[Husker] Observations

[Mike Jaixen]

Earlier this week, I posted a review of Clemson's 2008 season over at CornNation.com.  

http://www.cornnation.com/2008/12/29/704189/2008-clemson-season-in-rev  

I wasn't surprised by Clemson's quarterback issues.  Cullen Harper got benched at the time Tommy Bowden was let go, but his replacement, Willy Korn (what a name!) didn't make it through one quarter before hurting his shoulder.  He had surgery after Thanksgiving on it, and was supposedly cleared to play, but I think they decided to stay with the senior.  Harper has been sacked quite a bit this season.

#2 As for NU's kickoff coverage, I'll give this a pass for this season.  This staff needed to change a lot of things, and I think special teams became somewhat a lower priority.  It wasn't very good, but it wasn't as bad as 2004 either.  I look for a lot of improvement next season.

#4 Skylar pointed that out as well.  Yesterday's first half was not one of Shawn Watson's finer moments.  After the Missouri game, Watson adopted more of a spread look to loosen up the defense, but in the first half, he abandoned that attack.  I think he thought we could run the ball out of power formations, but it didn't work at all.  Looking back on the actual stats last night, it turned out we did throw the ball more than I remembered on first down, but many were short throws.  It wasn't until the second half that we opened things up offensively.

#5 If we need to "recruit speed" this February, we won't see it for a while on the field.  While I agree that we could use a boost in team speed, I'm not sure we're slow.  And with nearly the entire incoming recruiting class being redshirted, I think we might be surprised by what we've already got on campus.  The decision to redshirt players was based in part that the staff already knew they had their hands full on a reclamation project with the returning players and decided to concentrate on getting those guys ready to play.  This bears watching this spring.

Mike Jaixen
http://huskermike.blogspot.com
http://www.cornnation.com

--- On Fri, 1/2/09, Martin, Douglas W. <MartinDW at stlukes.org> wrote:

From: Martin, Douglas W. <MartinDW at stlukes.org>
Subject: [Husker] Observations
To: husker at tssi.com
Date: Friday, January 2, 2009, 9:08 AM

As they say, a win is a win; but this one was indeed ugly.  I was
surprised at how poor a game the Clemson quarterback had.  He did not
seem to understand the concept of avoiding a sack; even when he was out
of the pocket on a couple of occasions, he opted to take a loss rather
than flinging the ball out of bounds.

A few observations:

1.  One of my pet peeves is how offensive linemen are allowed to "bend
the rules" by how far back they line up behind the center.  The rules
state that the o-linemen are supposed to have their helmets at least at
a level with the center's mid torso.  Clemson's o-linemen were at times
lined up behind the center totally in the first half (they moved a
little up in the second half).  This rule is broken frequently by NFL
tackles but I wish the NCAA would put "special emphasis" on this for
next year because some teams are pushing the limit.

2.  NU is just flat poor at kick off and punt coverage.  This has been a
problem all year long.  After my initial post on this problem early in
the year, I see they have mixed and matched some different players on
kick off coverage but it does not seem to have made much of a
difference.

3.  Steinkuhler played his best game of his college career yesterday.

4.  Do we have any plays in the playbook other than a run on first down?
This became predictable in the Colorado game and yesterday was the same.
How many times does it take after getting stuffed for 2 or 3 yard losses
on first down before we change it up a little?

5.  We need to recruit speed.


Doug Martin, MD

UNL '87
UNMC '91
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