[Husker] amazingly quiet

[jonlists at cbsol.com]

It's amazingly quiet. Too quiet. It stinks, the quiet, it stinks. 

Texas Tech is a team that seems to defy logic offensively. Everyone out 
there would tell you if you can't run the ball, you can't win. Everyone 
except Mike Leach. It's debabatle as to whether or not Tech isn't a 
consistent winner because of this or whether or not they just can't 
recruit a gob of great athletes to come to Lubbock. 

I was thinking about the concept, and it occurred to me that this year's 
game will come down to a draw. 

Mike Jaixen has it right on his blog - http://huskermike.blogspot.com/ - 
we cannot afford to rush three and win this game. We may be able to rush 
four and put pressure on the quarterback, but reality is we're going to 
have to blitz to win this game. Hopefully not that often, but the key to 
it is not getting caught in the blitz while we're blitzing. I know that 
Tech loves to have their back close to the line (hiding?) for those dump 
passes, but they also run draws fairly well. 

Keep in mind the Iowa State game came down to a wonderful call at the 
right time - Ross's huge TD on a middle screen called perfectly into a 
blitz. Let's hope the same doesn't happen to us on a blitz. 

One thing that hasn't been discussed - Nebraska's inability to play zone 
last year versus our ability to play it this year. I went back and watched 
the Nebraska game last year a few times, and I remember posting about it 
on the list. We didn't have a clue how to play defense against Tech. It 
wasn't just Cosgrove's bad scheme of rushing three most of the time. It 
was the fact that Nebraska's linebackers and secondary didn't appear to 
have a clue what they were doing. I believe that's changed. We may not 
have as much skill in the secondary, but we'll be better nonetheless. 

I believe that Nebraska will win this game because I'm am optimist. I want 
to believe in Bill Callahan. I want to believe in this offense, this 
defense. A loss tomorrow won't change that desire. I'm going with a score 
we're familiar with: 

Nebraska        27
Texas Tech      20

Jon Johnston
Creative Business Solutions
IBM, Microsoft, Novell/Suse, Sophos Consultants
http://www.cbsol.com
blog:http://bingo.cbsol.com