So You're Telling Me...

Waterloohusker26 said:
cm husker said:
Elf said:
PTPer said:
Per Dan Hoppen Tweet: Nebraska play calling this season:

Six wins: 56.2% runs, 43.8% passes

Seven losses: 40.7% runs, 59.3% passes
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Honestly, I'm ok with either one of those ratios as long as we're winning. Give it some time and I think some of those 7 losses become wins sooner rather than later.
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I should hope Purdue isn't ever a loss again.
But that said, will people be content with 3 to 4 losses a season?
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All of the BOlievers were apparently content with it. Had a conversation with one of the relatives tonight who still wishes we had Bo. I asked him why, and the response was well the team never gave up on him. My response was the big ten title game vs Wisky or last year vs Wisky. He merely said that it wasn't bad coaching that it was just superior players.

Once again I asked how could a walk on from GI be the back up QB for this team. His response well that's not the coaches fault. I find myself having conversations with people like this more often then I'd like to. Not sure if they will ever get it.
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We didn't face a single player this season as good as Gordon, and Wisconsin is a shell of itself after their own coaching changes (yet they ground out 8+ wins). That said, I won't be calling for anyone to be fired if Riley gets to 9+ wins a year. I just know that if he does that, the Boleavers will apply the same idiotic pressure to this staff that was applied to Bo's and possibly catalyze another dumb firing.

As to the walkon back up at QB, Riley inherited something like two 4 stars and two 3 stars, including a guy he recruited at OSU, so if Fyfe moved up the chart, it's because he beat out some good talent. Not because there was no talent available.

 
Guy Chamberlin said:
UCLA is notoriously bad against the run.

It wasn't a secret that Riley intended to commit to the run to test that defense. UCLA couldn't stop us, so we kept running, with 19 passes thrown in to keep the defense on its toes.

Of course it's the offense we'd love to see, but it requires an opposing defense willing to play along.

I know some fans can't believe it, but Nebraska also came out with run-heavy offenses in several games this season. Run heavy would be questionable. They maybe tried to be more balanced. You also have to look at the run calls. Most of the season the run call were not power run calls, but runs out of the shotgun. Did you know Janovich averages 6.3ypc? He averages over 7ypc when he gets more then 3 carries & averages 1.8ypc when he gets 2 or less.This has been the problem with Langsdorf if something doesn't work right away, scrap it & move on. You need to be able to come back to something. UCLA did that with the screen game & it put them back in the game when it was almost out of reach.

It worked well in some games -- and some quarters -- but not against better defenses that made the proper adjustments. This really shouldn't be a surprise.

(Same fans may not have noticed UCLA's first touchdown came on a fourth and one where they completed a 25 yard pass. It's not a bad call when it works.) It was a power-set & they slid a large WR flat on the line. It was not a shotgun 4 wide set fade pass to the endzone. There is a big difference in the call.

I do think Langsdorf made a decision to run Tommy more, and Tommy was generally willing (despite another Illinois-like brain fart) and that should definitely be a template for next year. I actually think Riley finally stepped in & pushed Langsdorf into that game plan of a run heavy scheme. It also helped that Tommy looked terrible against Iowa & UCLA was undersized & thin on the DL & at LB.

If you are blaming Nebraska's W/L record on offensive play calling, while refusing to notice the major deficiencies in the Nebraska defense (on display again last night) I think you lose a huge amount of credibility as a football analyst. Several times it was the case. NU was at 93% chance to win, before Tommy threw the ball and stopped the clock. Hell a sack there might have won NU the game. Tommy's Miami pick in OT. A first down vs Wisconsin would have sealed it. 4 picks vs Iowa one for a TD. The most telling stat is Tommy's 22 td's to 16 int's. Not good. Yes the Defense let a lot of teams come back & win, but only after the offense failed to seal the wins or put them in some very bad spots.

It was a good win and a fun game. Happy New Year. Seriously.
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I was mostly happy with the last game. I still can't stand to see the shotgun formation in the redzone, but it was a solid effort from all three units.

All and all it was a crappy season, but at least they left us with some hope for the future. Happy New Year's to you as well

 
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The idea that Riley and Langs wanted to do things "their way" a.k.a. The Callahan Effect isn't true at all. Coming into the job, he was asked about being pass-happy and he said no, I want people on the ground with the ball. He said the same thing following the win versus UCLA, so at this point I'm curious if people are just hearing what they want to.

Fans see 40-plus passes and think that's the game plan. 22-25's roughly the sweet spot and you need the talent available to run the ball if you're going to stick to that. That means all 11 on the offensive side of the ball and Terrell Newby did no one any favors by dancing back and forth behind five yard holes and getting dropped for two. As of right now, Zig's your back of the future.

The plan versus UCLA was fantastic for Tommy because it didn't give him much of a chance to put the win in jeopardy. The run/pass ratio was going to be heavy and when you've got a QB with legs like Armstrong, you make a team that can't cover everyone pay, especially once they cheat up just in case he takes off.

 
eightlaces said:
The idea that Riley and Langs wanted to do things "their way" a.k.a. The Callahan Effect isn't true at all. Coming into the job, he was asked about being pass-happy and he said no, I want people on the ground with the ball. He said the same thing following the win versus UCLA, so at this point I'm curious if people are just hearing what they want to.
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What you say starts to ring hollow if it isn't matching up to what you do.

 
There is no "sweet spot" for passing the ball. It's about the effectiveness of the passes you do throw. That's why TO had a highly effective passing game even though he often threw it around 15 times a game. "Balance" is overrated, and I hope Riley is realizing that and coaching up Langs accordingly.

I generally agree with everything here but what the bolded implies. Armstrong won the game (leading an offense to 37 points while posting 250+ yards in total offense is much better than just avoiding a loss). This just makes me wonder why that wasn't the game plan for games like Purdue and Illinois, which should have been walk off wins.

The plan versus UCLA was fantastic for Tommy because it didn't give him much of a chance to put the win in jeopardy. The run/pass ratio was going to be heavy and when you've got a QB with legs like Armstrong, you make a team that can't cover everyone pay, especially once they cheat up just in case he takes off.
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What's interesting to me is that some are saying "well, early in the season, like against Miami, the team was down in the first half and had to throw its way back into the game."

But that's such an shallow way of thinking, and the UCLA game proves it.

Using Miami as a counter-case study, NU started the Miami game with 10 called pass plays against only 5 called running plays (armstrong did scramble twice for a total of 6 yards during that stretch), despite having much more success on called running plays. That passing to rushing ratio really put NU in some tough positions and led to the 17-0 and eventual 30-10 deficits.

By contrast, against UCLA, NU ran it 14 times (47 yards) against in the first quarter (3 passes for 37 yards), and 15 times for 97 yards in the second quarter against only about 6 pass attempts.

I think, thankfully, NU came in thinking they would establish the run and because they didn't fall behind by 2 scores until the second quarter, Langs (and Riley?) didn't go into "panic and abandon" mode like they did against Miami, a game where NU was actually having more success on the ground in the first quarter than against UCLA (8 carries for 37 yards versus 14 carries for 47 yards). Because, by staying with it, they wore UCLA down and went for almost 100 yards only 15 carries in the second quarter.

The other telling stat is time of possession. Against Miami, the Hurricanes possessed it about the same amount of time as NU. Against UCLA, NU possessed it almost twice as long in the first half along (and a whopping 12 minutes to 3 minutes in the third quarter that turned the game around, while running it 19 times and throwing it only 6 times).

I look at this and see clear evidence that NU clearly shifted gears and approaches for this bowl game. I'm really hopeful that they will continue to move in that direction next season. I just have a little doubt because I think both Langs and Riley are throw first guys and won't want to "grind out" wins like they did against UCLA.

 
We treated the tun game as a novelty. More of a necessity to ensure the defenses wouldn't simply defend the pass exclusively every drive. It cost us at least 3 games which is severely unfortunate considering we obviously HAD the players to run an effective ground game.

UCLA has a bad rush defense, that much was clear. But with Ozigbo and Cross and Jannovich we could have been beating the hell out of defensive lines all season yet we were passing on 1st and 2nd down in the 2st quarter for no apparent reason other than we could. Also, I would like to see more stretch to the wide side of the field instead of smash up the middle.

 
BaytownHusker said:
husker B-rent said:
He's saying that they should have used the same game plan all season.

In theory that would make a lot of fans happy! Myself included.

However, you also run the risk of being too predictable. Some of those points last night were because ucla didn't game plan for us to play that style.
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To predictable? Didn't hurt Iowa Mich St to much. There are a ton of other teams that are pretty predictable and had a lot of success
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Exactly. Some of the posters on here seem to think that if you run the ball 70% of the time you are predictable. That's not predictable, I feel sorry for the fool who only uses that stat as justification for tendencies.

You can run the ball every down if you wanted to and still not be very predictable in the way you choose to run by taking advantage of having a diversified run game.

Which is easier to defend?

Team A: 50% run, 2 different plays

Team B: 85% run, 10 different plays

Answer? Team A.

The point of this is that if you run Traps/Whams, Counters, Powers/Blasts, Toss, Options, Iso/Slam, etc...you won't be all that predictable. You get predictable when you only run up the center's arse.

 
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1995 Redux said:
We treated the tun game as a novelty. More of a necessity to ensure the defenses wouldn't simply defend the pass exclusively every drive. It cost us at least 3 games which is severely unfortunate considering we obviously HAD the players to run an effective ground game.

UCLA has a bad rush defense, that much was clear. But with Ozigbo and Cross and Jannovich we could have been beating the hell out of defensive lines all season yet we were passing on 1st and 2nd down in the 2st quarter for no apparent reason other than we could. Also, I would like to see more stretch to the wide side of the field instead of smash up the middle.
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Someone quoted Langsdorf in another thread following the game and he basically said it would've been nice if they could've run like that all season but some games they couldn't.

I challenge this mindset because saying something like that suggests they exhausted all their efforts to try and run the ball and nothing worked well enough. This can be proven false, however, by the fact that there were several games Janovich had no carries and Ozigbo had only a couple or none at all.

Then there was the 3rd and 1 play inside UCLA's 5-yard line in the 3rd quarter. They relied heavily on the rush attack this drive and the Bruins had been unable to stop yet, yet they called a shotgun pass play.

Langsdorf deserves credit for sticking to the run and calling a pretty darn good game, but there are still moments where it's clear to me he still doesn't quite trust or have a lot of faith in the run game.

 
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