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- While the various positives (many) and negatives (few) of the win over WKU already have been covered, I want to talk about something that’s nagging me – the mere 58 offensive snaps we had Saturday night. While we achieved a heroic average yards/snap, Bo was right to be “embarrassed” by our defensive effort. As of Monday night, other teams are sure to have latched on to the fact that WKU, possibly the worst BCS team out there, was able to gash us up the middle. Their solid but unspectacular RB carried 30 times for a very troubling 5+ ypc, and consequently WKU ran more plays than we did and bested us in time of possession. Even in the Dark Age of Callahan, it was shocking to have no player with over seven rushing attempts.
Last year, we were able to perfect the “peso” as our base defense (to me, really a 4-2-5), designed specifically to stop the spread raging through the Big 12, because we enjoyed the presence of a demigod in the middle who could command a double-team and still make plays. This allowed us to play five defensive backs on a majority of snaps and ”solve” spread offenses. Without Suh (and Dillard) clogging the middle this year, we may struggle stopping inside runs out of our 6-in-the-box base defense.
Unless Pinkel’s visor is too tight, he and other Big 12 coaches (certainly Bill Snyder) are going to be aware of this, and will seek to control the clock and game through a power-running gameplan. It’s way too early to panic, but I am hoping to see much better rushing defense this week against Idaho to prevent the # of plays/TOP problem of Saturday night becoming a worrying trend. The bottom line is that NU’s DT and LB must play better in the next few weeks, or Bo will be forced to limit our use of the peso and go back to a 4-3 base D against quality opponents. While we shouldn’t expect the 2010 Blackshirts to be five times better than the 2009 version, they do need to be a little more stingy up the middle.
- I had meant to write about this last week, but I am excited by the decision to start Martinez. Taylor has the highest upside of the three quarterbacks, and moreover the decision also indicates that Dr. Tom’s belief in the primacy of running quarterbacks may have won out over the remnants of the Callahan/Watson ideology. While I highly doubt there will be a return to the multiple-I offense, a Martinez-led offense could resemble a West Virginia run/spread-option scheme. I think this is preferable to a West Coast passing scheme in terms of maximizing the talent available in our recruiting area (OL, RB, few quality WR) and support the decision. There may be a few rough patches of QB play this fall, but 1) that would have happened anyway with Lee or Green (2009 Va Tech, anyone?), and 2) it is an investment which will pay off in three more years of veteran quarterbacking.
Idaho won a bowl game last year and blanked FCS N Dakota 45-0 last week (while this may unimpress, ask KU about FCS schools based in NoDak); they will be a good measuring stick of where NU is at before the road trip to Seattle.
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Ojnab Bob said:
September 6th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
I forgot to temper my argument by mentioning that some of the low “play count” Saturday is due to the abominable NFL-like clock rules that have denuded college football for the past few years, but the main argument still stands.
greentrees said:
September 7th, 2010 at 8:23 am
Your comment about the efficacy of the peso seems a little wrong-headed. I don’t think the scheme is the place to lay the blame. Instead, it’s because of two things: 1) as you noted, the interior d-line isn’t nearly as stout as it was last year with Suh, and (importantly) 2) we have linebackers who walked into Saturday’s game as intended backups who combined for no previous playing time between them. The latter led to alignment miscues, assignment mistakes, coverage sanfus, etc. Soft interior + totally inexperienced linebackers = problems stopping the run. I can’t see any chance that we’ll revert to three-linebacker sets outside of goal line situations this year, mostly because we have no other linebacker who can even reachingly justify replacing Eric Hagg.
Perhaps someone can come up with a column about why Mike Ekeler shouldn’t be the linebacker coach, or how badly we need a guy to step-up opposite Crick (who just isn’t the commanding load that Suh is), or something to that effect, but at this point, we’ve seen no evidence to show that the Peso itself is to blame.
Drops face into hand said:
September 7th, 2010 at 8:38 am
Western Kentucky is a BCS team?
Ojnab Bob said:
September 7th, 2010 at 8:58 am
faecpalm: Ahem. WKU is the worst Division I team out there… obviously the Sun Belt has not quite made it into the BCS ranks. Too many Christians v. Lions games in Week 1 has clouded the cerebrum a bit. The worst BCS team is, and has been for the last few years, forlorn Washington State.
greentrees: Not trying to say the peso isn’t a valid defensive scheme, and your points on the rookie struggles of the NU linebackers are well taken. Certainly no time to panic as yet, and last year’s defense struggled a little at the beginning as well. I have every faith in the Pelinis.
Even if Eric Hagg is our best safety-linebacker combo option present on the roster, though, my point is that a nickel scheme is still vulnerable to good rushing offenses without some difference-makers at the DL or LB postions, and the statistics of the first game bear that out. If we don’t figure this out, we are going to give up 120-160 ypg on the ground over the season. Bill Snyder certainly will run Thomas 25-35 times into the line in a few Thursdays, and give KSU a good chance to beat NU.
greentrees said:
September 7th, 2010 at 2:00 pm
In an ideal world, where our defense is laden with experience and depth and competence at linebacker, your point is right on- it would make a lot more sense to go with a more traditional 4-3 base to deal with our opponents who seem to be pursuing a return to power football. However, that’s not what we have. Taking Hagg off the field leaves us with Whaley, David, and either Matt May or Martin. Martin accomplishes the goal of making our defense bigger and stronger, though certainly less competent vis-a-vis defending the pass and probably in the finer points of the running game. I’m not sure May brings anything to the table compared to Hagg, as they’re basically the same size. Maybe it comes down to playing Hagg more firmly in the box on certain downs, but in our current state, I think we gain very little from going away from Peso personnel.
Corn Flakes: What if Martinez is that good? | Northeast Kansans for Nebraska said:
September 8th, 2010 at 3:01 pm
[...] Better Off Red | The Peso’s Devaluation? Two (quick) additional thoughts on NU-WKU [...]
ben said:
September 9th, 2010 at 9:44 am
first of all, just because we’re running a peso defense, doesn’t mean we aren’t in a traditional 4-3 alignment. it also doesn’t mean that we only have 6 in the box. if you pay close attention to the defensive sets from last week’s game, more times than not we lined up with 7 (or more) in the box. hagg/casidy almost always lines up exactly where a 3rd linebacker would line up unless there’s a 3rd receiver which WKU hardly ever employed. our problems last week stemmed more from communication issues than anything (as has been pointed out) and the fact that we had almost zero game film of what we were expecting WKU to run.
Mister Mike said:
September 10th, 2010 at 4:08 am
Enojyed the read Ojnab, but I think you need to stop viewing TOP as one of the holy grails (so to speak) of an effective offense (or how bad our defense was in that game). Just because you have the advantage in that area, doesn’t mean you’re going to win a lot of football games. Look at TT last year, and Mizzou and OU in 2008, we beat them in the TOP and still got our asses kicked.
Or, if you want to go back to the glory years (’95) that offense had a TOP not much better than what our offense in 2009 averaged. I think that offense held it something like 2 minutes more per game than the ’09 offense. But you want to know why that team was so good? We scored on an insanely high number of our drives. Teams were always playing catchup with us. What difference does it make how long an offense possesses the ball when they’re already down by 30+ early in the third quarter?
Want a good indication of how effective an offense is? Look at yards per drive (or per possession), points per drive (or possession), red-zone efficiency, and number of first downs. If our numbers are great in all those areas, it really doesn’t matter how long the team possesses the ball.
Check this out: NU averaged over 44 ypp (means you’re flipping field position), averaged just over 4 points pp (we were scoring in bunches), had 23 first downs (we were moving the ball) and our red-zone efficiency was 100%.
I know this is off the lead topic, but these are hallmarks of how well an offense is doing. I used to be like you and looking at TOP and number of plays. But someone educated me and he was absolutely right. You can have all the TOP you want, give me the above numbers, and I’m going to win all my games, especially with our defense.
Ojnab Bob said:
September 10th, 2010 at 6:54 am
I think you misapprehend my thesis a little Mike. I agree with you that TOP is an overrated statistic similar to AVG in baseball (see Navy v. Maryland last week), and totally agree that our offensive metrics for the WKU game were great. I just wanted to see more plays run, total, which leads to 1) concern on the defensive side, and 2) anger at the new TV-fed clock rules which allow for more insipid beer commercials.
The concern for me is solely that our defense was unable to get WKU off the field on 3rd and 5 or less, which resulted from our inability to stop their running game. One of the hallmarks of the great Nebraska defenses were their ability to stuff the run on 3rd and short, thus creating a change of possession (the main objective). Teams like K-State are going to replicate the WKU gameplan, and we’ll need to play better to make this a non-issue.
ben: You’re right, we played Hagg forward and always had 7 in the box. Hopefully we cut down on the linebacker miscommunciations and any concern will die out… I just get a little nervous when opening day games show a vulnerability. You often get a pretty good window into a season through the first game – although I am sure UT and OU is hopng that is not true this year…
greentrees said:
September 10th, 2010 at 7:49 am
Mike-
Agreed on your TOP analysis. If you’re scoring points and your defense is even average, it probably doesn’t matter much. It would, however, be an important stat, if you have a porous D, and you were facing explosive offenses. Our TOP was the only reason we stayed in the TT game two years ago.
Bob-
I think our strength up the middle on D will continue to be a concern until our LBs figure out what’s going on. Apparently Eric Martin will start this week over Whaley, alongside David. If he’s starting to get the mental part of the game, that bodes well for us, because that kid has more than enough physical ability to really wreck shit if he knows what he’s doing. A competent Eric Martin makes me slightly less concerned about dealing with Daniel Thomas next month.
Ojnab Bob said:
September 10th, 2010 at 7:55 am
Eric Martin looked like a budding superstar on special teams last year… hoping he “gets it” and fills that need for us.
Seeing Red said:
September 11th, 2010 at 5:10 am
Snyder will send Thomas at us 35 times. Pinkel’s visor will be too tight, no adjustments necessary in his world…but then again he was never going to be a contestant on Win Ben Stein’s Money in the 1st place.
Barking Carnival | BlogPoll – #4 – 2010 said:
September 19th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
[...] defense has taken a step back in the front 7, but the offense has an identity with Taylor Martinez and a style of play that suits their personnel beautif…. The beauty of zone read offense is how counters are naturally built into the offense. You [...]
Barking Carnival | Nebraska Preview: Texas Offense vs. Nebraska Defense said:
October 13th, 2010 at 12:38 am
[...] a game and he reminds you of the undersized Miami sprinter LBs of the 80s and 90s. Eric Hagg is the peso – a hybrid nickel/SS/LB – and he’s a solid tackler at 210. The other LB, Alonzo Whaley (from Madisonville), is, [...]