What did we learn South Alabama?

Scarlet Overkill said:
I wonder if they just had no motivation to play this particular team, thinking they could just show up and get the W - I thought that was in the past, but now, thinking it isn’t.  I can recall that even in a loss, the CU game last year was at least fun to watch the offense work.  This was about like paint drying.
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Yea we looked better in our first game last year, than we did in our first game this year.  We won so thats good...but i think Husker fans have to be about as dissapointed today as realistically possible, other than losing......which we seriously could have lost this game today....against South Alabama....at home....not under a new staff and scheme...this was surprising.  And yet we actually should feel somewhat fortunate to have won.

 
Oh well, at least they'll have lots of weed tonight and taxpayer funded room and board thats nicer than 50% of people in Nebraska!

 
I may be in the minority, but today's offensive performance may turn out to be a good thing for the unit.  The o-line should improve, as they gain more experience.  Martinez's performance should be a good learning tool for him.  There were a few plays where he was trying to force the ball into Wandale or Washington, instead of going through his reads.  Mike'l Severe tweeted that Spielman was open on a number of plays.  Spielman is NU's best WR, and he wasn't targeted very often.  The coaches will show that to Martinez and the performance should improve.  The other WR's will need to continue to read coverage and find spots in the zone for Martinez.

 
Dogs In A Pile said:
I was worried I way under estimated this team with my 7-5 preseason pick after seeing all the preseason hype. Now I'm wondering if I might have been overly optimistic :(
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I was right there with you but someone put kool-aid in my gatorade and I switched to 9-3.  I think you're good at 7-5 but you'll have to sweat out a 3-3 start.

 
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.

 
  • Martinez played horrible. I even said last year that he takes too long and needs to make quicker reads. Almost being too poised can make balls sail on you. I assume we will see a better performance next week because he is a damn good player 
  • Mills does a decent job of getting those 1-2 yards we need on 3rd and 4th down. Washington is an absolute must this season to get things going
  • I feel we did a bad job of getting the ball to our playmakers. JD and Wandale needed a few more touches and I feel Noa is more than capable. Was hoping to see even Woodyard get in there  
  • Our tight ends looked great early - why stop looking for them? 
  • The offensive line, especially the middle, is very weak. Hixson, Jurgens, and Wilson weren't impressive. Will came in and at least snapped the ball correctly

I felt that Frost called a really conservative game. We never seemed to look downfield at all and So Bama was on to us all game with their zone

  • Our D line did't play as bad as the announcers and others were saying. I saw Damion making some pushes and overall this unit played alright. When you only have 3 DL it isn't easy to always be disruptive like people think 
  • Our LB still have a ways to go. Mo B still overplays, but I appreciate the passion. Honas was taking some bad angles. Miller played alright and JoJo was def the bright spot. Outside of 2 plays I didn't see much from Tannor or Davis
  • Really happy for Lee and he played awesome today. Cam Taylor did a good job as well. There were still some wide open guys out there today though. Our LBs struggled to cover many times. 

Chin still has some alignment issues IMO that I was frustrated about last year. We caught a few breaks, but also made a few plays. Overall, I didn't see a whole lot of difference. 

 
As bad as the offense was, the game turned weird when JD muffed the punt in the 3rd quarter.  NU was up 14, and was poised to get ok field position (JD was calling for a fair catch around the 25-30 yard line.  That's one of NU's best players, making a huge mistake.

 
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