Objective analysis wanted.

[Pennsyhusker]

I have been bullish on this year's team on the board since last Spring. And I still think we can have a good season. This is just one game and it remains to be seen how indicative it will be of our whole season. We all need to take a deep breath and let things play out.

I am curious about what knowledgeable Husker fans thought of the game in terms of the actual execution on the field. We have all had time now to vent our frustrations over last night and to let our emotions and disappointments calm down. I am assuming Riley is not going to get fired this week and that this staff will be here for a while. So please no posts about "hot seats" and "Bloners vs. non-Bloners" and so on. I am just curious what passionate fans think of the execution side of things in an objective way.

My take? Offense was solid and balanced. Bryant, Lee, and the receivers are good. The offensive line was improved in all phases of the game against a decent defensive line. I thought Conrad in particular played well. I thought Gates dominated his area despite his two penalties. Farmer needs help with his footwork. He is physical and when his technique is good he is solid. But too often he gets his feet at bad angles.

Defense? Schemes were decent although I thought we needed more press coverage. Saying we should have blitzed more is silly, I think, since their short passing game was clicking. What was apparent was that our linebackers, corners, and safeties were playing so tentatively and without instinct that they were easily blocked and taken out of plays. That happens when you are a step slow in reacting. It may look like we were not physical enough to shed blocks, but from my perspective it was mostly caused by a lack of aggressive and instinctive play. That should improve therefore as the season goes on.

Stoltenberg was hot and cold. When his pad level was good he was good. When his pad level was bad, which was half the time, he was bad. I also wonder if he is 100%. It is shocking to see a freshman get that much playing time at that spot.

It looks like all those people who were saying the transition to the 3-4 will take time were correct. My hope for this season is that we see this defense get better and better each week. Next week will be a huge test for this defense.

GBR

 

[tpmcg]

probably a fair analysis, hope we can adjust.

probably a better team we faced than most will give credit, but i understand the frustration.

 

[lookyzark]

That sounds fair. Lee has the best arm we've had in a while. I thought he looked sharp. Our team overall for the most part look big and strong. I can't get over the size DPE has put on.
So far, I'm not a fan of 3-4 for a couple of reasons. It seems like we care in prevent D t he entire time. If think being in a 3-4 would entice the opponent to want to run the ball because the passing game would struggle. Not the case at all...But when they did try to run we did well.

 

[Pennsyhusker]

probably a fair analysis, hope we can adjust.

probably a better team we faced than most will give credit, but i understand the frustration.

Arkansas State has some talent and they had a good offensive game plan. But our tentativeness on defense made that plan look better than it was.

 

[SWIowahawks]

I think Tre Bryant looked good. ASU missed a lot of tackles and Bryant made them miss on quite a few. He got worked hard last night and. average 30 carries a game. (Not many guys can).

It seemed like Nebraska had some good pass coverage as odd as that sounds. They were all over anyone trying to go deep. ASU did have a few drops but they seemed to all be contested.

Tanner Lee didn't do anything to scare me as a Hawk fan. He missed on a lot of throws and sailed a couple. He threw off his back foot on occasion and tried to thread the needle. He could have had a pick or two. He did make a couple good throws though.

Speaking of Lee, I don't remember him being on his butt very much. He got hit pretty good on a corner blitz but I think the pass protection was really good.

 

[tpmcg]

Maybe we can turn it up a bit, because they showed signs of capability, but would have a breakdown.

 

[Pennsyhusker]

I think Tre Bryant looked good. ASU missed a lot of tackles and Bryant made them miss on quite a few. He got worked hard last night and. average 30 carries a game. (Not many guys can).

It seemed like Nebraska had some good pass coverage as odd as that sounds. They were all over anyone trying to go deep. ASU did have a few drops but they seemed to all be contested.

Tanner Lee didn't do anything to scare me as a Hawk fan. He missed on a lot of throws and sailed a couple. He threw off his back foot on occasion and tried to thread the needle. He could have had a pick or two. He did make a couple good throws though.

Speaking of Lee, I don't remember him being on his butt very much. He got hit pretty good on a corner blitz but I think the pass protection was really good.

I agree with most of this. Like I said, I think our defense's problem was not scheme. The coverage was there if guys are reacting more quickly. Work in progress for sure.

 

[chicolby]

I'm not sure how to respond to the statement that our coverage was there. Watch Michigan on D. Watch Alabama on D. Watch any of the top 15 teams on D. Our players have so much cushion to receivers they picked up 10 yards at will. The promising thing is that once they got into the red zone, things tightened significantly. Maybe Diaco needs to teach them to tighten up earlier in the possession.

On to Oregon.

 

[SWIowahawks]

I'm not sure how to respond to the statement that our coverage was there. Watch Michigan on D. Watch Alabama on D. Watch any of the top 15 teams on D. Our players have so much cushion to receivers they picked up 10 yards at will. The promising thing is that once they got into the red zone, things tightened significantly. Maybe Diaco needs to teach them to tighten up earlier in the possession.

On to Oregon.

I guess I was more referring to deep balls. ASU dunked and dunked all night. Anytime they tried to hit one deep, there was nothing there.

I think Diaco made good adjustments to that WR screen that ASU used early in the game.

 

[Pennsyhusker]

I'm not sure how to respond to the statement that our coverage was there. Watch Michigan on D. Watch Alabama on D. Watch any of the top 15 teams on D. Our players have so much cushion to receivers they picked up 10 yards at will. The promising thing is that once they got into the red zone, things tightened significantly. Maybe Diaco needs to teach them to tighten up earlier in the possession.

On to Oregon.

Some routes were consistently wide open over the intermediate middle. Davison pointed out on the radio that that was caused by how we were playing our safeties on the edges. We clearly did not want them to beat us with the long ball. But it came with a price since our corners were a step slow in reacting to the crossing patterns and middle zone stuff. As for the cushion on their receivers, I hope someone on here with more knowledge of the 3-4 than I have can explain what the role of the OLB is on those bubble screens and quick outs to the flat. We may be blaming our corners for something that was not their responsibility. And as many have pointed out on here, our weakest link on defense is the OLB.

 

[Bugeater]

"I am curious about what knowledgeable Husker fans thought of the game in terms of the actual execution on the field."

As for the defense, I'm all for their execution. Seriously though, the third qtr saw the best of the defense, looked like they turned the corner for the game, even Glenn Mason was commenting that the D was more aggressive and were getting to the ball quicker. Then came the 4th quarter, yikes! Hope Diaco was just playing vanilla as best as he could before Oregon.

 

[Pennsyhusker]

"I am curious about what knowledgeable Husker fans thought of the game in terms of the actual execution on the field."

As for the defense, I'm all for their execution. Seriously though, the third qtr saw the best of the defense, looked like they turned the corner for the game, even Glenn Mason was commenting that the D was more aggressive and were getting to the ball quicker. Then came the 4th quarter, yikes! Hope Diaco was just playing vanilla as best as he could before Oregon.

Did Diaco change our approach in the 4th, or did we just not play as well? Perhaps our guys were worn out?

 

[Archie Graham]

Two major points:

(1) Diaco made a big mistake thinking we could run an extremely vanilla defense, with few adjustments, and win this game. This is not a bad Arkansas State team. They're solid. I'm sure his plan was to save everything for next week but he very nearly cost us the game. This simply shouldn't happen from a guy with his experience.

(2) Langs is great. I'm a big fan. But he really needs to have better game awareness when calling plays. It didn't need to be so exciting at the end.

 

[Pennsyhusker]

Two major points:

(1) Diaco made a big mistake thinking we could run an extremely vanilla defense, with few adjustments, and win this game. This is not a bad Arkansas State team. They're solid. I'm sure his plan was to save everything for next week but he very nearly cost us the game. This simply shouldn't happen from a guy with his experience.

(2) Langs is great. I'm a big fan. But he really needs to have better game awareness when calling plays. It didn't need to be so exciting at the end.

Agree with this

 

[Archie Graham]

Agree with this

Honestly, I think we will move forward from this and be fine. It's going to be tough to win next week; however, I'm confident that the team will be in good shape (pending injuries) as we head into B10 play.

 

[jlb321]

Our OLBs in this 3-4 scheme were asked to cover/tackle a lot of athletes in space last night and struggled.

 

[tpmcg]

need to lean on the ground game. bryant looks the part.

 

[scarletred]

Our OLBs in this 3-4 scheme were asked to cover/tackle a lot of athletes in space last night and struggled.

That was apparent to me too.some LBer's struggled.

 

[Archie Graham]

Our OLBs in this 3-4 scheme were asked to cover/tackle a lot of athletes in space last night and struggled.

I'm watching the game again this morning and can't believe Diaco rolled out this game plan. 27 points on the board at half and we are in a dog fight with screen passes.

 

[dinglefritz]

Agree with this

Clearly the plan was to try to eliminate big plays down the field by playing soft and keeping everything in front of the defense. It looked somewhat like the old bend but don't break philosophy of a FHC. We sat back and waited for the mistake throw and unfortunately their QB didn't throw many bad passes. We got a couple of picks, no fumbles, and narrowly missed several other picks. Lamar Jackson really could have and maybe should have picked that next to last pass in the end zone. AkSU had some long athletic WRs that had a big size advantage on our CBs and if the refs are letting them play like they did on the bubble screens and the one TD pass, it's pretty tough to defend. Their next to the last TD was a blatant push off with no call. I don't know if we had tried to pressure more that it would have helped. Their kid released the ball so quickly that we may have gotten burned but on the other hand we didn't stop them nearly enough laying back. Next week will be interesting to see what we do differently.

 

[dinglefritz]

That was apparent to me too.some LBer's struggled.

There's no way our OLBs could cover that speedy of a back. Huge mismatch.

 

[huskerfan830]

From a personnel standpoint on D, I think Bootle outplayed Lee and it wasn't even close. Think that needs to be evaluated going forwards. Thought Berry played well, and should play more. Kieron Williams is on the milk carton, but he needs to be incorporated in this scheme with his size speed combo. There's a place for him and Reed on the field at the same time.

As far as defensive scheme, the simple numbers game and personnel matchups appears daunting at best. Newby and Young have below average cover skills. Fortunately NU doesn't play too many squads that stock WRs and throw it 60 times a game. As far as blitzes, Gifford HAS to get home when in range. No excuse. Happy with Lamar Jackson.

Offensively. I felt pretty good. NU can have a pretty good multiple attack. Shoot, the slot wasn't even used that often or screen game. Lindsey and Speilman will give fits. Only guys that concern me is Farmer and Reimers. Both seemed uncomfortable out there.

Finally no one got hurt! Big thumbs up!

 

[dinglefritz]

From a personnel standpoint on D, I think Bootle outplayed Lee and it wasn't even close. Think that needs to be evaluated going forwards. Thought Berry played well, and should play more. Kieron Williams is on the milk carton, but he needs to be incorporated in this scheme with his size speed combo. There's a place for him and Reed on the field at the same time.

As far as defensive scheme, the simple numbers game and personnel matchups appears daunting at best. Newby and Young have below average cover skills. Fortunately NU doesn't play too many squads that stock WRs and throw it 60 times a game. As far as blitzes, Gifford HAS to get home when in range. No excuse. Happy with Lamar Jackson.

Offensively. I felt pretty good. NU can have a pretty good multiple attack. Shoot, the slot wasn't even used that often or screen game. Lindsey and Speilman will give fits. Only guys that concern me is Farmer and Reimers. Both seemed uncomfortable out there.

Finally no one got hurt! Big thumbs up!

I believe I heard that K Williams is injured. I don't think it's a long term thing but I'm not sure.

 

[jlb321]

I'm watching the game again this morning and can't believe Diaco rolled out this game plan. 27 points on the board at half and we are in a dog fight with screen passes.

our OLBs need to be much more athletic or evolve toward more of a strong safety prototype ...

Were we in a 3-3-5 or 4-2-5 much last night?

 

[huskerfan830]

our OLBs need to be much more athletic or evolve toward more of a strong safety prototype ...

Were we in a 3-3-5 or 4-2-5 much last night?

It was mostly a 3-4. Gifford, Weber, Newby and Young were out there a lot. Should have had 5 DBs out there, and should have moved them up a lot earlier.

 

[Tuco Salamanca]

I am pretty sure they had 5 DBs for a good portion of the 2nd half, definitely in the 3rd quarter.

 

[mgbreis]

I'm not gonna panic over this game. For all the bitching about the defense, the offense looks like it could be special. I will say this, I'm just not a big fan of watching d-linemen play two gap technique. There was just no pressure last night. Forget sacks, the qb didn't have anyone remotely in his vicinity. But.. give the guy his due - he's a pretty damn good qb.

 

[yort2000]

I'm not gonna panic over this game. For all the bitching about the defense, the offense looks like it could be special. I will say this, I'm just not a big fan of watching d-linemen play two gap technique. There was just no pressure last night. Forget sacks, the qb didn't have anyone remotely in his vicinity. But.. give the guy his due - he's a pretty damn good qb.

Hard to get pressure when it is 3 on 5 for most of the night.

 

[Archie Graham]

Also, Carlos Davis is very good for being a redshirt sophomore.

 

[yort2000]

I am pretty sure they had 5 DBs for a good portion of the 2nd half, definitely in the 3rd quarter.

The whole defensive philosophy for the ASU game has me perplexed. Based on ASU's formation and personnel group, it seems like we should have been in 4-2-5 all night, but maybe they wanted to get the players (especially the OLBs) game experience in the 3-4. I don't know. I guess we will see if anything changes for Oregon.

 

[SnohomishRed]

There was good last night but overall much more bad than good imho.

The two things most concerning and they are both on the coaches

1. Langsdorf is just not a good play caller , when we threw the ball on the very first play I thought oh great here we go. We can be gaining 10 yards a play on the ground but the first play that gets stuffed he then turns to the pass. He simply has no feel nor strategy to his calls, the only way to fix this is to fix him

2. Disco did not adjust at all to their game plan, good lord how many WR screens did they throw. Very concerning that we did nothing to stop this until well into the second half

 

[inWV]

Two major points:

(1) Diaco made a big mistake thinking we could run an extremely vanilla defense, with few adjustments, and win this game. This is not a bad Arkansas State team. They're solid. I'm sure his plan was to save everything for next week but he very nearly cost us the game. This simply shouldn't happen from a guy with his experience.

(2) Langs is great. I'm a big fan. But he really needs to have better game awareness when calling plays. It didn't need to be so exciting at the end.

Pretty much sums it up for me. Any idea how of how much nickel we played? And yes, I like the throwing part. But It looked to me like Bryant can pull the load. Shorten the game.

 

[rcnut223]

"I am curious about what knowledgeable Husker fans thought of the game in terms of the actual execution on the field."

As for the defense, I'm all for their execution. Seriously though, the third qtr saw the best of the defense, looked like they turned the corner for the game, even Glenn Mason was commenting that the D was more aggressive and were getting to the ball quicker. Then came the 4th quarter, yikes! Hope Diaco was just playing vanilla as best as he could before Oregon.

Arkansas state ran the same sets in the 3rd qtr as the first half, our adjustments dealt with that. Then they changed think up again in the 4th and you saw what happened

 

[z28craz]

1) Give Arkansas State Credit. I think they are better than most give them credit for. They have won 5 of the last 6 Sun Belt Championships, that WR they have was a transfer from Arkansas, and that DE is just a few sacks away from the NCAA record. So they have some talent. That said, I still think we should have won that game by 2-3 TDs.

2) Offensively was kind of what I expected. If the RB spot was in question, and if as the coaches have been saying, no one has truely separated themselves from the pack, then I would say we're solid at RB. Bryant looked solid last night. He broke some tackles, made guys miss, got up field quick. Very happy with Tre. The OL looked good. A nice improvement over last year. I was watching for some pulling guards and tackles, which I didn't see much of, so I think the offense was pretty vanilla. WRs looked good, about what I expected. Only one really bad drop that I can think of. DPE, Speilman, and Lindsey have serious speed and considering we didn't really get into the screen game, and only called a couple jet sweeps, I think those three are going to give some people fits once we really dig into the playbook. Lee looked pretty good. It wasn't quite up to the hype IMO, but he had some really nice throws, and for his first game in 2 years I thought he did a nice job. If he improves, then I certainly think the hype is legit. It's nice to have a QB under center who can go through progressions and actually hit a target. Overall, I think if the OL holds up, and if the O continues to improve, we have the weapons available to put up a lot of points this season.

3) Defensively, I guess the good thing is that they played about as vanilla as you can play, and I thought for the most part tackling was solid. As someone else mentioned, I thought deep passing routes were pretty well covered, and for the most part I thought our rush defense was ok. The screens and short passing routes killed us. Our corners couldn't get off of blocks and the LBers were not getting to the ball as quickly as I wanted. We got nearly zero pressure on the QB, which is not good considering how inexperienced the ASU offensive line was. I was hoping the transition to the 3-4 would be quick, but it seems it's going to take longer than I expected. They need to improve in a hurry. Also, this is probably more of my own personal preference than anything, but I prefer the DC to be on the sidelines during games. If Diaco really does have infectious energy, and is a good teacher for the D, I think those intangibles need to be on the sidelines during games, and that can't happen up in the booth. It's probably silly, but that's just my preference.

 

[BigRedLegion]

Having 2 deep safeties most of the night was killing us. Olb covering slot wr bad matchup. We have all seen the bend but dont break style before and that was with more dbs.Spread teams like ASU will cause major problems playing that way when olbs are having to cover in space. I think Diaco should be on the field. Defense has a long way to go. I liked the balance on offense. However the line needs to be more assignment sound and play calling was confusing at times. I thought Langs took a few to many deep shots on 1st down. Bryant looked real good. Receivers have talent. I think Lee will shred defenses if they protect well. At this point there is a ton to fix overall. I hope they do.

 

[SnohomishRed]

I wonder if the issues we saw last night were not noticed in camp and if they were (which they would have been) why was the game plan not designed to buffer our defense more. Riley is a good guy but these types of coaching mistakes are getting old

 

[headcard]

Our OLBs in this 3-4 scheme were asked to cover/tackle a lot of athletes in space last night and struggled.

Exactly. I don't understand why we were in base personnel against three and four wide so often.

 

[jflores]

Got called in for the North Korea thing, but a couple of points. Yes, I was one of those that didn't think the D would be ready for prime time. There's no rule that says when you switch coordinators, the performance level you had last year, was the backstop of what you could expect this year. Most teams take a step back, at least initially. I expect the team to get better each week but this won't be a lights out D probably this year. Too many missing pieces at the OLB position and young corners.

Very vanilla on D, combination of the opponent, and I think Diaco wanting to see how the base D performed under the lights. I'm hoping to see more nickel and dime at Oregon. And lastly on D, I see people have the same gripe they have with Riley, when you bring in Bob Diaco, you bring in Diaco's style of defense. Bringing him here is not going to get him to all of a sudden play super high pressure blitz ball. We knew more or less what we were getting when he was announced, keep it in front of you with occassional pressure.


The O looked good, while the line had its share of breakdowns, overall I thought they looked pretty decent compared to what we saw last year. Bryant looked good, Wilbon looked good the handful of plays he got. I'd like to see Bryant at the 22-24 carry mark and let other guys get a few more snaps. Tanner looked good, a couple of drops (including one for a TD) dropped the percentage a bit, but the real deal.

I'm with Archie, I actually like Langs. Probably the one beef folks are going to have with him as a playcaller is that he's a "by the sheet" play caller. If its 3rd and five, he's probably going to throw it, its not in his DNA to *expect* a run to get five yards at a critical moment late in the game. Especially when you have something like the safety happen, and superman Tre Bryant gets stuffed in the end zone at an inopportune time due to an OL bust. I think he pretty much expects a run to get 3-4 yards at any given time, and any more is a gift due to an well executed OL or Bryant making something happen.

Perhaps that will change as the OL matures, but I don't see him changing that anytime soon.

 

[Tuco Salamanca]

too many people comparing Oregon offense with Ark St. Only similarity is that they spread you out. Oregon will run much more and more successfully than Ark St.

 

[jflores]

too many people comparing Oregon offense with Ark St. Only similarity is that they spread you out. Oregon will run much more and more successfully than Ark St.

There's some shell shock over that 77 number.


Hopefully the Huskers bring their A game.