While the Georgia Southern game was a let down, this Oklahoma game seemed to be right up there as well. Everyone knew the Sooners had more firepower than the Huskers, but Trev Alberts had just fired Scott Frost, and some people thought this would bring a renewed energy to the team:
Someone tag Jim on ‘Freezing Cold Takes’ twitter account. I had several friends ask me in which galaxy Nebraska could stay within 2 touchdowns of Oklahoma, and I had no answer. But I understood the optimism with Mickey Joseph at the helm, ‘Big Noon Kickoff’ doing their national broadcast from Lincoln, a rivalry that generally has close games… I could kind of see it, I just wasn’t buying it.
I had 45-27 Sooners in my game preview, but the reality is it probably could have been 70-7 if OU didn’t have an off day offensively and didn’t pull their defensive starters. What seemed like a weekend full of optimism (even if it was a little wishful thinking) ended with another coach fired, and 1-3 at the bye week when many were predicting 3-1.
There’s not a ton to talk about, so i’ll just go over some things that I knew were problems in my preview and that are rearing their ugly head now. Can Joseph and Busch fix them? I really don’t know.
Nebraska defensively:
If you remember before the season, I stated that some of the things we did just weren’t going to work. We typically stayed in a two high shell to protect from big plays, but with our DL I didn’t think they would be able to hold down the fort like Stille, Daniels, Rogers, Thomas, etc., did. Also, we seemingly are constantly misaligned.
Let’s take the run fits out of it. Here you have trips to the bottom of the screen. We have a corner up pressing to take away the outside WR, Kolarevic who has proven he can’t play in space over the #2 wideout, and then a safety 12 yards deep over the top of the #3 WR who happens to be their best playmaker. Guys, before you hit play, I promise you when Oklahoma’s OC saw us line up like this, this was him in the booth:
So at the snap you have Kolarevic so far wide over #2 he can’t get to the #3, and the ILB splitting the difference heads in when the H-back goes inside. #3 (Mims) sprints at our safety to have him bail and then just stops.
That is a no win situation for anyone on our defense. No shot our pass rush gets home, no shot Kolarevic can get him, no shot our ILB comes back out to take it away, and our safety is responsible for deep ball so has to bail. That’s just so bad.
I also brought up in my preview, that for all of the people who just thought we would run a 4 man line and put 2 of our edge guys on it, that we would be in trouble because people could run all over us with no big bodies there.
Now, this is a 3rd and 7, but you see what i’m talking about as we have 3 “edge guys” in on this play. Oklahoma sees 4 in the box and just runs a QB draw culminating in some of the worst effort i’ve see on a football field by 0.
Oklahoma ran for over 300 yards on us and the offensive coordinator couldn’t have had an easier day. While the Sooners were off a little bit, not sure it could have went any smoother for them. It was just time to make a change.
I’m hoping that Bill Busch starts implementing a much more aggressive scheme and if we have a few long plays against us, fine. But maybe we could get some plays behind the line of scrimmage. We are 115th in the country in sacks, and just all around awful on that side of the ball. Let’s move on…
Nebraska Offense:
While Nebraska looked good the first 3 games, they finally played a defense with a pulse and it went as expected. Nebraska scored on the first drive of the game, then failed to score again until Oklahoma pulled their starters and Nebraska had our reserves in as well. While I like a lot of what the Huskers do, you are starting to see where our deficiencies were.
As mentioned in the preview, our OL is a problem. We lost our best player, second best guy was out for the season, now we have Prochazska out for the year, and we are just circling the drain trying to move anyone off the line of scrimmage and protect Casey Thompson. Makes you wonder where the comment came from when he said Nebraska’s OL is better than Texas’.
Let’s look at this for example, our near 5 star and 64th ranked player in the nation is at LT here going against an Oklahoma 4 star:
Maybe he held the ball too long, maybe. But what is Whipple supposed to do? Our 300 pounder gets pushed back by a 240 pound linebacker and our QB has no shot. Or what about this one with our four star RT:
Or here…
It just doesn’t make any sense to me how we are that bad on the line. Those are four star guys. And when we try to run we still can’t get a hand on anyone:
I just don’t know what answers Whipple will be able to give us until the line is figured out, and with two guys out for the season I think we’ve thrown everything that is a viable option out there.
The good news is Indiana, Rutgers, those types of teams aren’t Oklahoma so we may have an easier/better shot there.
We will see everyone on Friday with the gambling picks (up 4 units on the year) and toilet reading tweets.
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The defense gave up and had no effort. That video with 0 not trying, look at 44 at the beginning. He is running the other way watching the QB. That is prob why MJ had to let go of Chin. Players gave up on him. I wounder if the whole team already checked out. The o-line might of just cashed it in already, Tough task for MJ to get everyone back on the same page. I like what he is selling but he has one hard job right now.
Do you think we promised Joseph the head job if we fire Frost in-season? I can’t imagine he would want to come here other than for that opportunity considering all the things we are hearing post-firing. Mickey should have enough connections back here to know he was joining a toxic environment.
No, Mickey won’t be head coach here.
Honestly, I think some of the players may have checked out mentally. I’m not sure anything can be done to reverse it. The Indiana game is going to be telling IMHO. If we see the same effort, like the OU game, then NU likely won’t win another game this season. I never thought this would turn into a total disaster but it’s getting close. If they can find a way to beat Indiana then maybe they can get some momentum in the positive direction.
Our offensive linemen have become Bodybuilders – they look very impressive getting off the bus. But on the football field, they have the mobility of Statues. Our Strength & Conditioning program has actually made our 4-star recruits regress.
My man! Right on.
You’ll like this, SSO…
On the HM site, there was a thread criticizing the media for not covering and making public Frost’s professional and personal transgressions. I chimed in to point out that maybe we shouldn’t cast stones because HM didn’t allow those discussions, either.
Your pal RR quickly slapped me with a week-long probation for “questioning the moderation of the board”! Joe and Max clearly appreciate RR’s long hours watching over their site but that dude is nothing but a insecure and petty tyrant who takes offense at anything he perceives to be a slight.
I’m not going to go in on RR since he and I got along until he went with a different crowd. But i’m basically kicked off that board for saying some of the things that they are now complaining no one talked about? How many times did I post something and a moderator would say “without a link this will be deleted”. When before the moderator got in with the other crowd those posts were allowed. Again, I literally got kicked off for saying some of the things that Joseph is pointing out as things they need to correct now. Heck, I even have heard that my name is blocked out as a bad word over there.
An apology from them and I’d shut this thing down and go back over there in a second. But I know that’s not happening.
Agree with yours and other comments regarding effort. I’ll give Frost his due in that the kids continually fought for him. Now that he’s gone it looks like quite a few players are looking to pack it in for the year which is pretty ugly. We’ll see if firing Chins gets Mickey anywhere but he’s been thrown to the wolves trying to keep this thing together for the remainder of the season. I think his comment after the game that were looking at getting some of the younger kids on the field is indicative of him trying to find guys who will fight for him and the team.
Looking at it now I don’t think there is any way to salvage the season. I think Mickey will do more than an admirable job to get guys to fight and pull through but there is so much psychological/emotional damage right now it’s overwhelming. Couple that with the misalignment issues, the O line and D line development issues and the S&C disaster and I don’t see anything good happening here. Just gotta hope we are staring at the bottom for Nebraska football because we have fallen into the abyss. Not sure who we get but it’s going to be an intense and long rebuild to right this ship. Got to find the right guy for that kind of job.
Yeah agree with your rebuild comment. I listened to a CFB podcast the other day and they were talking about Nebraska needing someone who can build a program, with an emphasis on BUILDING. Some are good at keeping the train rolling or whatnot, but I think at this point we need someone who shows he can build from the ground up.
I believe we can be a better version of some other schools that needed to be built up, like Kansas or Iowa State or whatnot, but at this point I think we need reconstruction. I think it will be beneficial for us long term. I started this coaching search not super excited about guys like Campbell, Leipold or Klieman, but at this point I’ve turned to thinking they could be a steady presence we need. I’m still higher on other guys, but more open to those guys now, because they have a track record of BUILDING. If we can be a steady team for 4-5 years, then talk about what changes/tweaks could happen to get us ‘over the top’. But I think we’ve got to be more long-term thinking right now.