[Husker] Offense is offensive

[Bapi Gupta]

284 carries for 782 yards rushing, for a whopping 2.75 yards per carry.

Only 7 out of the 118 other teams are worse:

  58. North Carolina (3-4)
108. Florida Atlantic (1-7)
111. Utah State (2-5)
100. Tulane (2-5)
118. Temple (0-9)
106. Idaho (2-6)
109. Kent State (1-7)

These are our peers...

(We rank 18th high in sacks allowed, 24, and that doesn't help.)

38 out of 119 on 3rd down conversions, for 31.9%.  Only 13 teams are worse 
and only mighty Central Michigan (5-3), a 40-3 loser to Penn State, has a 
winning record.


Maybe the passing side looks better?

162 completions out of 300 attempts for a 54% completion rate. That ranks 
89th - quite an improvement.

1775 yards (in 300 attempts) for 5.92 yards per attempt and that gets us 
92nd place.

12 TDs, passing (in 300 attempts) for just 4% TDs, ranking us 77th.

We are 20th in number of passing attempts, but it sure looks like quantity 
not quality.  We rank 88th in passing efficiency (110.90).


For comparison        2003 (13 games)     2004 (11 games)    2005 (8 games)

ypc:                  4.28                4.70               2.75
3rd down:            36.3%               31.2%              31.9%
sacks allowed:       18                  25                 24
comp pct:            49.1%               48.4%              54.0%
ypa:                  7.17                6.38               5.92
td pct:               4.54                5.28               4.00


We used to be considered as a strong rushing team and a poor passing team, 
but that wasn't really true.  In 1999, we averaged 4.99 ypc rushing and 
were 4th in rushing and 107th in passing based on total yards.  On the 
other hand, we averaged 8.22 ypa when we did pass - 9th best in the 
country.  We didn't pass a lot, but we did pass efficiently.  You can even 
see that in 2003, with 7.17 ypa despite just 49.1% completion percentage.

What I really don't get it why all this passing hasn't opened up the 
running game.  I'm beginning to think something is just wrong with the 
whole offensive philosophy.

Bapi