HuskerfaninOkieland
Heisman Trophy Winner
NE Statepaper
NEBRASKA FOOTBALL: Five Keys to Mizzou
Getting momentum and turnovers...
by Samuel McKewon
October 29, 2010
Last dance with Moaning Missouri, an athletic department worth its weight in complaint on a variety of topics. Fortunately for Tiger fans, Mizzou's football team didn't mope after a slew of off-the-field incidents before the season.
Just the opposite: Missouri headed to the chemistry lab, subtracted doubt in its relatively new offensive and defensive coordinators, sprinkled in some new talent at key offensive positions, integrated sports psychology into its daily routine to improve focus and cooked up a terrific first half of the season.
The Tigers, for now, are just a shade behind Boise State and Auburn as the story of the year in college football.
Nebraska, meanwhile, emerges from its own experiments. We're about to find out if the Huskers really have the fortitude and pluck head coach Bo Pelini believes they do. Whether NU can make good on Bo's Holiday Bowl proclamation of “Nebraska's back – and we're here to stay.”
Remember those words? Clink them around in your Husker glass before kickoff. Over the course of three hours Saturday, we'll find out if those words were spot on – or premature.
The keys, please.
Ball security: There are truly no fancy tricks for how to hold on to the ball once you're in college football. Coaches can teach the finer points of ball pressure until the player is showering with the pigskin, but, at some point, you can either tuck the ball away and keep it there in key moments or you can't. Now's the time to have a perfect week in the turnover department – for either team. Nebraska and Missouri both know how to take it away.
Open Range: Missouri's offensive staff wants to put its skill players – running back Henry Josey and wide receiver T.J. Moe among them – on the edge of the field and let them create plays with their feet and deft shoulder fakes. Tackle these Tigers and take away a crucial element of their offense: yards after catch. Limiting Mizzou to pitch-and-catch, instead of pitch-catch-and-run, could be the single purpose of Nebraska's safeties. Whatever their tackling woes were heading into the this week – fix them now.
Capitalizing on chaos: Yet another week where an opponent places quarterback Taylor Martinez right in the crosshairs. Missouri will attack No. 3 a little differently, using a movable feast of defensive linemen shifting and stunting all over the place, a bunch of active, athletic linebackers and a secondary that loves to blitz and take chances. In short, the Tigers try to overwhelm an opposing quarterback. Martinez, while flawed, has proven pretty deft at dealing with pressure packages and tight situations on third down. Mizzou's aggressive style leaves it open to big plays – a Martinez forte.
Red Zone: Missouri has the nation's best red zone defense, and it's not even all that close, allowing opponents to score points, period, just 52 percent of the time. How is that possible? Creating timely turnovers. While some of that's luck – it's hard to control, after all, how a ball bounces and to whom it bounces after a fumble – it's a testament to the Tigers staying sturdy so close to their own end zone.
NU's red zone defense is much less impressive from a rankings perspective - 82nd in the nation – but that number is misleading; in 21 drives into NU's red zone, teams have only scored 11 touchdowns. And three of those have been on tiny drives set up by Husker fumbles.
The Tigers' red zone offense is 19th in the country. The Huskers are, again, ranked lower - 80th – but the stat is skewed by the Huskers' relative few times entering the red zone. NU makes too many big plays.
Early momentum: Husker fans hope this is the last time the following paragraph has to be mentioned:
During the Bo Pelini era, Nebraska has played ten home games against foes from BCS-autobid conferences (nine Big 12 teams + Virginia Tech). In those games, NU has been outscored 88-52 in the first quarter. In 7 of the 10 games, the opponent scored first, and it would have been 8 if Oklahoma had not missed two field goals in the 2009 game.
Whatever buttons Bo pushes with his team to get them focused and into it during the first quarter, let them be the right ones. Nebraska can't afford to fall behind two scores to a Missouri team gushing with confidence and a Memorial Stadium crowd waiting for the other shoe to drop.
NEBRASKA FOOTBALL: Five Keys to Mizzou
Getting momentum and turnovers...
by Samuel McKewon
October 29, 2010
Last dance with Moaning Missouri, an athletic department worth its weight in complaint on a variety of topics. Fortunately for Tiger fans, Mizzou's football team didn't mope after a slew of off-the-field incidents before the season.
Just the opposite: Missouri headed to the chemistry lab, subtracted doubt in its relatively new offensive and defensive coordinators, sprinkled in some new talent at key offensive positions, integrated sports psychology into its daily routine to improve focus and cooked up a terrific first half of the season.
The Tigers, for now, are just a shade behind Boise State and Auburn as the story of the year in college football.
Nebraska, meanwhile, emerges from its own experiments. We're about to find out if the Huskers really have the fortitude and pluck head coach Bo Pelini believes they do. Whether NU can make good on Bo's Holiday Bowl proclamation of “Nebraska's back – and we're here to stay.”
Remember those words? Clink them around in your Husker glass before kickoff. Over the course of three hours Saturday, we'll find out if those words were spot on – or premature.
The keys, please.
Ball security: There are truly no fancy tricks for how to hold on to the ball once you're in college football. Coaches can teach the finer points of ball pressure until the player is showering with the pigskin, but, at some point, you can either tuck the ball away and keep it there in key moments or you can't. Now's the time to have a perfect week in the turnover department – for either team. Nebraska and Missouri both know how to take it away.
Open Range: Missouri's offensive staff wants to put its skill players – running back Henry Josey and wide receiver T.J. Moe among them – on the edge of the field and let them create plays with their feet and deft shoulder fakes. Tackle these Tigers and take away a crucial element of their offense: yards after catch. Limiting Mizzou to pitch-and-catch, instead of pitch-catch-and-run, could be the single purpose of Nebraska's safeties. Whatever their tackling woes were heading into the this week – fix them now.
Capitalizing on chaos: Yet another week where an opponent places quarterback Taylor Martinez right in the crosshairs. Missouri will attack No. 3 a little differently, using a movable feast of defensive linemen shifting and stunting all over the place, a bunch of active, athletic linebackers and a secondary that loves to blitz and take chances. In short, the Tigers try to overwhelm an opposing quarterback. Martinez, while flawed, has proven pretty deft at dealing with pressure packages and tight situations on third down. Mizzou's aggressive style leaves it open to big plays – a Martinez forte.
Red Zone: Missouri has the nation's best red zone defense, and it's not even all that close, allowing opponents to score points, period, just 52 percent of the time. How is that possible? Creating timely turnovers. While some of that's luck – it's hard to control, after all, how a ball bounces and to whom it bounces after a fumble – it's a testament to the Tigers staying sturdy so close to their own end zone.
NU's red zone defense is much less impressive from a rankings perspective - 82nd in the nation – but that number is misleading; in 21 drives into NU's red zone, teams have only scored 11 touchdowns. And three of those have been on tiny drives set up by Husker fumbles.
The Tigers' red zone offense is 19th in the country. The Huskers are, again, ranked lower - 80th – but the stat is skewed by the Huskers' relative few times entering the red zone. NU makes too many big plays.
Early momentum: Husker fans hope this is the last time the following paragraph has to be mentioned:
During the Bo Pelini era, Nebraska has played ten home games against foes from BCS-autobid conferences (nine Big 12 teams + Virginia Tech). In those games, NU has been outscored 88-52 in the first quarter. In 7 of the 10 games, the opponent scored first, and it would have been 8 if Oklahoma had not missed two field goals in the 2009 game.
Whatever buttons Bo pushes with his team to get them focused and into it during the first quarter, let them be the right ones. Nebraska can't afford to fall behind two scores to a Missouri team gushing with confidence and a Memorial Stadium crowd waiting for the other shoe to drop.