What did we learn (Ohio State edition)

[r06ue1]

Didn't see one of these yet and I know most don't want to think about last night.  I re-watched the game, was really looking for things that we did which were good.  I want to start out by analyzing our first series as it, I believe, sets the tone for the rest of the game.  

 

1st series - kickoff - Wandale tries to run it out of the end zone (mistake #1), if he had taken a knee, would have been ball at the 25, instead, gets tackled before he gets to the 20 and a holding penalty (mistake #2) starts the first drive at the 8.  

1st play - Martinez under immediate pressure from the collapsing O-Line (from a four man rush), penalty on OSU gives Nebraska the first down, one of the few mistakes Ohio State makes on the night.  Scumbag play by Harrison, going low on our QB out of bounds.  

2nd play - Very nice play call by the staff and run by Washington, pick up of 9.  

3rd play - First down on a short yardage run.  

4th play - 3 yard pickup by Wandale.  

5th play - No gain, Washington banged up a bit on the play.  

6th play - O-Line collapses instantly, pressure by Young (basically unblocked) forces Martinez to make the throw on the run, ball is thrown behind the receiver instead of leading him and picked off (good play by the DB).  Ohio State ball at the 50.  

 

Fast forwarding a bit from here on, just wanted to show the first set downs as it highlights the issues of the offensive line and also the stupid mistakes which set the tone for the entire game.  

 

Bad call on Cam, he played the ball perfectly, poor officiating right there, wish they would review pass interference calls.  Ohio State probably still would have scored even without the bad call but who knows for sure, the tone was already set in the first series with the turnover at mid-field.  

Fields scores easily on no one being in the middle of the field.  Why no spy on him?  Barry was the closest and he was 15 yards away, gets burned on a simple turn to the inside.  

 

2nd series - Touchback (good call to not run it out) on the kickoff.  Series goes nowhere, bad punt, good coverage.  

 

Ohio State second TD drive.  Some good plays by the D (stopped Dobbins a few times for no gain, contained Fields in the pocket) but also some bad plays (Dobbins breaks off ten yard runs, Fields, with Honas spying, breaks a long first down run, Honas was blocked on the play).  WR's for Ohio State are getting a big cushion, indicative of our DB's inability to match their speed.  

 

3rd series - quick hitters to Mills, first as lone back (what formation is that?), then out in the flat, then out of the I-Formation!  High snap, throws the play off.  I noticed something about Jurgens when he does this; he is anticipating the block before hiking the ball, watch him, indicative of his inexperience.  More I-Formation plays, 5+ yards per play, Ohio States D is reeling and takes a time out, disruptive is an understatement.  Then comes the second interception; terrible throw by Martinez (again under pressure and hit on the throw from a collapsing pocket), overthrows the receiver and somehow, miraculously, an OSU defender is lying on the ground waiting for it to drop oh so gently into his waiting arms.  Question: Why not throw out of the I?  A play action pass out of the I on that play likely goes for six or at the very least a first down as the D bites hard expecting a run.  I don't understand the change in formation, this likely clued OSU defenders in to it being a pass.  

 

D holds OSU to a field goal.  

 

4th series - Abandoned the I which had been working great, back to throwing the ball and of course, an interception on a poor throw.  This interception was all on Martinez (unlike the others).  OSU with great field position once again.  

 

D looks deflated, completely uninspired by the turnovers which keep putting them in terrible situations and Fields breaks a long one with a huge running lane my grandma could run through setting up another OSU TD.  

 

5th series = Again no I, Martinez under pressure immediately on 3rd down and gets sacked.  

 

And another OSU TD.  

 

Fast forward to the end of the game.  

 

A few more scores for OSU, Nebraska gets on the board after a long run by Martinez.  The option is opening up a lot of the running game, should have scored one more time at the end.  

 

If Wandale doesn't try to run it out on the first play of the game and instead takes the touchback and if Frost had called for the I-Formation from the start of the game instead of waiting until the third series this is a different game.  Sure, we still likely lose, Ohio State simply has too many weapons and we would have had to have played a perfect game in order to have a chance at all but the game would have been much closer.  

 

The offensive line caused two of Martinez' interceptions, one was all his.  Jurgens also needs to focus on hiking the ball first and blocking second.  The option was really disruptive and had a lot of success, need to see a lot more of it next week.  Also, Martinez seemed to do better with the quick throws, didn't give him time to think too much.  I wouldn't put too much blame on the D in this game, if you watch the game again and analyze it they were put in difficult situations the entire first half and were playing hard until the third interception.  Special teams actually had good coverage except for the one long return (I believe, correct me if I missed one) but the punting was terrible.  

 

[krc1995]

Bless you for having the courage to rewatch. Why do we abandon the I formation? 

[Caliborn72]

- OLine is a big enough issue against good opponents that I have a hard time giving us a chance against Wisconsin and Iowa. I know the other games are winnable but we also play a few teams who won’t beat themselves as much as Illinois did so we will see. Got to get to a bowl game.

 

- I think the DLine is improved. Our ILBs continue to get targeted by opposing OCs. Honas takes such bad angles and I think it makes Barry overthink things. But Barry deserves some blame too.

 

- Martinez is rattled in the pocket and seeing ghosts. I don’t 100% blame him or anything like that but he’s making mistakes even when the pocket is clean.

 

- Need more WRs to step up, which is getting annoying to say. RB room seems pretty damn stocked going forward though, which isn’t surprising considering Held has been our most tireless recruiter by far.

 

- Secondary is better than under Riley, by a good margin. But they still make quite a few mistakes and I think we had been a tad lucky to only be torched by Colorado until last night. 

 

- I’m really glad we have another year of Domann, that guy is a baller and easy to root for. Should be a scary sight if he can stay healthy all offseason.

[gobiggergoredder]

Offense:

-I just don’t understand what we are trying to do on offense.  A replay of AM getting sacked in the dirt QTR showed 3 receivers bunched together only using half the field.  Then later going under center with QB and moving the ball.

-This team is struggling with the same thing Husker Offenses have battled for nearly two decades.....poor QB play.  AM is not a threat right now and he has to be for this to work.

 

Defense:

-Domann is the best player on defense.

-starting to see some of that no arm Diaco tackling from Barry & Dismuke.  I saw two plays where Dismuke allowed the ball carrying space so he could talking him from side instead of direct contact.

-Quite Simply we have a huge talent gap on D

[The Dude]

I learned you can fair catch on a kickoff and automatically get the ball at the 25.  Special teams is just going out of its way to reach an all new low now.

[Dansker]

We learned we're light years away from Ohio State.

 

[Redux]

Offensively speaking, we are screwed this year.  The depth isn't there to make drastic changes to veer us on another course.  Benching Martinez may help us short term but does nothing long term unless any of us really think Vedral is the answer.  Martinez needs an epiphany moment where the light goes on, he can't do that on the bench.

 

Defensively I still like what I'm seeing, crazy as that sounds.  Maybe we are outclassed in a lot of area's, but I think this unit trends up down the stretch.

 

Not that it mattered yesterday, but find us a damn kicker.

 

1 minute ago, The Dude said:

I learned you can fair catch on a kickoff and automatically get the ball at the 25.  Special teams is just going out of its way to reach an all new low now.

 

Yeah that new rule is great for safety, awful for spectators.

[lincoln84]

11 minutes ago, FTW said:

We learned we're light years away from Ohio State.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Redux said:

 

We might be light years away from Iowa right now. 

[10_point_buck]

What did we learn......

 

1)  we are YEARS away from anything of substance

2)   I have a hard time finding 1 thing we do well consistently 

3)  if we are sticking with players, we need to give everyone a look.  Use the 4 game red shirt rule all over the roster 

4)  the media hype machine did their jobs

5) 6 wins and a bowl would be a great year at this point

[Redux]

6 minutes ago, lincoln84 said:

 

We might be light years away from Iowa right now. 

 

Nah, not even.  Right now I'd bet on them to smack us around this year but wouldn't be shocked if we start playing our best football down the stretch.  If we don't start beating them this year it will begin next year.  This lopsided series starts swinging back in our favor pretty soon. 

[lincoln84]

The only we thing do consistently, is turn the ball over and get penalized.

[Redux]

3 minutes ago, 10_point_buck said:

What did we learn......

 

1)  we are YEARS away from anything of substance

1-2 years.  What I was told preseason, and it's been verified

2)   I have a hard time finding 1 thing we do well consistently

gain yardage, make plays on the ball

3)  if we are sticking with players, we need to give everyone a look.  Use the 4 game red shirt rule all over the roster 

Why?

4)  the media hype machine did their jobs

You new here?

5) 6 wins and a bowl would be a great year at this point

coming off back to back 4-8 years and a blowout loss to Ohio State, yes a bowl game should be the goal right now

 

[lincoln84]

1 minute ago, Redux said:

 

Nah, not even.  Right now I'd bet on them to smack us around this year but wouldn't be shocked if we start playing our best football down the stretch.  If we don't start beating them this year it will begin next year.  This lopsided series starts swinging back in our favor pretty soon. 

I hope you are right.

[10_point_buck]

2 minutes ago, Redux said:

 

Nah, not even.  Right now I'd bet on them to smack us around this year but wouldn't be shocked if we start playing our best football down the stretch.  If we don't start beating them this year it will begin next year.  This lopsided series starts swinging back in our favor pretty soon. 

 

[chamrocck]

The offensive line is the weak link on this football team.  No ability to protect the QB, no ability to open up inside runs, and a center who costs us a down every single series with poor snaps.  While AM had a lousy game last night, I'll put it this way...before the game last night you can trade QB's (we get Fields and they get AM) or you can trade offensive lines (we keep AM but get their offensive line and they keep Fields but have to play with our offensive line).  Let that sink in. 

 

The defensive line is the next weakest link.  Can't get to the QB, can't stop the run, TFL's are on a milk carton.  The lack of an edge rusher has been a problem for years...how have we not specifically recruited for this huge gap?

 

Basically when you have poor line of scrimmage play you can't win big boy football.  We are like that high school team that has some good athletes but gets clobbered because we have no OL or DL that can really make a difference in the game.  

 

This is not getting fixed this year.  I am going to force myself to enjoy some Saturdays back.  This is a .500 football team.  Everyone but us knows this.  

 

Sure enjoy some of the talent that will flash in other games this year...AM, JD, Wandale, Washington. JoJo, Britt-Taylor...these are all high level skill guys but they have no help around them.  I like some of our other starters but they are back-ups or buried on the depth chart at OSU.  

 

Play more under center.  Have a wrinkle for this.  Have a fullback.  I formation was a breath of fresh air last night and was the only thing working.  

 

Recruit top 15 classes...yes difficult but you have to do this to win big.  Anything less is not cutting it.  Latest Rivals shows our class rank for 2020 at 42...yes I think we'll improve but finishing at say 22 is not good, especially when 4 to 5 other conference teams are ahead of us.

 

I still think Frost is the right guy.  I imagine him here for 20 years so year 2 will be a distant memory not too long in the future.  But basically until we consistently win the line of scrimmage we won't win anything of significance.  I will tell you that once we figure that out this team will truly be back.  It's in our DNA and birthright that we have an OL pipeline and dominating Blackshirts front 7.  We have sort of been building this thing back-asswards.  We have some skill but no foundation...once you build the foundation it doesn't matter who you put back there at QB.  This is a nice OSU-type of problem to have...they can jettison one QB and plug in another and it is pretty much the same dominance year after year.