Watson: Offensive meetings full of "creative discussions"
If you are looking for a label to pin on Nebraska's offense for next season, you might be out of luck according to Husker offensive coordinator Shawn Watson.
"We're not going to be a spread offense, that's not the deal," Watson said. "But that's the beautiful thing about the Nebraska offense. We're not going to be West Coast, we're not going to be spread. Those terms are overused by everybody. We're going to be the Nebraska offense. We're going to be multiple, balanced, and use the field, make the defense defend the field and defend us formationally."
Husker offensive coaches have been meeting every morning since the end of recruiting season. There's been blackboard work and film work. In the meetings, coaches talk through every play and discuss what each player does during every play. "A lot of creative discussions," Watson said.
So far the coaches, have just worked on plays concerning the running game. Next week, Watson expects to move onto the passing game.
"I've shared my vision for where I'd like to see us grow to based on the people we have ...Everybody has been great around the table in terms of helping to tweak and develop that vision for where I'd like to see us go based on our people."
It's an interesting combination of coaches in the meeting room, all coming to the table with different offensive backgrounds. Tim Beck, for instance, brings the perspective of someone familiar with the spread offense. "Tim has brought in some things concept-wise that will certainly have a huge impact on that," Watson said.
Despite the differing coaching backgrounds, Watson said: "There hasn't been any obstacles because of the caliber of people I'm working with."
Watson has said several times this offseason that he wants to see more of a running attack from his offense this year. Last year, the team struggled statistically running the ball, though much of that can be attributed to huge deficits in games.
"It's not fair to talk about last year. You got to throw that out, just situationally. So that's not fair to even talk about that," Watson said. "But I think to be a championship team you have to be able to run the football. You look at championship games, the team that rushes the ball, that can eat up chain, eat up clock, but be able to be multi-dimensional, being able to run and it pass it, is going to be the team that wins. But it all starts with being able to run the football."