive note, the special teams was marginally better, although we still had virtually NOTHING in returns and failed to field a bunch of punts again. You will never get a return if you don't catch the ball and try. Unless the refs missed the calls, it seemed we did play a full game without having the wrong number of players on the field in the kicking game. A step in the right direction. If Drew and Caleb had not been kickiing pretty well, it would have gotten uglier too.

 

If you have great defensive lineman across from your struggling offensive line, you better design and customize your blocking schemes, atleast for some plays, to help out. Double teams, pulling, a FULLBACK or something. None of this happened, all season long, that I could tell.

[Wordek]

We got out talented our offense to their front 4.

[Xmas32]

Really wondering. At one point we had run seven first down plays. All of them were runs and we were averaging just over one yard in those seven plays. The commentators were mentioning that they thought we had to try to open is up a bit on first down.

 

After half time we they interviewed Reilly and he stated "we have to get more aggressive in offense and defense". Which leads to question number one.

 

1: Does he communicate with the coordinators during the game? Why does this have to wait til halftime to be addressed? It seemed pretty evident it wasn't working early on.

 

2: In game adjustments. It was clearly evident that Gates had no chance of blocking #9. Sometimes not even a chance of getting a piece of him. He was basically almost sprinting diffectly to Fyfe.

 

Why don't we have a tight end or a back there to help? Over and over the same thing happened.

 

Yeah, I too was surprised they didn't try to chip Derek Barnett with Ozigbo more as UT was collapsing the pocket from the inside as well so Fyfe couldn't just step up. Westerkamp being out was a big blow as it really affects what you can do with Carter. If you keep him in to block you lose him as a receiver as you can't just give Barnett a token shove. If you split Carter out, Fyfe has .7 seconds to throw. Tough decisions.