Offensive line play

[BigRedBuster]

I rewatched the game today. 

One thing i noticed was that our blocking from the tight end was horrible on a number of plays and directly lead to the play being blown up. 

Our O line played bad. But, the tightends were to blame sometimes too. 

PS....there were also sometimes on zone reads where the QB should have kept the ball and it lead to an easy defensive play that wasn’t the O line’s fault.  

In short....we had major issues through our the offense. 

 

[HuskersNC949597]

Lol.  “Bad players”

Heck yeah, can't have a good rant without going nuts.

 

[Landlord]

Wait. Wasn't our offensive stat line from the Colorado game the Huskerboard dream? A stat line impossible without a vastly improved offensive line?

It is pretty weird honestly. The OL play seemed a bit Jeckyl and Hide from the Colorado game to the Troy game. I'm not knowledgeable enough about football to really know why exactly, but whatever Troy did worked far better.

 

[onlyHskrfaninIL]

I rewatched the game today. 

One thing i noticed was that our blocking from the tight end was horrible on a number of plays and directly lead to the play being blown up. 

Our O line played bad. But, the tightends were to blame sometimes too. 

PS....there were also sometimes on zone reads where the QB should have kept the ball and it lead to an easy defensive play that wasn’t the O line’s fault.  

In short....we had major issues through our the offense. 

yes, stoll had a really bad game.  i wasn't sure if some of the zone reads weren't really reads and he just supposed to hand it off.  but i agree, if he had the option he made a lot of bad reads.

i don't think bunch is as bad as that game plan (and blocking) made him look.  i hope they open it up for him a little if he plays this week.

 

[Mavric]

I rewatched the game today. 

One thing i noticed was that our blocking from the tight end was horrible on a number of plays and directly lead to the play being blown up. 

Our O line played bad. But, the tightends were to blame sometimes too. 

PS....there were also sometimes on zone reads where the QB should have kept the ball and it lead to an easy defensive play that wasn’t the O line’s fault.  

In short....we had major issues through our the offense. 

I haven't had a chance to watch the game again yet but I noticed several of these thing live so I was curious how many times it was really someone other than the OL who was (mainly) at fault for a given play.

I've long said that people seem to be overly critical of the OL.  I think a lot of it is it's easy just to say it was "bad OL play" but it takes more work to look into it to see what actually happened.  I'm sure they made their fare share of bad plays.  But like @Guy Chamberlin said, the OL was pretty good just a week before so I find it pretty unlikely that they suddenly got terrible in a week.

I think we were in a bad situation with our QB so we were limited in what we were going to do on offense.  Frost has said this twice now.  And my personal opinion is we got even more conservative after Bunch made some really bad decisions early.  

Troy was doubling Morgan and selling out to stop the run.  But we (apparently) didn't think Bunch could handle much more than some basic zone plays.  So we played right into Troy's hands.  And even then - as you noted - it was actually the TEs that were missing blocks at least as much as the line.  But a lot of people don't seem to notice that and just blame the line.

 

[BigRedBuster]

I haven't had a chance to watch the game again yet but I noticed several of these thing live so I was curious how many times it was really someone other than the OL who was (mainly) at fault for a given play.

I've long said that people seem to be overly critical of the OL.  I think a lot of it is it's easy just to say it was "bad OL play" but it takes more work to look into it to see what actually happened.  I'm sure they made their fare share of bad plays.  But like @Guy Chamberlin said, the OL was pretty good just a week before so I find it pretty unlikely that they suddenly got terrible in a week.

I think we were in a bad situation with our QB so we were limited in what we were going to do on offense.  Frost has said this twice now.  And my personal opinion is we got even more conservative after Bunch made some really bad decisions early.  

Troy was doubling Morgan and selling out to stop the run.  But we (apparently) didn't think Bunch could handle much more than some basic zone plays.  So we played right into Troy's hands.  And even then - as you noted - it was actually the TEs that were missing blocks at least as much as the line.  But a lot of people don't seem to notice that and just blame the line.

Very true.

The zone reads I mentioned where they should have been kept, very well could have been told to hand it off.  If 2AM was totally off limits for this game, we really couldn't have risked running Bunch a bunch.

That really limits the effectiveness of everyone else in the offense.  If Troy assumes Bunch isn't going to run, it makes defending our offense a lot easier.

On the O line, I've said for a long time that part of the problem over the last number of years is that our running scheme was so pathetic, that it made it extremely difficult for the O line to do their job.  If the defense knows a running play is going to be somewhere between the tackles with the RB....that's pretty easy to defend.  This game seemed to, unfortunately, go back to that predictability probably because of our QB situation.

 

[Mavric]

On the O line, I've said for a long time that part of the problem over the last number of years is that our running scheme was so pathetic, that it made it extremely difficult for the O line to do their job.  If the defense knows a running play is going to be somewhere between the tackles with the RB....that's pretty easy to defend.  This game seemed to, unfortunately, go back to that predictability probably because of our QB situation.

Definitely agree with this.  And I think we were pretty predictable in this game.  IMO, there wasn't anywhere near the variety we saw against Colorado.  So I think they were running with a very limited playbook, probably for a couple reasons - what Bunch knew and what they trusted him to run.  We were hoping that would be enough - as Frost said, lean on the OL, Defense and Special Teams.  But the OL wasn't great, the Defense let a couple too many big plays go and Special Teams was anything but.  It added up to a loss to a team that we definitely could have beaten with a little more explosiveness from our offense.

 

[DrunkOffPunch]

I haven't had a chance to watch the game again yet but I noticed several of these thing live so I was curious how many times it was really someone other than the OL who was (mainly) at fault for a given play.

Another thing that made the OL look bad (as far as the passing game goes) is that IMO Bunch was holding the ball too long. One of Frost’s big things he wants in a QB is quick decision making. We seemed to be ok faking a run to suck in the LBs. That should lead to some easier throws but Bunch wasn’t seeing them. Maybe it was his indecisiveness or maybe just a lack of reps and timing with the offense.

 

[Undone]

I would have liked to have seen outside pitches or quick throws to Washington. The big problem was multiple 3rd & shorts that we couldn't convert on. 

I suppose that I'd have to at least partially disagree with some comments above that "what Troy did [on offense] worked better." One of their touchdowns was on a punt return. So technically, they scored fewer offensive points than we did. And we both rushed for and passed for more yards.

*Edit: Not that it makes it any better, really. In my opinion we should always crack at least 450 yards of total offense and put up at least 30 points against a Sun Belt team.

 

[InOmaha]

Considering how many times we threw to the tight ends, I'd consider them linemen in the Troy game. 

Both weeks were a play or mistake here and there from winning.  I thought they would win by 3 TDs with AM in and picked them by 10 with Bunch playing in the office pool last Friday.  Which ended up being the missed FG and punt return TD.  Or the holding call trading out the Nebraska TD for 3 and the punt return.

At 0-2 they are just as good or bad on the field as they would be if they made 1 or 2 extra plays in each game and were 2-0.

 

[Mavric]

I rewatched the game today. 

One thing i noticed was that our blocking from the tight end was horrible on a number of plays and directly lead to the play being blown up. 

Our O line played bad. But, the tightends were to blame sometimes too. 

PS....there were also sometimes on zone reads where the QB should have kept the ball and it lead to an easy defensive play that wasn’t the O line’s fault.  

In short....we had major issues through our the offense. 

Watched the first quarter-and-a-half at lunch.  

The claims of our OL playing terrible are grossly exaggerated - at least to that point. (Not saying you're making that claim, just continuing the discussion.)

Not that they were great, but they did a pretty good job on most plays.  A couple of the bigger screw-ups were the TEs.  And Conrad had a few bad plays.  The rest did pretty well most of the time.  The biggest problem we had was not communicating on a couple plays and that let a guy go free who could/should have been blocked - that's definitely a problem that needs fixed but a much easier problem to be fixed than getting beat.

There were at least as many plays where someone else screwed a play up but unless you really watch to see what happened it would be easy to think it was a big screw up by the offensive line.  The most obvious example is when we started on our own 6 - after a stupid fair catch by Lindsey - and Oz got tackled for a loss.  Most people probably saw that as terrible OL play.  But actually the line did all they could on that play.  Troy had a LB walked up into the play-side B gap showing blitz well before the snap and he did blitz.  We pulled a guy to block him but because he was there so fast there was not choice but to kick him out.  But Oz still tried to run outside him and got tackled.  One would think Bunch would have been able to see the blitz coming right where we were trying to run and change something up.  You would think Oz would have seen that coming and tried to run inside it.  But everyone else just keeps doing what was originally called and run right into a blitzing LB. 

Nothing the OL could have done differently but they probably got blamed for it by a lot of people.

 

[BigRedBuster]

Watched the first quarter-and-a-half at lunch.  

The claims of our OL playing terrible are grossly exaggerated - at least to that point. (Not saying you're making that claim, just continuing the discussion.)

Not that they were great, but they did a pretty good job on most plays.  A couple of the bigger screw-ups were the TEs.  And Conrad had a few bad plays.  The rest did pretty well most of the time.  The biggest problem we had was not communicating on a couple plays and that let a guy go free who could/should have been blocked - that's definitely a problem that needs fixed but a much easier problem to be fixed than getting beat.

There were at least as many plays where someone else screwed a play up but unless you really watch to see what happened it would be easy to think it was a big screw up by the offensive line.  The most obvious example is when we started on our own 6 - after a stupid fair catch by Lindsey - and Oz got tackled for a loss.  Most people probably saw that as terrible OL play.  But actually the line did all they could on that play.  Troy had a LB walked up into the play-side B gap showing blitz well before the snap and he did blitz.  We pulled a guy to block him but because he was there so fast there was not choice but to kick him out.  But Oz still tried to run outside him and got tackled.  One would think Bunch would have been able to see the blitz coming right where we were trying to run and change something up.  You would think Oz would have seen that coming and tried to run inside it.  But everyone else just keeps doing what was originally called and run right into a blitzing LB. 

Nothing the OL could have done differently but they probably got blamed for it by a lot of people.

Pretty much the same type of things I saw. 

This isnt stuff where we are getting beat by better players physically. 

These are things that can be cleaned up with good coaching and more time in the system. 

 

[yort2000]

It is pretty weird honestly. The OL play seemed a bit Jeckyl and Hide from the Colorado game to the Troy game. I'm not knowledgeable enough about football to really know why exactly, but whatever Troy did worked far better.

I'm sure Troy saw some things on film that they could exploit through alignment and pressure packages.  Only the 2nd game for these guys in this system.  With the lack of experience, you would have to expect that seeing things for the first time at speed would lead to misreads, confusion, and playing slowly as a result of thinking instead of just knowing and attacking.

 

[Mavric]

Per Sean Callahan, he was told Bunch was having a hard time reading the zone read correctly.  Not sure how many times we actually ran that play wrong or if that means we quit running it because he was struggling with it but that would definitely put a damper on the offense.

 

[Decoy73]

Per Sean Callahan, he was told Bunch was having a hard time reading the zone read correctly.  Not sure how many times we actually ran that play wrong or if that means we quit running it because he was struggling with it but that would definitely put a damper on the offense.

I was at the game and I agree 100% with this.