Run Defense vs. Pass Defense (How big is the discrepancy?)

[lo country]

I guess I was hoping to find passing numbers closer to our opponents' averages and rushing numbers much lower than opponents' averages. I found..., well not sure

...

Is it because of play style? small sample? Good run d? Bad pass D? or "all of the above"? I want to look a little deeper myself.

In one of the threads discussing our pass D, our opponents averages thus far was pulled. All of them threw higher percentage of passes than run of their average save for one. I think it's safe to say that we have not seen the last of the aerial assaults against NU. IIRC, Wisky, Iowa, Minnie and Illinois are all throwing over 200 yards per game. Illinois should be a great test. Talking heads say he is the best "pure passer" in the west.We have no more guys to bench, so maybe the staff will pull their heads out of their collective butts and figure out something..........

I also think our rush D might not be near what we were told it will be. My guess is based upon non-existent pass rush (no real dominant performance) and the fact teams are stupid to run when they can put 245 yards on us in a quarter...... Southern Miss abandoned run and came close to upsetting us....

Your assumptions are based on what about S. Miss? They ran for 102,239,and 280 in their first three games, so you think they didn't want to run the ball or felt they didn't need to run the ball? They had like -14 yards rushing in the first half of that game.
You think they said we don't need to run the ball. We can assume we will put up 245 yards passing in a quarter? We can assume they thought this after throwing for about 140 in the first half? I think they said we aren't running and we are down 22 so we most likely are going to throw.

You assume a lot.

Look, in the first half NU played well defensively, they really did. In the second they didn't. That needs to be fixed. It is a game of momentum and NU lost the momentum om the second play of the first half. NU is not good enough to mail it in and they kind of did that.

The offense did their job they just didn't finish drives like they had all year. Remember up till the last game NU was 11 of 12 in the red zone.

The pass d needs to get a lot better, but you are making a lot of assumptions

I didn't assume that Southern Miss threw for 245 yards in the 4th quarter. I didn't assume that this board blamed Davie for the loss against Miami only to see every DB we have get torched for almost 500 yards. I am not assuming that every team we have faced in 4 games has thrown more than their season average to date......I am assuming that our rush D might not be what it is advertised. Unsure if we will know this season. I'd plan to throw until we can stop it. To date, we haven't......Here is the post from our own "ItsNotaFakeID" Note the bold as to what Opponents "normally" do and what they did against NU.

Let's have a little fun. Here are the stats of Michigan State's opponents in 2007:

UAB: 21/39, 265 yards, 1TD, 1 INT, 19.3 QBR; 32 rushes, 12 yards

Bowling Green: 32/51, 328 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT, 45.6 QBR; 25 rushes, 47 yards

Pittsburgh: 9/20, 118 yards, 0 TD, 2 INT, 10.5 QBR; 38 rushes, 207 yards

Notre Dame: 11/20 118 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT, 6.2 QBR; 35 rushes, 117 yards

Wisconsin: 17/25, 267 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, 43.0 QBR; 52 rushes, 214 yards

Northwestern: 38/49, 522 yards, 5 TD, 0 INT, 96.0 QBR; 34 rushes, 91 yards

Indiana: 13/19, 211 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 56.3 QBR; 17 rushes 22 yards

Ohio State: 15/23, 206 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 69.4 QBR; 47 rushes, 229 yards

Iowa: 5/15, 64 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 11.4 QBR; 44 rushes, 230 yards

Michigan: 18/33, 221 yards, 4 TD, 1 INT; 51.4 QBR; 30 rushes, 100 yards

Purdue: 29/45, 362 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, 67.8 QBR; 25 rushes, 173 yards

Penn State: 16/37, 188 yards, 1 TD, 0 INT, 33.9 QBR; 40 rushes, 167 yards

And now Nebraska's defensive stats through 4 games so far (this is going to be painful):

BYU: 28/46, 379 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 68.5/87.6 (Hill/Mangum) QBR; 26 rushes, 132 yards

South Alabama: 26/45, 313 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT, 42.5 QBR; 24 rushes, 19 yards

Miami: 25/42, 379 yards, 2 TD, 1 INT, 67.6 QBR; 33 rushes, 132 yards

Southern Miss: 26/42 447 (*cough*) yards, 2 TD, 0 INT, 72.1 QBR; 23 rushes, 11 yards

So as you can see, those aren't quite similar stats that teams put up against the Spartans in Narduzzi's first year implementing his similar defense at Michigan State. Now you can take this one of a few ways:

1. It's easier for teams to pass the ball in 2015 than 2007, and there's been a greater emphasis by teams to throw the ball more. I think it's pretty safe to acknowledge that offenses are scoring more points in today's version of the game than they scored in older versions. Just the way the game is called and officiated gives offenses advantages over the defense, and good teams are taking advantage of that. Despite the changes in the game since 2007, there's not much of a difference in how many yards a majority of teams pass for between 2007 and 2014. In 2007, a majority of college teams ended the season with 2155-3685 yards whereas in 2014 a majority of teams ended the season with 2146-3782 yards.

2. Perhaps the teams we faced were just pass heavy teams. It's true, the Big Ten is a run-heavy conference, and perhaps our secondary won't be asked to do as much work as they have during the past 4 weeks. So perhaps we won't be seeing these kind of performances because our conference opponents will stress running over passing and will play into the strength of our defense. I looked at the run/pass % of teams on our schedules, just to see if we just had the misfortune of coming across pass-heavy offenses.

BYU after 4 games, sits at 54/46 pass/run%: against Nebraska it was 64/36 pass/run%

USA after 3 games, sits at 51/49 pass/run%: against Nebraska it was 65/35 pass/run%

Miami after 3 games, sits at 54/46 pass/run%: against Nebraska it was 56/44 pass/run%

So Miss after 4 games, sits at 53/47 pass/run%: against Nebraska it was 65/35 pass/run %

So the only game where the pass/run splits wasn't significantly different than the team's season average was against Miami, which means that teams were able to notice that they were able to get Nebraska through the air that they were comfortable enough abandoning their identity. If Nebraska's secondary play doesn't improve, more teams--regardless of how pass or run-heavy their offenses are, will be comfortable in abandoning their offensive identity as well. Let's see their pass/run% so far in this young season:

Illinois: 51/49 pass/run%

Wisconsin: 48/52 pass/run%

Minnesota: 46/54 pass/run%

Northwestern: 27/73 pass/run%

Purdue: 50/50 pass/run%

Michigan State: 42/58 pass/run%

Rutgers: 43/57 pass/run%

Iowa: 43/57 pass/run%

So more teams in the Big Ten favor the run game over the pass, that's not really surprising, and could mean that our defense may improve upon entering conference play. Although I'm not sure if teams will stay true to their identity and tendencies or if they will abandon that and pass more because of how porous our secondary has been in the early going.

Nevertheless, this defense--the secondary especially--has a lot of work to do if we want to get through this season respectably.

 

[NUinID]

Lo I am not exactly sure what you are trying to prove by listing all this stuff. I guess it is that the teams we have played have thrown the ball more than they normally do against our defense. Yes, that is correct. Nor do I understand why you bolded that from my post, but really don't address it. Your premise was why run the ball when we can throw it. I said they were throwing it because they weren't doing anything running the ball.

I also think our rush D might not be near what we were told it will be. My guess is based upon non-existent pass rush (no real dominant performance) and the fact teams are stupid to run when they can put 245 yards on us in a quarter...... Southern Miss abandoned run and came close to upsetting us....

This is what you said. They are stupid to run the ball when they can put up 245 in a quarter. S. Miss didn't know they could or would put up 245 in the forth quarter. Up to that point they had about 200 in the game which is less than 75 a quarter. That is an assumption. They had abandoned the run before the 4th quarter. They abandoned the run because they were getting no where doing it.

I said several times the pass defense needs to get better.

 

[Huskers19911]

IMO, if I'm coaching against Nebraska, I'm focusing on an air attack. Coaches look to exploit weaknesses of the opposition, and our pass defense has been weak so far, to say the least. You're crazy if you don't believe teams will focus more on passing in their week of preparation from us. Does that mean they will abandon the run? Of course not, if that's your strength as a team, you will try to use it. Do I think we will see more passing from these teams? Definitely. Few runs, then take a chance at the deep ball. If we are able to stop run plays early in a game against big ten opponents, I think we will see pass plays early, and often. If we can't stop the run, we are dead in the water. This defense is definitely meant to stop run first, so I hope running teams can't gash us.

 

[84HuskerLaw]

It seems the question we are wondering about at this point, concerning the defense, is whether or not we do have a good run defense or that it has not been truly tested either because our opponents are not very good or because they never seriously tried because they found passing to be so effective. In fairness, it seems some of the stats suggest that opponents did not have much success in running early on in the games and turned to the pass in an effort to move the ball. I think a chart which showed the stats in rush and pass yards on a quarter by quarter basis across all four opponents would indicate this, particularly if it showed also the numbers of plays run v pass on a quarter by quarter basis. This would indicate the numbers of attempts in each category and yards gained. I am not adept at the stats researching of course but I believe you may have more of an answer as to the issue being debated. My hunch is that teams found passing was the preferred approach for BOTH reasons: the needed to pass as running was not getting the desired results (they were behind or trying to keep up with NU scoring wise).

But there are more factors to consider including injured Husker players at key positions in some games at key times. Opponents were also trying to take advantage of perceived weaknesses in NU's defense due to injuries to LBs, CBs and Safeties, and also there were a few key series later in games where we were short a DT or DE or two and opponents found that our D Line was too tired to rush the passer with any real zest. Result was they felt very comfortable dropping back to throw as time was not a problem. Our defense has given up quite a few long pass plays at critical times. These big plays distort the stats somewhat as well. Run plays take time that teams may feel they don't have in close games as several of our games have been. Time constraints favor the pass over the run as well.