Secondary play...

Husker67 said:
teachercd said:
admo said:
What are you going to do, defend the pass or defend the run? I wish we could do both.

Gave up 11 yards on the ground today and got a few sacks. Dialed up some corner blitzes.

But 450 yards in the air is 100 too, too much. Even against a team like USM that has a pretty good passing game.
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Michigan did
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Michigan shut out a team that got the Huskers for 33 (albeit with a Hail Mary) and a bunch of yards. New coaches, new schemes, different results. Who's in better shape at this point, Michigan or Nebraska?
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This is a valid point but we need to temper it a bit. It's really dicey to compare opponents against different competition and try to draw wide-ranging conclusions from it. Each team is composed of different matchups, game plans and circumstances. I'm not disregarding your point - like I said, it's a valid argument. But, not all things remain constant between different teams. If they were then Nebraska would never lose to a team they shouldn't.

 
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After BYU played Nebraska, they played Boise State and UCLA. I'm guessing that had something to do with how flat they came out against Michigan.

Maybe we still lose if we play BYU in the fourth game of the year, rather than the first. Maybe we win. But against Michigan today, BYU looked different than they looked against us, Boise State and UCLA.

 
saunders45 said:
I would not be shocked to see a guy like Mitch Leidner throw for 300 yards against this defense. It's a complete mess.
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If we put Minny out of their comfort zone enough to make them throw it enough for Leidner to get those numbers, we'll win that game by 4 touchdowns.

Cmon Saunders. Youre smarter than that.

 
Count 'Bility said:
saunders45 said:
I would not be shocked to see a guy like Mitch Leidner throw for 300 yards against this defense. It's a complete mess.
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If we put Minny out of their comfort zone enough to make them throw it enough for Leidner to get those numbers, we'll win that game by 4 touchdowns.

Cmon Saunders. Youre smarter than that.
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Maybe, maybe not. Minny has a better defense than anyone we've played, and if we can't convert in the RZ, it won't matter.

 
Those inderneath routes are killing us. We cant cover running back in routes. I saw a few times where our lb's either got picked or ran into each other. Thats inexperience. That will come. As far as db's, coverage is terrible. This goes to technique and coaching.

They will figure it out. We have a lot of injuries and we are adjusting to new schemes. Yes, we are struggling, but to lose two games in final seconds, to teams that are pretty good says alot. Im hopeful. We just need to hit on all cylinders come conference play and we are good. The sky isnt falling. Its only 3 games in and folks want people fired. Glad some of you all arent the AD. We would change coaches every 5 games.

GBR!!

 
saunders45 said:
Count 'Bility said:
saunders45 said:
I would not be shocked to see a guy like Mitch Leidner throw for 300 yards against this defense. It's a complete mess.
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If we put Minny out of their comfort zone enough to make them throw it enough for Leidner to get those numbers, we'll win that game by 4 touchdowns.

Cmon Saunders. Youre smarter than that.
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Maybe, maybe not. Minny has a better defense than anyone we've played, and if we can't convert in the RZ, it won't matter.
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Well, yeah. You got me a little there I guess. They are awfully salty on D. I stand corrected my man.

2 touchdowns?

 
We knew LB would be a problem, and the lack of pass rush up front doesn't help, but I don't think anyone saw us sucking this badly at Pass D. One of the most disheartening things about the S.Miss game was it was the final nail in the coffin and I had to admit to myself just how bad our secondary is.

BYU - lots of yards, Davie got torched, really impressed with BYU's WRs.....first game of the season,...etc

USA - I don't recall us being terribly bad but they're USA

Miami - Miami is a quality opponent, still clinging to hope....seemed to improve after shuffling the secondary around.

SM - Okay, I'm officially out of hope. I don't recall seeing Davie in at all and we still got torched by Southern Miss.

And I don't mean to pile on to Davie, I feel bad for the kid. I think he just got picked on after the BYU game, we seemed to get torched even without him against S.Miss.

 
Despite the red zone inefficiencies, Nebraska was playing well in the first half, especially defensively. The defense gave up 133 passing yards in the 1st half and that's pretty damn good considering how poor they've been. By the end of the 3rd quarter that number had shot up to 202. By the end of the 4th quarter... 447 passing yards.

So. Miss more than doubled their passing attack output in one quarter alone. We have to keep in mind that part of this was because So. Miss had to pass if they were going to even have a fighting chance of winning the game.

Clearly, however, poor pass defense is a theme and so we were probably going to give up 300+ yards passing regardless and that's not good. But, all things considered, I didn't think we were playing that bad in the 1st half defensively. We looked quite good.

But, as we saw against Miami and even BYU, keeping this defense on the field for extended periods of time is a recipe for disaster. We should've been up 35-0 at halftime and then would've been on pace to score 50-60 points. Instead, we settled for field goals and sputtered offensively in the 2nd half and put our defense in bad spots.

Our passing defense is mostly all to blame on the passing defense, but, there are some extra factors out there that aren't helping them.

 
I tried to link an article from last year's Illinois game where Mr. Davie had two interceptions and our defense was exceptional, but I couldn't get the board to cooperate with the downloading. Just like the OP points out rather well, I don't see how these guys who were so good last year all of the sudden got dumb, slow, and out of position. In the business world you fire managers who do a lousy job, sports seems to be the exception.

Anti-social media has a mob way of turning players into the bad guy. Let's get off Daniel Davie's a$$ and put the blame where it belongs.

 
Enhance89 said:
So. Miss more than doubled their passing attack output in one quarter alone. We have to keep in mind that part of this was because So. Miss had to pass if they were going to even have a fighting chance of winning the game.

Clearly, however, poor pass defense is a theme and so we were probably going to give up 300+ yards passing regardless and that's not good. But, all things considered, I didn't think we were playing that bad in the 1st half defensively. We looked quite good.
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This had mostly to do with what type of plays Southern Mississippi was calling. Here's my synopsis from another thread:

Mavric said:
The only thing that saved us yesterday was Southern Mississippi apparently has the dumbest Offensive Coordinator in the history of college football.

Despite three games showing us to be VERY vulnerable to the deep pass and (now) the #5 QB in the nation in terms of passing yards, he spent the first three quarters calling about the most conservative game plan imaginable.

Through the end of the third quarter, they had 20 rushes for 18 yards and 22 passes for 202 yards. Why they continued to run the ball when they were having absolutely no success is mind-boggling. And - by my count - they had only thrown the ball farther than 10 yards downfield three times. They resulted in a 50 yard completion, an incompletion and a pass interference call. Most of their passes were swings and screens - almost nothing testing us down the field.

In the fourth quarter he finally got to the part of his playbook that had the deep passing game in it. IN THAT QUARTER ALONE they went 12 for 20 passing for 245 yards and two touchdowns.

I have no idea what he was doing the rest of the game but Banker should send him his game check.
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Some interesting perspective to offer up regarding pass defense. I can't take credit for this idea because I heard it on Unsportsmanlike Conduct; but, I researched the numbers myself and found some interesting information.

For starters, many of us go by the thought process that running the ball and playing great defense is the way to win championships, and while it certainly doesn't hurt, is it that simple in college football anymore? I'll focus on pass defense since we're talking about secondary play.

Of the four teams that played in the college football playoff last year, only one had a pass defense ranked in the Top 20 and that was Ohio St. at number 15. The rest were Alabama (59), Florida St. (78) and Oregon (110). Some teams in the final AP poll of 2014 are TCU (90), Mich. St. (61), Baylor (117) and UCLA (93).

Most of these teams, however, were in the Top 25 in scoring offense. The Top 10 consisted of Baylor (1), TCU (2), Oregon (3), Ohio St. (5) and Mich. St. (7). So, offense is clearly the priority, but we already know offenses are ahead of the curve right now in football. Playing great defense really doesn't come down to holding an opponent to under 100 yards rushing and 150 passing. Now, it's about limiting big plays and keeping touchdowns off the board. Teams are going to get yards.

So, I don't want to draw some wide-ranging conclusions from this. I think we still need a better passing defense performance without question. The defense needs to be a bit more balanced. But, as these numbers suggest, winning doesn't necessarily come down to having a great passing defense. I think we could reach our goal of at least winning a conference title with a passing defense that was average.

Ours is very below average and I'm definitely concerned about it. But, I don't know if it's something we should be completely absorbed in when it comes to our immediate goals.

 
Not much of a Dirk fan but I think he hits the nail on the head here:

This is getting down to crunch time for Banker. The Huskers are dead-last in the country in passing yards allowed per game (379.5) by a wide margin. The third-to-last team is New Mexico State at 343.0. The Huskers are dead-last in pass plays allowed of 20-plus yards (24).


It’s like watching Charlie McBride’s 80s and 90s secondaries face Miami and Florida State. Only this is every week.

...

The optimist looks at the Big Ten schedule and says, “Hey, I don’t see many good quarterbacks. We’ll be fine.” The realist recognizes that it doesn’t take a good quarterback to make the Husker secondary look atrocious.
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