Second Spring Practice - 2012

No, this has nothing to do with Cody Green. Taylor was *not* making reads at one point, could you remind me of when that was? Maybe it was after the Texas game. If he was making reads that day, they were the wrong ones. It would be a credit to him if he was shut down because Texas outschemed us, rather than Taylor simply being unable to make the right reads.

 
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knapplc said:
zoogies said:
Texas figured out that Taylor wasn't making reads when he ran the 'zone read.'

Really though, that zone read has been more effective than the option. Kind of a weird situation. Taylor still is fast and can make the runs, it is just that they are quite rare. I mean, he put up the yards last year, but it was not to devastating, gamebreaking effect.
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In early 2010, Taylor was making reads. The TV guys were raving about how long he kept the ball in the RB's gut before he made his read in several games.

Texas was a team meltdown, not a Taylor meltdown.
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Yes it was a team meltdown. And I meant my post to iIlustrate a point not be a bash Taylor jumping off point. I counted seven dropped passes by our wide receivers and of course Rex had the drop coming out of the backfield on a wheel route. All in all that day Nebraska's receivers dropped four passes which if caught would have been touchdowns. The point I made was that when Texas loaded the box and came after Taylor our offense simply couldn't respond. That inability to burn teams with the pass has been a recurring theme for the past two seasons. Taylor is incredibly fast in straight line speed but he has no wiggle to make defenders miss.

 
zoogies said:
No, this has nothing to do with Cody Green. Taylor was *not* making reads at one point, could you remind me of when that was? Maybe it was after the Texas game. If he was making reads that day, they were the wrong ones. It would be a credit to him if he was shut down because Texas outschemed us, rather than Taylor simply being unable to make the right reads.
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I think it was pretty obvious that Taylor was not making reads at times last year - that, or other teams became MUCH better at defending it. I have no explanation for that, other than a guess that he was still injured. As far as 2010, I would imagine it was post-injury. I don't recall anyone concluding that he was not making reads in 2010, but the last half of the season was such a mess... who knows.

In the Texas game the problem was not Taylor making poor reads. It was Nebraska thinking they were better than they were and disrespecting an opponent. Same thing happened in the bowl game against Washington. And against Northwestern in 2011. And against Iowa State in 2009. This is a recurring theme with this team over the past few years. They get so wrapped up in "being Nebraska" that they forget they are not the 80s and 90s Huskers who were standing on the shoulders of giants, they are the current Huskers, who have a lot of proving left to do.

 
zoogies said:
No, this has nothing to do with Cody Green. Taylor was *not* making reads at one point, could you remind me of when that was? Maybe it was after the Texas game. If he was making reads that day, they were the wrong ones. It would be a credit to him if he was shut down because Texas outschemed us, rather than Taylor simply being unable to make the right reads.
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Your remembering right. Muschamp said after the game that they noticed thru watching film that he was guessing on his reads.

 
Taylor was making reads against Texas - but he was doing it before the snap. Muschamp caught it on film and used it to show Taylor a certain look before the snap, and then do something else once the ball was snapped to trick him into a bad decision.

 
That is not what Muschamp said. He said:

2. After Nebraska played South Dakota State, there was talk that freshman QB Taylor Martinez was confused about when to keep and when to give on the zone read. Muschamp said he thinks there are times in the Nebraska offense when Martinez intends to keep the ball no matter what, even if the defensive keys say to give the ball.
"I don't know that he's not reading the defense," Muschamp said. "What I told the kids was that I think at times some things are pre-determined. When you have an athlete like that, if I'm Nebraska, there's times I want him to carry the ball regardless of what happens.

"Based on the zone read series and the different things they're doing, you can take him out of the game a little bit based on how you play it.

"Now, they'll block it a little differently to make sure he carries the ball. So I just told the kids, 'Sometimes, guys, regardless of what looks like should be a give read, it may be a pull read because they are going to put the ball in his hands to carry the football,' which is a smart move on their part."

Unless the Texas defense has two defenders keying on Martinez and taking huge gambles in pass coverage - basically gambling that Martinez couldn't find his hot receiver before the pressure got to him.
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LINK

 
So I am not going crazy. We were not running zone reads that day. Whether the reads where coming before the snap, or the decision was coming from the playcall, it was simply not a zone *read.*

The important thing is not what won or lost us that game.

Taylor is incredibly fast in straight line speed but he has no wiggle to make defenders miss.
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I agree with this. I think the zone reads up the middle were the best use of Taylor's burst, rather than plays that had him run laterally first. If Taylor has his burst back, I think we should see more of that. The downside is that he hasn't been great at making the reads so far. If he could get to that point, it would be a deadly weapon in our arsenal.

 
I don't know why we're talking about Texas 2010... Taylor did show clear improvement in his reads last year. He never reached perfection by any stretch of the imagination, but decision-making in the option game and the passing game got significantly better. Not saying that he's arrived, just disagreeing with the implication that we haven't seen progress.

 
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Pre-snap read doesn't equal guessing. It just means he was making his decision based on the look of the defense before the snap as opposed to reading the DE/LB during the play, like you're supposed to. It's less like guesswork and more like he was cutting corners, which isn't all that surprising for a freshman QB. At least that's my take, based on my limited understanding of the game.

 
Not Taylor cutting corners, the point is that the zone read plays were not reads by design, and they were that way because coaches thought that was better than letting him handle the reads during the play - probably because he wasn't polished enough to really run it yet.

Here's why we are talking about the Texas game:

. But in 2010 it started with the loss to Texas. The Horns came to Lincoln and essentially copied the defense that Arizona State beat Nebraska with back in 1996. In other words they essentially put 9 guys in the box and sold out on every snap to stuff the run. The goal was to put the Nebraska offense into 3rd and long as often as possible. Since that game against Texas back in 2010 every team that has beaten Nebraska has used the exact same approach.
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I disagreed with this was what happened, and that their success had more to do with figuring out how to stop our staple, and not a simple matter of selling out against the run.
I maintain that the most dangerous and most explosive we can make Taylor is off the zone read, but that is dependent on being able to run it crisply and making the right reads during the play. Without it, we can try ways to make it work, but it really can only get us so far.

Can Taylor execute the reads well these days? I don't know, and I hope he can, with all this time now in the system. I just hope that we make that a big focus of the offense and put a lot of work into its execution.

 
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zoogies said:
Not Taylor cutting corners, the point is that the zone read plays were not reads by design, and they were that way because coaches thought that was better than letting him handle the reads during the play - probably because he wasn't polished enough to really run it yet.

Here's why we are talking about the Texas game:

. But in 2010 it started with the loss to Texas. The Horns came to Lincoln and essentially copied the defense that Arizona State beat Nebraska with back in 1996. In other words they essentially put 9 guys in the box and sold out on every snap to stuff the run. The goal was to put the Nebraska offense into 3rd and long as often as possible. Since that game against Texas back in 2010 every team that has beaten Nebraska has used the exact same approach.
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I disagreed with this was what happened, and that their success had more to do with figuring out how to stop our staple, and not a simple matter of selling out against the run.
I maintain that the most dangerous and most explosive we can make Taylor is off the zone read, but that is dependent on being able to run it crisply and making the right reads during the play. Without it, we can try ways to make it work, but it really can only get us so far.

Can Taylor execute the reads well these days? I don't know, and I hope he can, with all this time now in the system. I just hope that we make that a big focus of the offense and put a lot of work into its execution.
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i wonder how much is left in running the zone read......

 
knapplc said:
zoogies said:
No, this has nothing to do with Cody Green. Taylor was *not* making reads at one point, could you remind me of when that was? Maybe it was after the Texas game. If he was making reads that day, they were the wrong ones. It would be a credit to him if he was shut down because Texas outschemed us, rather than Taylor simply being unable to make the right reads.
Click to expand...
I think it was pretty obvious that Taylor was not making reads at times last year - that, or other teams became MUCH better at defending it. I have no explanation for that, other than a guess that he was still injured. As far as 2010, I would imagine it was post-injury. I don't recall anyone concluding that he was not making reads in 2010, but the last half of the season was such a mess... who knows.

In the Texas game the problem was not Taylor making poor reads. It was Nebraska thinking they were better than they were and disrespecting an opponent. Same thing happened in the bowl game against Washington. And against Northwestern in 2011. And against Iowa State in 2009. This is a recurring theme with this team over the past few years. They get so wrapped up in "being Nebraska" that they forget they are not the 80s and 90s Huskers who were standing on the shoulders of giants, they are the current Huskers, who have a lot of proving left to do.
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Taylor made bad reads all game long against Uteras. They played a 3-4 and he couldn't read the NG properly all game. He kept keeping the ball and Uteras only keyed in on him. When Lee came in they started having success with the ZR because Lee made the right reads. Had he possessed Taylor's speed then they would have gotten bigger chunks than they did. Taylor seemed to have that issue all year long though, he would guess had most times would keep it if he had a choice.

 
caveman99 said:
knapplc said:
zoogies said:
No, this has nothing to do with Cody Green. Taylor was *not* making reads at one point, could you remind me of when that was? Maybe it was after the Texas game. If he was making reads that day, they were the wrong ones. It would be a credit to him if he was shut down because Texas outschemed us, rather than Taylor simply being unable to make the right reads.
Click to expand...
I think it was pretty obvious that Taylor was not making reads at times last year - that, or other teams became MUCH better at defending it. I have no explanation for that, other than a guess that he was still injured. As far as 2010, I would imagine it was post-injury. I don't recall anyone concluding that he was not making reads in 2010, but the last half of the season was such a mess... who knows.

In the Texas game the problem was not Taylor making poor reads. It was Nebraska thinking they were better than they were and disrespecting an opponent. Same thing happened in the bowl game against Washington. And against Northwestern in 2011. And against Iowa State in 2009. This is a recurring theme with this team over the past few years. They get so wrapped up in "being Nebraska" that they forget they are not the 80s and 90s Huskers who were standing on the shoulders of giants, they are the current Huskers, who have a lot of proving left to do.
Click to expand...
Taylor made bad reads all game long against Uteras. They played a 3-4 and he couldn't read the NG properly all game. He kept keeping the ball and Uteras only keyed in on him. When Lee came in they started having success with the ZR because Lee made the right reads. Had he possessed Taylor's speed then they would have gotten bigger chunks than they did. Taylor seemed to have that issue all year long though, he would guess had most times would keep it if he had a choice.
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Texas keyed on both Taylor and the RB. There was no place to go with the read, even if Taylor had made the correct read. Both options were covered. That's why we had wide receivers running down field completely by themselves all day - they just couldn't catch the ball when it hit them in their hands.

The reason Zac Lee had more success running the zone read was partially that he made better reads - and it was partially that Texas backed off on the run when he came in. As soon as Lee entered, Texas defenders started shouting "pass, pass, pass!"

 
Hercules said:
caveman99 said:
knapplc said:
zoogies said:
No, this has nothing to do with Cody Green. Taylor was *not* making reads at one point, could you remind me of when that was? Maybe it was after the Texas game. If he was making reads that day, they were the wrong ones. It would be a credit to him if he was shut down because Texas outschemed us, rather than Taylor simply being unable to make the right reads.
Click to expand...
I think it was pretty obvious that Taylor was not making reads at times last year - that, or other teams became MUCH better at defending it. I have no explanation for that, other than a guess that he was still injured. As far as 2010, I would imagine it was post-injury. I don't recall anyone concluding that he was not making reads in 2010, but the last half of the season was such a mess... who knows.

In the Texas game the problem was not Taylor making poor reads. It was Nebraska thinking they were better than they were and disrespecting an opponent. Same thing happened in the bowl game against Washington. And against Northwestern in 2011. And against Iowa State in 2009. This is a recurring theme with this team over the past few years. They get so wrapped up in "being Nebraska" that they forget they are not the 80s and 90s Huskers who were standing on the shoulders of giants, they are the current Huskers, who have a lot of proving left to do.
Click to expand...
Taylor made bad reads all game long against Uteras. They played a 3-4 and he couldn't read the NG properly all game. He kept keeping the ball and Uteras only keyed in on him. When Lee came in they started having success with the ZR because Lee made the right reads. Had he possessed Taylor's speed then they would have gotten bigger chunks than they did. Taylor seemed to have that issue all year long though, he would guess had most times would keep it if he had a choice.
Click to expand...
Texas keyed on both Taylor and the RB. There was no place to go with the read, even if Taylor had made the correct read. Both options were covered. That's why we had wide receivers running down field completely by themselves all day - they just couldn't catch the ball when it hit them in their hands.

The reason Zac Lee had more success running the zone read was partially that he made better reads - and it was partially that Texas backed off on the run when he came in. As soon as Lee entered, Texas defenders started shouting "pass, pass, pass!"
Click to expand...
This. We playfaked off the zone read at least 4 times. Burkhead dropped one. Kinnie dropped one. Paul dropped 2+X. All woulda most likely been TD's.

 
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