It was three hours before Saturday night's kickoff, and Nebraska's football team had just hopped off two red Arrow buses and prepared make the short, winding “Unity Walk” around the north side of Memorial Stadium. As is custom, Ndamukong Suh, headphones blaring, led the team. Linebacker Phillip Dillard and center Jacob Hickman were there, too.

Freshman quarterback Cody Green was right beside them.

Zac Lee was somewhere toward the back, tucked under a red “N” hat. Along the path he quietly, almost sheepishly, shook the hands of the few fans paying attention as he walked by.

It was a startling picture of their momentary fortunes that switched suddenly in the second quarter, when offensive coordinator Shawn Watson pulled Green and inserted Lee, who threw one excellent goal line pass for a touchdown and otherwise made perfectly safe, pedestrian plays that Green could have made. But Green never went back in to make them.

Watson said Green was “nervous in the service.”

Head coach Bo Pelini thought inserting Lee “felt like the right thing.”

“Make no mistake about it, I've got a tremendous amount of confidence in Cody Green” Pelini said. “(But) you've got to go with your gut. I felt that way. Wats felt that way. It played out for us.”

Will they reverse their places in the Unity Walk line this week? Do they both head to the front? Does Green start and Lee play relief pitcher? Does Lee start and Green become a mid-game spark?

Now that the euphoria of Nebraska's 10-3 win over Oklahoma has worn off a bit, the Huskers' offense are left with, among many, this central question: Who be the QB?

Green?

Lee?

Both?

Roy Helu in the Joker? Kidding. Maybe.

It's become a mess to assess, frankly. Watson seems caught between a spread running game and a power one, a quick passing game and one built on long, playaction fakes. The spread attack favors Green, who can run the ball, and isn't afraid to stick his passes in tight spots, whereas the power stuff favors Lee, I suppose, who's a slightly better ball handler and in better command of the offense.

Can Watson really try to run two different offenses? It hasn't worked so far. Green seemed stripped of his wits Saturday night. The quail Green threw into a wide expanse of field was not a good sign. Yet Lee is so comically painful on those zone read and option plays that you wish he'd make an executive decision, and simply change the call in the huddle. He had a “blow the whistle!” look about him every time he ran.

But Lee quite effectively ran three playaction passes. The touchdown to Ryan Hill. A little wide receiver drag route to Brandon Kinnie. And the best of them, a fake-then-throw to Helu, after the defense had vacated Helu's area.

It's baby steps for rebuilding Lee's confidence and skills. He can still throw a mean deep ball. And he's OK in playaction. If Watson wants to start there, and sprinkle in Green on some shotgun stuff, that's a plan that could win Nebraska the Big 12 North.

What about Green's confidence? Outwardly, it's there. You could say the same of Lee, I suppose. Inwardly – who knows?

The kid from Dayton,Texas has been often been presented as “the answer” to Nebraska's struggling offense because he make plays off the board, on athleticism and instinct, that Lee cannot.

But Green is trapped inside a rigid structure of NU's offense, which finally is playing to its dominant defense. Green talks a good game about letting instincts take over, but it's hard to freelance in the thick of a conference race, in the West Coast Offense, in an offense desperately trying to possess the ball behind a leaky, creaky offensive line. Watching the game tape again, Green's setting seemed stuck on “overload” of all kinds – emotional, mental, physical – and the WCO is too precise, even when masquerading as a spread, to accommodate that state of being.

Lee has already been there. Watson still hasn't stripped the quarterback run game from Lee's list of plays, but he has toned some of the other elements.

Is the offense too complex? It doesn't have to be. But you need a staple on the table first. Last year, Nebraska rolled its opponents with a short, controlled passing game of screens, stops, curls and crossing patterns. Defenses crept up to take it away, and Joe Ganz burned them with long throws to Nate Swift and Mike McNeill.

Lee is not a good short-game passer. Green is designed for a free-wheeling attack that allows him to hit the edge, throw all over the joint, and generate mismatches.

There is no good answer. Just survival.

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