What did we learn South Alabama?

Martinez plays too tight instead of letting his instincts take over once he lets loose we’ll be a better team. 

I don’t trust this offensive line as far as I can throw it. 

Alex Davis looked worthy of the offseason hype. 

Mo Barry is still one of the guys on either side of the ball bringing the necessary intensity. 

CBs looked great especially cam Taylor he looks like a pure football player. 

Dismuke and Williams seemed flat footed and indecisive too often. 

Ill give frost a couple games to see to see if the play calls were dialed back because of the opponent or that’s the bland offense we’ll keep seeing 

 
brophog said:
I said early this summer I thought the defense would need to carry the offense early due to how young we were. What I didn’t know was that we’d alter our offense this much. I don’t know if the Hunt situation has affected things or there are other things we don’t know, or we just thought we could do this because of an inferior opponent.

A basis of Frost’s offense is to use spacing and motion to create big plays. As Frost mentioned in postgame, they were able to bring a Safety into the box all day. Usually against his offense that’s tough to do. The difference is how much two tight and condensed sets we used. When we had a 2 back set with Robinson, instead of creating an advantage, we simply collapsed the area of the field they had to defend. There were chances to be had in the passing game because of this, but Martinez tried to place too many balls in zones than just accepting the open receiver underneath. Again, though, we could have greatly aided him by pulling defenders laterally with screens, TE/RB, etc.

One reason we didnt, and Martinez felt so much need to go downfield relates to the poor running on first down. Notice the best runs of the day were by Mo. That’s because he bounced plays outside. Mills just put his head down, ran into defenders and accepted the two yard gain. They may be fine in some offenses, but it neuters our playcalling if it’s constantly 2nd and long. I thought Mills showed a lack of vision all day. Yes, the blocking wasn’t there, and that’s a big problem, but Mo had it just as bad and he averaged over 6 ypc while Mills was just under 3.

The center position is as big of a worry as many of us feared. Not only the bad snaps, but both centers were constantly being driven back. I’m confident Frost will get back to creating numbers in the box to allow our running game to get going, and that will help Martinez get back on track. The offensive line issues are more concerning. We may not have an offensive line that allows him to call some of the formations he called today.
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@brophog Great points.  Do you think lack of spacing is why we weren't calling a whole lot of misdirection with pulling either?  At least I didn't remember that.  Here's hoping Frost and staff kept it very vanilla to keep some things for CU.  He has mentioned multiple times about "teams running new plays (that NU ran) the following week" over the off-season. 

We usually learn the most after the 2nd game of the season.  I'm not writing anything off yet, but man the OL needs to improve in a hurry.

 
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huskerfan702 said:
Martinez plays too tight instead of letting his instincts take over once he lets loose we’ll be a better team. 

I don’t trust this offensive line as far as I can throw it. 

Alex Davis looked worthy of the offseason hype. 

Mo Barry is still one of the guys on either side of the ball bringing the necessary intensity. 

CBs looked great especially cam Taylor he looks like a pure football player. 

Dismuke and Williams seemed flat footed and indecisive too often. 

Ill give frost a couple games to see to see if the play calls were dialed back because of the opponent or that’s the bland offense we’ll keep seeing 
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Mo still struggles in pass coverage.  Now we know why Dedrick Young played LB most of the time when NU would go into nickel and dime defenses last year.

 
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ColoradoHusk said:
Mo still struggles in pass coverage.  Now we know why Dedrick Young played LB most of the time when NU would go into nickel and dime defenses last year.
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He’s not an every down LB that’s for sure but he’s giving his all out there and I didn’t see anyone else I’d rather have in the game 

 
The Blackshirts will need to win us some games. Right now Wan’Dale is easily our biggest offensive threat.  Still too damn many penalties. We still slip and fall on our a$$ when we get the opportunity to stomp on an opponents neck and put the game away. 

 
if we don't see major improvement next week on offense, this could be a long season.

i wasn't buying all the preseason hype, but i never thought we'd do this bad on offense today.

 
huskerfan702 said:
He’s not an every down LB that’s for sure but he’s giving his all out there and I didn’t see anyone else I’d rather have in the game 
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Barry is a key part of the defense, and I have never questioned his effort and leadership.  He still needs to do better in pass coverage.

MichiganDad3 said:
Did Green play? I didn't hear his name called.
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He probably won't play for a few games.  He got to camp late and isn't near game shape.

 
In the Deed the Glory said:
@brophog Great points.  Do you think lack of spacing is why we weren't calling a whole lot of misdirection with pulling either?  At least I didn't remember that. 
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I don’t remember much of that, either, but I can say you really can’t pull if you can’t control the middle of the LOS and that was a massive problem all day. I’d have to go over the game to answer that better, but their NG really made things difficult for us, regardless.

 
brophog said:
I don’t remember much of that, either, but I can say you really can’t pull if you can’t control the middle of the LOS and that was a massive problem all day. I’d have to go over the game to answer that better, but their NG really made things difficult for us, regardless.
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Right, that's what I was getting at.  I am VERY concerned about the G-C-G work today.  Hoping they just haven't played together enough, but man they couldn't control the LOS and because of that they could not get to the second level at all.  Frost has some cool stuff where he pulls a T and a TE across the formation, but he won't be able to do that if the interior line is in the QB's lap 1/2 a second after the snap.

 
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