Interesting stat on NU's OL performance

[runningblind]

I don't know if lining up in lots of different looks and having pre-snap motions and things like that are necessarily in the category of "creative," though. The defense is usually still manning up against their same assignments; that stuff amounts to frills a lot of the time. Not necessarily any real substance to it, nor with having a massive playbook.

Creativity in this context is probably more of doing something out of any given set that the defense isn't expecting, or doing something that the defense isn't expecting situationally. I'm not sure if Satterfield did that last year for the gamecocks.

But the rushing stats you shared are probably bigger issues. That looks like Mike Riley Ball type stuff. Some of Frost's stats probably even look like that (when excluding Martinez's scrambles from the data).

We haven't run the ball effectively since we fired Bo.  Bo had a lot of other problems, but his offenses were pretty effective at that.  Good point about Frost.  His team's running numbers were ok but the averages were largely terrible when you take out Martinez scrambling. 

 

[brophog]

The defense is usually still manning up against their same assignments; that stuff amounts to frills a lot of the time. Not necessarily any real substance to it, nor with having a massive playbook.

It certainly can be frivolous. Bill Callahan built an entire playbook on frivolous pre-snap shifts and motion.

But it can be very effective, too. One example was how UCLA uses it, like we were talking about the other day. Another example was from the Spring. One of the most effective runs was a counter in which we motioned an H-Back across the formation and then ran counter the other way. That play was effective on its own, but you can expand on that idea. He could go out for a pass. Against man you can use him to pull defenders out of position for weakside runs. Against zone you can motion into quads for some type of flood concept.

Creativity in this context is probably more of doing something out of any given set that the defense isn't expecting, or doing something that the defense isn't expecting situationally. I'm not sure if Satterfield did that last year for the gamecocks.

You must have missed his pistol flexbone formation. He certainly could be creative at times, but some of that stuff just didn't work for them.

One thing I did like, and hope we incorporate, is he would sometimes run bunch compression sets with TEs at one or more of the WR spots. Those sets tend to result in a lot of natural rub routes and having that bigger body in there is handy for that. You can also run out of it pretty effectively and it's hard for a defense to match personnel when you do decide to do so.

 

[Mavric]

We haven't run the ball effectively since we fired Bo.  Bo had a lot of other problems, but his offenses were pretty effective at that.  Good point about Frost.  His team's running numbers were ok but the averages were largely terrible when you take out Martinez scrambling. 

In Frost's first three years here, we ranked in the upper 20s in the nation in rushing each year.  Not elite but pretty decent overall.

And I think you're overestimated how much Martinez scrambled.  For his career here, he averaged about 30 yards per game on scrambles.   Not insignificant but also not a huge chunk of the 200+ yards rushing per game we were getting.

 

[Undone]

You must have missed his pistol flexbone formation. He certainly could be creative at times, but some of that stuff just didn't work for them.

You're making a good case for some of the concepts. Obviously I'm hoping it all works well. I don't care what scheme or style we play at NU anymore at all - I just want to win games.

One thing I did like, and hope we incorporate, is he would sometimes run bunch compression sets with TEs at one or more of the WR spots.

I'd love to see us run off-tackle handoffs or tosses out of this. We've got a couple backs that can attack the edge better than they can run inside, IMO.

 

[runningblind]

In Frost's first three years here, we ranked in the upper 20s in the nation in rushing each year.  Not elite but pretty decent overall.

And I think you're overestimated how much Martinez scrambled.  For his career here, he averaged about 30 yards per game on scrambles.   Not insignificant but also not a huge chunk of the 200+ yards rushing per game we were getting.

Fair enough.  It got worse at the end, like everything else and of course the red zone was terrible. 

 

[brophog]

I'd love to see us run off-tackle handoffs or tosses out of this. We've got a couple backs that can attack the edge better than they can run inside, IMO.

I think it was against Kentucky last year that they did something like that. Motioned a TE into a 3x1 set, giving them 2 TE lead blockers, Kentucky didn't account for the motion  very well and they ran toss out of it. I think that would not only be great with our personnel, but it's a play that takes pressure off of the offensive line.

 

[Undone]

In Frost's first three years here, we ranked in the upper 20s in the nation in rushing each year.  Not elite but pretty decent overall.

And I think you're overestimated how much Martinez scrambled.  For his career here, he averaged about 30 yards per game on scrambles.   Not insignificant but also not a huge chunk of the 200+ yards rushing per game we were getting.

I thought it would be cool to list these out. The site teamrankings dot com has these numbers for team rushing yards per game (and I decided to include the 2022 season):

2018: 27th

2019: 28th

2020: 28th
2021: 57th

2022: 107th

Now in 2018, Ozigbo caught fire - but he also had some great holes to run through. I don't have a quick way of then looking up who the leading rusher tended to be on the team from 2019 - 2021 but I think it had to have been Martinez most of the time. He was a phenomenal runner. But I do wonder how often he was the leading rusher?

Maybe the answer doesn't matter. The stats show that for the first three years, Scott was committed to running and did it fairly well.

 

[runningblind]

I thought it would be cool to list these out. The site teamrankings dot com has these numbers for team rushing yards per game (and I decided to include the 2022 season):

2018: 27th

2019: 28th

2020: 28th
2021: 57th

2022: 107th

Now in 2018, Ozigbo caught fire - but he also had some great holes to run through. I don't have a quick way of then looking up who the leading rusher tended to be on the team from 2019 - 2021 but I think it had to have been Martinez most of the time. He was a phenomenal runner. But I do wonder how often he was the leading rusher?

Maybe the answer doesn't matter. The stats show that for the first three years, Scott was committed to running and did it fairly well.

AM spot in rushing on the team

#2 in 2018 : https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2018.html#all_rushing_and_receiving  (Ozigbo significantly ahead, also our best rushing team)

#2 in 2019 :  https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2019.html#all_rushing_and_receiving (Closer to #1 behind Mills)

#1 in 2020:  https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2020.html#all_rushing_and_receiving

#1 in 2021: https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2021.html#all_rushing_and_receiving 

Easy to see the correlation between QB being your #1 rusher and the overall effectiveness going down. 

 

[brophog]

Easy to see the correlation between QB being your #1 rusher and the overall effectiveness going down. 

Then there's Tim Tebow and Lamar Jackson, both of whom won Heismans doing it. Tebow's numbers were no where as god tier as Jackson, but he did go 13-1 twice doing it.

 

[Undone]

Then there's Tim Tebow and Lamar Jackson, both of whom won Heismans doing it. Tebow's numbers were no where as god tier as Jackson, but he did go 13-1 twice doing it.

Yeah, but I'd tend to doubt that the offensive line and players around those guys were nearly as proportionally bad as the ones on our team. Probably an important detail to mention there.         Sure, there were some "Brendan Jaimes'" and "Zavier Betts'" interspersed in there...but there was also a whole lotta suck as well.

But like I mentioned earlier, Adrian was a phenomenal rusher.

 

[Mavric]

AM spot in rushing on the team

#2 in 2018 : https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2018.html#all_rushing_and_receiving  (Ozigbo significantly ahead, also our best rushing team)

#2 in 2019 :  https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2019.html#all_rushing_and_receiving (Closer to #1 behind Mills)

#1 in 2020:  https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2020.html#all_rushing_and_receiving

#1 in 2021: https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/nebraska/2021.html#all_rushing_and_receiving 

Easy to see the correlation between QB being your #1 rusher and the overall effectiveness going down. 

Correlation but I don't think it's causation.  In fact, you could probably make a stronger argument for the opposite.  We tried to run Martinez less to keep him from getting injured and then our offense wasn't as effective.

Martinez's attempts trended down his first three years.  His total carries were 140 as a freshman then 140 as a sophomore before dropping to 91 his third year.  They were back up to 133 his fourth year.  According to PFF (who I believe is tracking called running plays), those also trended down from 91 then 89, 69 and 78.

So I don't think the part where the QB was the leading rusher was the primary cause for the offensive struggles.  I'd say it is a result of the lack of other legitimate options due to injuries, attitudes and poor line play.

 

[Lorewarn]

Correlation but I don't think it's causation.  In fact, you could probably make a stronger argument for the opposite.  We tried to run Martinez less to keep him from getting injured and then our offense wasn't as effective.

Martinez's attempts trended down his first three years.  His total carries were 140 as a freshman then 140 as a sophomore before dropping to 91 his third year.  They were back up to 133 his fourth year.  According to PFF (who I believe is tracking called running plays), those also trended down from 91 then 89, 69 and 78.

So I don't think the part where the QB was the leading rusher was the primary cause for the offensive struggles.  I'd say it is a result of the lack of other legitimate options due to injuries, attitudes and poor line play.

How about per game, since his third year was a COVID shortened season.

 

[brophog]

Yeah, but I'd tend to doubt that the offensive line and players around those guys were nearly as proportionally bad as the ones on our team. 

Where in the quoted sentence does it mention Nebraska?

It’s actually very uncommon to see a QB be a team’s leading rusher, if only because of sacks. The service academies vary a bit.  Air Force, for instance, is very FB dominated while Army is a little more balanced in this respect. I do think Navy can be pretty QB heavy at times, at least they have been in the past.

 

[Mavric]

How about per game, since his third year was a COVID shortened season.

Good point.

Per game total carries:

2018 - 12.7

2019 - 14.4

2020 - 13.0

2021 - 12.1

Per game called runs:

2018 - 8.3

2019 - 8.9

2020 - 9.8

2021 - 7.1

Still trended down but not as dramatically. 

2020 was also somewhat skewed by Martinez running a ton against Rutgers in the last game of the season.  One big game on a smaller sample size made a decent difference.  Only averaged 9.7 total carries and 7.0 called runs the rest of the season.

 

[brophog]

I don't care what scheme or style we play at NU anymore at all - I just want to win games.

I think the beauty of the game is in the variance of styles you can deploy. Even when the pendulum seems to swing one way, as more offenses copy that more defenses adjust to it and then that is an opportunity for it to swing the other way. The Big 12 of recent years is a good example of that.

To me what you do is not as important as how you do it. Looking at great offenses in college football over the years, one commonality you'll see is they often have a set of core concepts they get really good at and then they branch out off of that. Here's our core play, here's the constraint plays, and here are the complimentary plays. In terms of this conversation where we're talking about how play calling affects opportunity and how to counter defenses, I think this branching logic works well.

In terms of Satterfield, I honestly don't have a great feel for how specifically this will play out at Nebraska, partly because his time at Temple and South Carolina are very different.