Just two days before Nebraska's tilt with Kansas State, it's like that little mint hotels put on the pillows.

NU running back Rex Burkhead has apparently recovered well enough from a broken foot suffered four weeks ago to be ready for the Cornhuskers' Big 12 North title game with the Wildcats.

“Rex is doing really good,” head coach Bo Pelini said Thursday night after NU's practice.. “If he can play, he can play. Let it all hang out.”

Burkhead broke his foot Oct. 12 in practice. Prior to the injury, he had 262 all-purpose yards (118 rushing, 66 receiving and 88 return yards). Burkhead seemed to be taking over for Niles Paul as NU's lead punt returner when he got injured; since then, the redshirt of Dontrayevous Robinson has also been burned.

Pelini confirmed Thursday that tight end Mike McNeill and defensive end Pierre Allen are expected to play, as well.

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Part of good coaching is knowing when, and how, to push player buttons to get the desired effect.

After Nebraska’s offense laid an egg in the first half of the Missouri game, wide receivers coach Ted Gilmore benched Niles Paul and Menelik Holt. He made them turn in their hand warmers and gloves. He stuck Antonio Bell and Brandon Kinnie out there, to no real avail other than it fired up Paul, who responded with two touchdown catches in the fourth quarter.

“It kind of let me get down on myself,” Paul said. “But then I kind of thought about it and was like ‘he’s doing this for the team.’ And he put us back in there.”

Offensive coordinator Shawn Watson told his quarterback, Zac Lee, point blank: We’re thinking about sitting you for a drive, and inserting true freshman Cody Green.

“He said, ‘We’re going to do it for a series,’” Lee said. “‘Keep your eyes open.’”

Watson didn’t bench Lee. One wonders if his mere consideration was a fire he was trying to light under the junior, who came alive and threw his best passes of the game in the fourth quarter. If Green had entered the game, and played remotely well, Watson would have opened a Pandora’s Box in Husker Nation. As it is, he cracked it opened a little bit,

“It is what it is,” Lee said. “I had to deal with it. I know Coach Wats has my back, I know Coach (Bo) Pelini has my back, so it kind of motivated me to have their back. It’s just part of the game.”

How often do those motivational techniques work? Once? Twice? Ideally, you don’t use them much.

But Nebraska’s offense, especially the running game, has been a little slipshod at times since the Arkansas State game, when Lee looked like the best quarterback in the Big 12. Roy Helu’s bailed out the offensive line with some terrific individual efforts – more than half of his yards this year are after early contact - and Lee’s fired up that great arm of his at just the right times.

Can NU really afford to hope the switch flips at the right time? To assume the offensive coordinator alights on just the right passing plays to beat the opposing defense?

Watson took considerable heat for his playcalling in Missouri. By Watson’s own actions and logic, he deserved some of the criticism.

Watson used the awful, rainy conditions to defend Lee, yet shrugged off those same conditions in defense of his playcalling because Missouri was “loading the box” against the run. But Watson didn’t exactly help his own case when he unveiled a quite successful quad-tight set at the end of the game that ground out 68 rushing yards in eight plays. The Tigers had ten guys hovering near the line of scrimmage – but the Huskers still ran the ball.

Now comes Texas Tech, a “vanilla” defense that doesn’t blitz much and relies on its front seven to stop the run. Will Watson impose NU’s size advantage? Or will the game, again, fall on Lee’s right arm?

The Huskers could, but should not, use the absence of Rex Burkhead as a built-in excuse for throwing the ball 40 times a game. Burkhead was valuable – he made several crucial plays in the Missouri game – but he was only averaging roughly 6-8 touches per game. If Helu has to carry it 30 times, so be it. He’s a great back, Nebraska’s best in a decade. If Helu’s shoulder is too banged up for the heavy load, Watson and Tim Beck need to trust their own coaching skills, and insert Burkhead’s replacement. It’s football, after all, not a North Korean nuclear treaty negotiation.

And defenses are going to start getting wise to Nebraska’s strategy. If it’s that easy to move NU away from the running game, they’ll take the chances with a quarterback and receivers who have been uneven at best over the last month.

Missouri was a handful of plays away from a shutout, frankly. If Burkhead doesn’t make a nifty move to gain four yards on a third-down play, Lee never gets to make that throw to Paul, and the Tigers shift into the “eating game clock” mode. And the bulk of this week is a real bear for Nebraska and its coaching staff, instead of a celebration of Ndamukong Suh’s many defensive talents.

“Bottom line is, we need to score points,” head coach Bo Pelini said. “You’re not going to shut (Texas Tech) out. You’d like to, but they’re a pretty good offensive football team and we need to match them. We need to put some points on the board.”

You wonder if Bo will have to push some his coaches’ buttons to make it happen.

See also: 50 Husker Fans, 50 States: Pittsburgh

See also: Defending Tech's...Running Game?

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Please enable Javascript, or download the podcast here.

Join Husker Locker today - it's free!

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Nebraska’s running backs corps just got a little thinner for Saturday’s Texas Tech game.

NU head coach Bo Pelini announced Tuesday at his press conference that true freshman Rex Burkhead injured his foot in practice Monday and would not play against the Red Raiders.

“He’s going to be out for awhile,” Pelini said. He did not specify how long. “…Anytime you have a good football player out, you’re gonna miss him. We’ll be all right. I feel worse for the kid. He’s a prideful, tough kid.”

Sai quarterback Zac Lee: "It'll be a blow. But we've got other guys we have confidence in. I'm pretty confident they'll make the best of their opportunity."

That does not necessarily mean starter Roy Helu – who seemed to suffer a shoulder injury late in the Mizzou game – will get more of the work at the position. While Pelini said Helu had “no issues” in returning to practice Monday, but Austin Jones, Lester Ward, Collins Okafor, Traye Robinson and Marcus Mendoza have moved up the depth chart.

“Still gonna have other guys in there playing,” Pelini said. “Whoever earns it.”

Said Lee: Roy's stud. Roy can take whatever we can put on him, honestly. But it's always nice to have a second guy."

Of Nebraska's 120 running back carries, 114 of them were by Burkhead or Helu. Jones has three, while Ward, Mendoza and Okafor each have one.

See also: 50 Husker Fans, 50 States: Pittsburgh

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Just in case you haven’t come out of that rain-fueled reverie from last Thursday, Texas Tech coach Mike Leach delivered a public service announcement Saturday. More like a warning, with that 66-14 drubbing his Red Raiders hung on Kansas State. KSU isn’t particularly good. But the Wildcats aren’t 52 points that bad either.

Yes – just like playing at Tech wasn’t as hard as it seemed last year, this year’s game won’t be as easy as it seems. In many ways, the “Air Raid” system is better than Missouri’s spread offense, especially in creating big plays for the running backs, which Mizzou’s system doesn’t do so well.

If NU thinks it can get chuffed and proud, the Huskers had better cleanse their system of that incredible comeback win before Leach and Co. head to town. Once thing about Leach: He simply doesn’t care. He’ll boot players, bluff his own athletic director and happily serve as a hypocrite when he chastises players for the seeking the publicity he hounds. He just doesn’t care. Leach is a football mercenary for hire – Texas Tech has him tied to long-term contract – whose measurement of success is racking up points and yards.

My wife and I were watching a YouTube clip on Leach. Some nonsense about dating advice and pirate obsessions.

“He’s kind of a clown,” my wife said. Molly’s a pretty polite girl; she prefers half-insults unless we’re on the subject of bad officiating.

“Well, maybe,” I said. “But he wins a lot of games.”

“Yeah,” she shrugged. “He’s still a clown.”

As we await Leach’s circus on Saturday, we relive, one last time, the Mizzou win.

Five Players We Loved

Defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh: You rarely get to see “legendary” defensive performances from a single player. On national TV, Suh delivered one. I’m not sure even he understood just what he’d done. In the coming weeks, if he makes a push for the Heisman, he will. The Missouri game was his launching pad.

Defensive back Dejon Gomes: He stuck to Mizzou receivers like glue all of Thursday night. Where’s he been? Doesn’t matter. Gomes needs to stay in the game, and off the bench.

Linebacker Philip Dillard: He’s re-established himself as Nebraska’s best linebacker. It took the coaches too long to realize it, but they’ve finally come around to Dillard’s brand of play and leadership.

Running back Rex Burkhead: Made a lot of little plays in the game, including a couple key third-down conversions. He’s excellent in open space, and getting better between the tackles.

Wide receiver Niles Paul: Oh, if only his confidence matched his raw talent. Maybe his fourth-quarter heroics vs. Missouri will clue Paul into the kind of player he can be – every game. He may want it a little too much. Paul needs to let the game come to him a little more often.

Three Concerns We Still Have

Depth and trust in the running game: It’s really hard to account for Nebraska’s deliberate choice to pass the ball, over and over, vs. the Tigers in the pouring rain. We keep hearing about all these guys in the box, but the Huskers pretty much abandoned the run until the game’s final drive and, then, embracing it with the heaviest of the heavy sets (four tight ends!), looked quite good. Where was that all game?

Punt snaps: Freshman P.J. Mangieri needs to figure this out. If Alex Henery wasn’t back there making incredible plays just to get the ball off, NU would have three or four blocked punts by now. Some were critical of Bo Pelini’s minor chew session of Mangieri, but the kid, young as he may be, is only on the team to do one thing. He needs to do it right.

A little too much offensive diversity: Nebraska flashed a ton of formations at Missouri Thursday night, and almost seemed to cross itself up. In big games, it’s not the chess match that wins, but the execution of your best stuff. What is Nebraska’s best stuff? We’re still waiting a little.

Reviewing The Five Keys

Mystery Ingredients: The weather definitely affected Nebraska (although offensive coordinator Shawn Watson called the game like it didn’t) and the flu bug kept five or six players under the weather. The power outage at Faurot Field threw another curveball the Huskers’ way, as the coaches were forced to conduct their locker room sessions by flashlight, essentially. For all that, for NU to still win the way it did – it’s character, plain and simple.

Zac Lee On the Road – Again: I wasn’t encouraged by Lee’s performance through three quarters, but he made some clutch throws in the fourth quarter to redeem the performance. Another plus: Lee put the ball in places where his offensive players could nab it. Unlike Blaine Gabbert, whose vision – not his ankle – was the real culprit Thursday night.

The First Impression: Nebraska’s defense sent a very different message in 2009; Suh and his front four mates made sure of it. Mizzou tried to run NU off the field on the first couple drives, but the Tigers slowed down out of necessity.

Stick or Quit: Missouri’s running game never really got shut down, but never got going, either. The Tigers threw too many passes, and too many of those passes were simply bad, telegraphed reads by Blaine Gabbert.

Pelini vs. Pinkel: Call it a draw, I suppose; both coaches failed to slow the game down with running attack, and both coaches made some gutsy decisions. Pinkel gambled and won on fourth down, while Pelini subbed out three starters – Anthpny West, Will Compton and Lance Thorell – to go with guys whom he thought would get the job done better. He was right.

Three Questions We Have

Is Nebraska ready for more, more, more? NU’s going to see one version or another of the spread from this point forward until Kansas State. Can it stick with the current gameplan used vs. Missouri, or must it alter the plan to fit the needs of each team and quarterback?

Time for Blackshirts? We think so. How about you?

Who’s the real Zac Lee? The kid who knocks em dead at home, or the head-scratcher on the road? Will we really learn anything this week? Maybe. Tech is easily the best home opponent Nebraska has faced this season.

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Report Card from Nebraska’s 27-12 win over Missouri:

OFFENSIVE MVP: Rex Burkhead. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Burkhead didn’t seem to do much, but he converted a couple crucial third downs, one of which kept alive Nebraska’s first touchdown drive. Burkhead caught a swing pass, planted hard into wet turf, and darted his way to an unlikely first down. Statistically, Burkhead didn’t do much. But he made four or five little big plays, and no bad ones.

DEFENSIVE MVP: Ndamukong Suh. A performance that echoed the dominance of Grant Wistrom and Rich Glover before him. Suh’s one of the great ones.

GRADES

QUARTERBACK: C Zac Lee had one terrific fourth quarter. But his play during the first three quarters nearly earned Lee a spot on the bench. He looked confused, slow, wet and overmatched. Many of his passes were simply inaccurate. But he made the plays when NU really needed them, in tough conditions. He should be glad – really glad - OC Shawn Watson never took him out. If Watson had, we’d have a week of Lee vs. Cody Green chatter.

RUNNING BACK: B+ Considering what NU had to work with – a sick Roy Helu and a so-so offensive line – it was a solid performance. The numbers were low, but hardly reflective on the effort. Helu banged up his shoulder well enough to wear a giant ice pack afterward, but he was still in there on the last drive. Tough kid.

OFFENSIVE LINE: C- They were kind of a disaster until the fourth. Mizzou’s stunting run defense threw off the big boys; their pass protection was fair, but unspectacular until the final quarter.

WIDE RECEIVERS/TIGHT ENDS: C- Niles Paul and Menelik Holt played so poorly that Watson benched them to start the second half. Paul could’ve sulked; instead, he had the two signature plays of his career. Mike McNeill only had the one grab, but he made it count. Too many dropped balls, and not-so-great blocking on the perimeter.

DEFENSIVE LINE: A+ A dominant, signature performance from all four of them. Energy, physicality, playmaking and just plain smarts: This bunch doesn’t necessarily get a ton of sacks, but they frustrate the bejusus out of the quarterback. They combined for 21 tackles, 2 sacks, 2 pass breakups and 2 turnovers. The best defensive line in America? Maybe.

LINEBACKERS: A Mostly Will Compton and Phillip Dillard, who had the complex assignment of diagnosing Mizzou’s spread offense and attacking it downhill. The Tigers slowed down as the game went on. NU’s defense just got stronger.

SECONDARY: A Nebraska finally seems to be playing the right guys in Dejon Gomes and Alfonzo Dennard, who clearly have more pure coverage skills than Anthony West and Lance Thorell. Both of them, along with Prince Amukamara, were excellent Thursday. Larry Asante held up quite well on a injured ankle, too.

SPECIAL TEAMS: D If Alex Henery weren’t so athletic and smart – just check out some of the plays he had to make on bad snaps from PJ Mangieri – Nebraska might have given up more than a safety. Punt returns were just awful, punt coverage wasn’t much better, as several guys simply overran Carl Gettis. Kick coverage was excellent – the lone bright spot, other than Henery.

GAME MANAGEMENT/PLAYCALLING: C+ That would be a A for the defensive work, which was stellar, and a D+ for offensive coordinator Shawn Watson, who frankly stumbled into success in the fourth quarter. Nebraska never tried to establish the run and Lee was about to get the hook after a fumble when Watson changed his mind. The decision turned out to be fortuitous.

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

The best play of Rex Burkhead’s young career at Nebraska shouldn’t have happened.

The freshman running back scored a touchdown on a 24-yard shovel pass reception with a nifty feat of speed, moves and toughness in the waning moments of NU’s 55-0 win over Louisiana-Lafayette.

Burkhead caught a short, forward flip from fellow true freshman Cody Green, eluded one defender, broke the tackles of three more, and stiff-armed a fifth tackler at the five-yard line to score the second touchdown on his career.

“I was hoping to get the first down,” Burkhead said. “But I was fortunate to stay up.”

Too bad Green called the wrong play in the huddle. He misread the signals from the sidelines, called a shovel pass, watched it work thanks to Burkhead’s effort and trotted over to the sidelines, where a smiling Zac Lee awaited him.

“Coach (Shawn) Watson told me the exact same thing,” Green said. “He said, ‘Nice job of running the offense. I think I’ll hand over the reins to you and you can call your own plays. Because you just did now.’ It was supposed to be a regular pass to get the first down. But, heck, my shovel pass went for a touchdown. So I was happy for it.”

So was Burkhead, who accumulated 108 all-purpose yards for the night, throwing in his two punt returns for 55 yards. It was the most extensive action he or Green - the most ballyhooed of NU’s 2009 recruiting class – has seen this year.

“It was awesome,” Burkhead said. “Every time you get in the end zone. When 86,000 fans roar, it’s a great feeling.”

Green, a native of Dayton, Texas, scored a touchdown of his own on a 24-yard zone read play that looked like his 49-yard showstopper in the first game. Green completed 7-of-8 passes for 62 yards and the touchdown to Burkhead.

On Burkhead’s score, Green thought the Plano, Texas native was already down. He glanced up at the HuskerVision screen – Green calls it the “big board” – to watch a replay. Instead, he watched Burkhead’s touchdown.

“That kid’s got something right there,” Green said. “I think that little guy has probably the best center of gravity I’ve seen in just a freshman or any young guy that’s been playing. The kid doesn’t go down. For nothing.”

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

It was a quick vocabulary lesson in the difference between offensive and defensive coaches.

When Nebraska head coach Bo Pelini critiqued, at length, his defense in Tuesday’s press conference, he used the word “soft” to describe its physical effort in a 49-3 win over Florida Atlantic.

Offensive coordinator Shawn Watson’s word of the day? Tempo. As in the speed with which quarterback Zac Lee received the play from the sideline, communicated it to the offense, and actually ran it.

In a 21-point first half, it wasn’t so good, despite touchdown passes of 28 and 51 yards.

But when Nebraska sped up in the second half, FAU “couldn’t stop us,” Watson said after Tuesday’s two-hour practice on the grass fields north of Memorial Stadium. “We went right down the field on them.”

The difference? Lee himself. The junior from San Francisco was “a little nervous in the service,” Watson said, in the first half, and kept heading to the sidelines to receive the play. That’s not uncommon in some offenses; however, Watson and Co. are making a concerted effort to speed up without ditching the huddle altogether.

At halftime, Watson told Lee to stand by the rest of his teammates on the field.

“That’s step one,” Watson smiled. “Pretty logical.”

Then, NU coaches held Lee “more accountable” for making sure the line hustled to their spots.

“If guys aren’t getting their hand in the dirt, he’s got to get them to get their hand in the dirt so we can play,” Watson said.

Watson called Lee’s second-half tempo “beautiful.” Nebraska needed only four plays on each its first two drives in the third quarter, scoring touchdowns on runs by junior Roy Helu.

“It could have been a little better,” Lee said. “But it’s kind of a first game thing.”

Other than the tempo problems, Watson said Lee “graded out really high” in his initial start. He completed 15 of 22 passes for 213 yards and two touchdowns.

“We didn’t ask him to do a whole lot of stuff, but we asked him to do enough to win the football game,” Watson said. “And as the game wore on I gave him more responsibility. And he really handled it well.”

Concerns about Lee vacating the pocket to run seemed answered by Saturday’s performance. Lee only scrambled once, and that was for a 12-yard gain. Mostly, Lee said, he tried to buy time for receivers to get open downfield by stepping into the pocket and moving away from pressure.

“I’ll run if I have to,” Lee said. “But I’d rather somebody got open downfield and hit them for a big gain…you want to get out and run around and make plays yourself, but I think the best thing, in the big picture, is to let guys get open.”

Notes:

*Both left guard Keith Williams and tight end Dreu Young practiced in full pads Tuesday. Young missed most of fall camp and the first game recovering from back surgery.

“It’s good to have (Dreu) back,” Watson said. “He’ll be in the gameplan. He has a lot of thump on the line of scrimmage and he’s a good pass receiver.”

*Watson seemed pretty set on using just Helu and true freshman Rex Burkhead at running back.

“We would ride those two horses, to be honest with you, forever,” Watson said. “That’s the way we’d do it. And we need a third guy, it’d be Lester (Ward).”

Expect more of Ward in the Big 12 season, when Nebraska routinely used three running backs in 2008.

Join Husker Locker today - it's free!

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Here come the Hooters.

(And if you didn’t think that was coming, you don’t know our Five Keys very well).

In roughly the last 20 years, Nebraska has chosen to make its season opening opponent, with a few exceptions (1994, 1996, 2002 and 2003 among them) soft, fruit-filled pastries to enjoy on a late summer day. The names – San Jose State, Western Illinois, Maine, Florida Atlantic – change, but the games they inspire do not.

Oh, there is this nugget of fear right until kickoff. Is this the year the Cornhuskers come out flat? Then the Memorial Stadium crowd leans in, the opponent makes a bonehead play, and it’s time to look for the kid selling Runzas. Even the Fallen Team of 2007 knew how to cut a pound of flesh from Nevada.

Take last year. First quarter. Western Michigan sets up a perfect trick play, WMU quarterback Tim Hiller steps to throw the easiest touchdown pass he’ll ever toss, and he forgets the ball. Just plum slips out of his hand. You couldn’t dream it up.

But this is what happens to non-major conference programs at the beginning of the year. By midseason 2008, when Illinois had already been beaten down a little by injuries and losses, and Western Michigan had some confidence, the Broncos rolled into Champaign and scored an upset.

Six weeks from now, FAU would be a more dangerous team than it is today. As it stands, we call the Owls a funny name. Beyond that, we preach respect. And, as such, a full, in-depth five keys to kick off 2009.

KIDS: That’s short for: Keep It Downhill, Shawn. Offensive coordinator Shawn Watson is much smarter than we are at this playcalling gig, so we figure he can already tell that Florida Atlantic’s defense will eventually crack under the weight and strength of Nebraska’s physical offensive line. Maybe not on the first drive. Maybe not even in the first quarter. But eventually. FAU can only stunt and guess its way into the right defense so many times, right?

Quentin Castille would have been a perfect fit for a game like this, because smaller defenses loathe tackling a load like Q. In Castille’s permanent absence, might NU use some heavier sets, some double tight end packages? Can Nebraska so easily vacillate between power and shotgun spread? We’ll see.

Our long-term concern is the durability of Roy Helu. He’s never been in better shape, and he’s not the kind to beg out of a game. But he has been the kind who’s had to miss a practice or two the following week because of a pull, strain or tweak. There hasn’t been a running back alive who didn’t play with little hurts after the first game, for the rest of a given season. But Nebraska’s coaches need to give their prized junior just enough of a break to keep him away from nagging problems.

If that means a little more Rex Burkhead in weeks one and two, so be it. Burkhead could use the work. Know this: Helu’s money time is in October and November. September is the rehearsal.

36 inches: That’s about the distance separating the facemask of FAU quarterback Rusty Smith from the helmet of Nebraska nose tackle Ndamukong Suh. At least when Smith is under center.

If Florida Atlantic has any chance Saturday, Smith must win the battle between those two players. Yes, between them.

Good quarterbacks don’t hide behind an offensive line all night. Smith can’t and won’t expect his center to stuff Suh every time; it won’t happen. He can’t expect double teams all night, either. Smith and his coaches have to develop a quick rhythm passing game that stares right into the face of the Big 12’s baddest man and throws right over his head. If the Owls spend all night trying to scheme away from Suh, or run around him, the plan will fall to pieces.

As for Suh – if he makes a blowup tackle or a big sack on the opening series or two, the Memorial Stadium crowd will lose its collective head and suck much of the energy out of the Owls. One memorable quality about Grant Wistrom, the last NU defensive lineman of this magnitude: He knew how to say hello on the first drive.

Attack Zac, Zac Attack: When a defense is overmatched, as FAU’s most certainly is, the coordinator is wise to narrow down the number of players who can beat his crew.

If the Owls’ strength is coverage, for example, and NU has relatively inexperienced wide receivers catching passes from a very inexperienced quarterback, the logic flows like this: Put eight guys in the box, dare NU quarterback Zac Lee to throw deep balls into one-on-one coverage, and dare the Huskers’ receivers to do something about it.

"He's new and we want to test him, but to do that we have to make them put it in the air," FAU cornerback Torvoris Hill said.

Western Michigan tried that last year, and Joe Ganz smoked the Broncos with a 61-yard touchdown bomb to Nate Swift that put away WMU for good. Baylor tried the same strategy to nullify Nebraska’s quick WR screen game. Once again, Ganz found Swift behind the coverage for a 60-yard backbreaker of a touchdown.

Just because it burned Western Michigan and BU, doesn’t mean FAU shouldn’t try it. After all, Lee could crumble under the pressure. We doubt it – he’s got more physical skills than Ganz - but he could. Or Nebraska’s receivers, unaccustomed to running deep routes, might not be up for the challenge.

Either way, Nebraska should expect an eight-man box. An option game can loosen it up. A properly timed zone read can, too. Or perhaps, when FAU picks its poison, Lee turns out to be more toxic than the Owls expected.

Young Guns: Great movies, weren’t they? No, they weren’t, but Lou Diamond Phillips was in both of them. Lou also made a movie called “Sioux City,” set in, you guessed it – Nebraska? Apparently “South Sioux City” didn’t make the cut as a title.

We digress.

Nebraska’s roster is stuffed with freshmen, redshirt freshmen and sophomores, many of whom are “Bo guys” he either recruited, or found toiling as walk-ons (Lance Thorell and Mathew May fit this bill).

The youngest of these will make mistakes Saturday. That’s not a specific indictment on them. That’s the nature of football. New guys screw up in their first handful of games, and hopefully they’re athletic enough to adjust on the fly. There probably hasn’t been a more dominant true freshman in NU’s history than Ahman Green, but the prevailing opinion upon his arrival was “Well, he’s no Lawrence Phillips.” Even though, two years later, he was most certainly was.

The Specials: We tend to harp on special teams quite a bit around here, and it’s for reason: It’s a hidden, often misunderstood component of the game that should be won, game in and game out, by the bigger, deeper program.
In the NFL, of course, mandatory roster sizes balance it out. But in college, home teams – especially home teams in major conferences – have the distinct advantage of using athletic specialists (talented redshirt freshmen like Alonzo Whaley and P.J. Smith, useful walk-ons like Wes Cammack, gunners like Rickey Thenarse) where Sun Belt teams are forced to use starters.

So, fatigue, execution and field position becomes an issue. Throw in Nebraska punter/kicker Alex Henery, and NU should be able to create 7-10 points (directly or indirectly) off of this advantage alone.

See also: Guess The Score!

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Nebraska’s football team handled practice on the first day of fall classes well, head coach Bo Pelini told the media Monday night after a two-hour workout on the grass fields just north of the Hawks Center.

“Normally you come out the first day of school and it’s not a real good practice,” Pelini said. “They came out with real good energy today…we got a lot accomplished today.”

That’s a far cry from Nebraska’s first-day-of-school practice in 2008, which Pelini, at the time, deemed “not nearly good enough.”

Pelini said NU remains in camp mode. No prep on Florida Atlantic yet. Maybe later this week. But the Huskers did add 30-plus players who weren’t part of the original 105-man roster. Pelini said the total count was at 142. Lines for drills were longer, but the practice seemed just as logistically smooth as it was for the last two weeks.

The Quentin Castille dismissal was address obliquely, as a couple question were posed to Pelini about running backs being aware of an opportunity.

“I would hope so, unless they’re blind,” Pelini said. “But it shouldn’t change the way they’ve been competing…it’s pretty obvious. We let you guys beat a dead horse. We don’t need to. Our players know what’s in front of them.”

Nebraska returns to the practice field Tuesday, same time, presumably same grass fields.

Notes:

*Pelini brushed aside the opportunity praise true freshman Rex Burkhead more than he already has for Burkhead’s quick move up the depth chart.

“We’ve got a number of true freshmen who are in the mix for playing time,” Pelini said. “Nobody’s earned anything yet.”

*Tight end Dreu Young continues to practice without pads. The doctors have to clear Young for more contact before he puts them on. Young had back surgery recently.

*Freshman right guard Brent Qvale has a shoulder injury and will be out 3-4 months, Pelini. Qvale had been impressive during his brief time in fall camp.

Join Husker Locker today - it's free!

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

We’ve heard whispers all summer and fall camp about the potential of Plano, Texas running back Rex Burkhead, and when we got the chance to see him in person, we were impressed by his frame and his ability to put 10-15 pounds, if the coaches so choose

Wednesday, offensive coordinator Shawn Watson went a long way to confirming that, indeed, Burkhead will be playing this fall. Just how much, and where, remains to be seen. But Watson’s comments are beaucoup positive:

“He’s earning it every day,” Watson said. “He’s surprised all of us with his maturity. He gets football. He’s doing things you wouldn’t expect a freshman to do. He’s doing things that, really, you wouldn’t expect him to do until maybe a year from this time. So he came here ready to play football. I think he’ll play for us, I just don’t know how much or where. But he’s earned himself into that depth (chart.)”

Burkhead has good hands; everybody knew that. And he’s a talented runner. But our hunch is that he picks up NU’s offense so well because of being a former quarterback, and having to know the offense from that perspective before he was ever a running back.

That, and Burkhead’s work ethic, are the two key contributors on top of his prodigious skills.

See also: 8/20 podcast Integrating true freshmen

Join Husker Locker today - it's free!

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Please enable Javascript, or download the podcast here.

Join Husker Locker today - it's free!

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Please enable Javascript, or download the podcast here.

Join Husker Locker today - it's free!

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Some more in-depth takes from practice on Tuesday:

*Folks, this is a grueling fall camp. The real deal. It’s very intense, the practices are the full allotted length, and there is punishment in place for lack of effort or performance. And neither stars nor scrubs are spared. Pretty old-school stuff.

*An example: Bo Pelini devised a game yesterday. A running back has to hold on to a football for a 24-hour period, and the rest of the team has to try and punch it out. But if they do…everybody gets a little punishment. And yet the whole defense tried to knock the ball away from Rex Burkhead over a 24-hour period. And they couldn’t do it.

“He’s a tough kid,” defensive tackle Jared Crick said.

Yeah, Rex is tough. The team is beginning to discover that.

Now Quentin Castille has the ball.

*Tom Osborne dropped by practice on Tuesday and was chatting with NU’s offensive linemen. Osborne certainly looked like he could still coach, and a number of the players were pleased, and a little awed, to chat with him.

*Then the offensive linemen were pulled out of that reverie and immediately into some quick-twitch tandem drills led by offensive line coach Barney Cotton. Cotton doesn’t mess around, that’s for sure. He didn’t like his group’s attentiveness after a rep, and he told them so.

And this, a day after the offensive line did quite well among the team.

*Jacob Hickman is now, by his senior season, a very technically sound guy. Probably not the most vicious blocker on the planet, but he gets his hips around, and he reads defenders well. NU would do well to keep him at center, if at all possible.

*Brandon Thompson has now gone to the mohawk look. He resembles someone who might be Ricky Henry’s bigger-yet-younger brother. Apparently, they’re both pretty tough guys, too.

*Khiry Cooper is so naturally gifted that he does not appear to try hard sometimes. He makes tough catches look easy, and some of the easy catches look hard. He needs to go at every play with that same high gear.

*Nebraska is going to be more diverse in its shotgun running game this, we think. And that’s all we’ll say until we confirm more.

*Ben Cotton? Looking good through a couple days. Decent hands. Good speed. And physical. He wins the blocking drills against almost everyone.

*Saw more of the ribbon boards and how they’ll organize scores. There will be a section for Big 12, national and other Husker sports scores (each denoted by their respective logos), an area for stats, and a big spot in the middle for the score itself. Plus three ads in between all the sections. A little cluttered, but, overall, a good effect.

*Barry Turner isn’t talking much during this fall camp and, all in all, that’s probably a good thing. Turner is poised to have a big senior season, and, if he lives up to his potential, he’s an NFL guy – really.

*Carl Pelini confirmed today what we sorta knew: Jared Crick was still adjusting to his weight in the spring, and it slowed him down some. This fall, Pelini said, Crick looks much better.

Permanent Link to this Blog Post

Heavy rains forced Nebraska’s football team inside the Hawks Center for part of its second practice Sunday, which offensive coordinator Shawn Watson deemed typical of a second practice.

“Lot of work to do,” Watson said. “But we’ll be all right. It’s only the second day…there’s a lot of things that have to get accomplished in terms of timing, which we should be. But the kids are working hard. We’ve thrown a lot of install at them, which they’ve handled well.”

Naturally Watson, who was speaking to the media for the first time this fall, was hit up for initial impressions of NU quarterback Zac Lee. Although Watson said NU’s top offense “was trying to get tied back up,” Lee was progressing well enough that he might be officially named the Huskers’ starting quarterback “soon.”

“It’s gonna be hard to unseat Zac,” Watson said. “He’s playing really well. Once we feel like he’s got a grasp of everything and headed in a direction he wanted to go, we’ll name the guy. Sorting out 2-3-4…that’s the big thing.”

Watson got his first glimpse at a number of newcomers, including true freshmen Taylor Martinez and Rex Burkhead.

Both spent chunks of the first two practices in a “rookie camp” of sorts, Watson said, along with the rest of the true freshmen. Just getting into a huddle, lining up correctly – the things that college football players do thousands of times, once, of course, they get the routine down.

Watson called Martinez a “very skilled athlete,” with a “pretty clean stroke,” but didn’t want to elaborate too much without seeing more film. Ditto on Burkhead, who nevertheless was moved up with the older players in 7-on-7 workouts this summer.

“I think he’ll really show up here as we go down the pike,” Watson said.

Watson said NU’s committed to finding “No. 3 and 4” running backs to back up Roy Helu and Quentin Castille, who pushed each other throughout the summer and now again in fall practice.

Permanent Link to this Blog Post