McBride vs Pelini

[Enhance]

I think McBride's defense was much more of an attacking D than Bo's has been the last few years, but I think that has more to do with the schemes they face than anything else. The old Big 8 conference of the 1980's and 1990's had nothing like the spread attacks that exist in the Big 12 today.

There are a lot of good points being made but I think this is one of the more important things to realize. Most teams Nebraska faced in the Big 8 days, especially those from the Big 8, ran the ball 20+ times from traditional power sets. Nebraska's defense, and almost every other defense, doesn't see that on a week-to-week basis. The heavy-run teams in this day and age run from the spread and shotgun formations, with a lot of zone-read.

 

[74Hunter]

I was watching a few of the classic Husker matchups in the 90's from my collection. I've always wondered why McBride would crowd the line with linebackers like Farley and Williams. I know that it creates confusion for the line and QB but why don't we see Pelini doing it more? Does he really need to do it with his scheme?

It seems that as a defensive coordinator that you would want to create as much confusion as possible. Now, I don't propose to know anywhere near what Bo does when it comes to defense. It seems that at times we let the Offense come to us instead of attacking as much as our great defenses of the past. We profess to be an attacking defense but after comparing the McBride vs Pelini defenses I would say that McBride's style was much more agressive.

I realize that in order to pull off what we did in the 90's that you have to have lock down corners and strong safeties. Which is what we had with Prince and Dennard not to mention a couple of other good safeties.

Don't get me wrong, I love what Pelini puts on the field. I wanted to start a discussion on the nuances of both defenses and why the McBride model isn't implemented more.

I think a lot of the reason for the different philosophy is the type of offenses that are run in the Big 12 now. You can't afford to have linebackers crowding the line when there are 4-5wrs spreading the field.

It seems like Pelini's philosophy is to have the 4 down linemen collapse the pocket and contain the QB which should allow the LB/CB/S to tee off on the skill position players.

This. In the 90's we didn't face many qb's that were running threats, unlike the game today. The times we did (Mizzou & Corby Jones 97, tu & James Brown 96) we normally had our worst defensive performances. This defense built by Bo is designed to contain the running qb's with the DE's and push the pocket back from the middle, where as McBride just turned the whole front loose to create mayhem. As someone else pointed out, Bo's 03 defense looked a lot different than the one we have used since 08.

In the mid 90s we had great cb's and safeties that could play bump-and-run and ballhawk. It was a very fun defense to watch. We did give up more big play touchdowns then than we do now, but if you watch those games, we had a lot more 3 and outs also. Some of that may have had to do with how our offensive philosophy matched with our defensive philosophy, but it certainly was great.

I don't really like the bend but don't break that we play now as much as McBride's defense, but I would have liked to see how Bo's defense would have fared against Mizzou and tu back then. It is effective most of the time, which is what matters in the long run.

 

[Count 'Bility]

I think a lot of the difference in scheming is simple perception of the situation. McBride ALWAYS had the convenience of an offense that was gonna score points, he was allowed to take the chance of giving up one or two big plays for the sake of puttin on the pressure and making just as many if not more big plays. Let's face, Bo and Carl have simple NOT had the convenience of an offense to back them up, so they have not been able to afford those chances. Just my thought. You think in the Florida Fiesta Bowl if Weurfal, instead of a safety, got a deep fade to Hilliard for a 99 yd Td, that Florida woulda went on to win that game, or Nebraska woulda just won, what, 60-31?