You brought up some good points, and if you read carefully, your points support my analysis. Beck has been taking advantage of what's been given. When opponents load the box, though, a long bomb is not always going to work, and against a heavy blitz, standing in the pocket and waiting for deep routes to develop will lead to sacks. This is why I emphasized the use of quick routes, especially by TEs and RBs out of the backfield, to defeat a heavy blitz. If you read carefully, I praised a lot of what Tim Beck was doing. I didn't agree with all of it and I offered tweaks to an already good system to make it better.
After the Miami game, I really feel that Beck is maturing as an OC, and he will be a good one. Nebraska football is and should always be based on the run game. But when the opponent sells out to stop it, that's when we need to have a complete passing game as well. That includes the short routes. Beck already does well with his long routes, no doubt about it, but the short routes can be just as effective as a supplement to the deep routes on the same play. If you send a TE on an out route or an angle route or a slant or whatever kind of short route, and you send the two outside receivers on streaks and the slot on a post, and Abdullah on a wheel out of the backfield, you can do a lot. If the safeties play the deep routes, or focus on the streaks, you might be able to slip one into the post route, but only if the slot has beaten his man. Those TD passes to Westy and Bell that have gone for touchdowns used this simple read. But let's say all the deep routes are covered. This puts the LBs in a bad spot, because they'll have to cover both the TE and the RB, and with three WRs on the field, the D will have had to be in a Nickel package at the very least. That means one on one against a TE, a match up that we can exploit for good yardage, or a one on one against Abdullah, which I would take any given play on any given Saturday. And that is assuming they didn't blitz one or both of their LBs, which would leave one or both of those short routes wide open, and open quickly enough that Armstrong could get the ball out well before he gets sacked. If you exploit the short routes, they'll either roll their coverage down to cover them, which will leave the deep routes wide open, or they will stop stacking the box, which will let Abdullah run wild. Those short passes added to what we already do well, would make our offense much more versatile, and a much bigger threat than it already is.
I think we have seen the barest glimmer of these tweaks, but I guarantee you that we will need them to beat MSU.
