"What stands out from the game is the lack of adjustments. The cornerbacks were never protected, in the sense that no coverage changes took place to compensate for the fact that receivers were constantly open. The other issue is the lack of pressure on the quarterback. The defensive line was unable to generate a proper rush but there was no blitzing, which would help the line and the cornerbacks."Surprisingly that quote does not come from a Nebraska fan or pundit. Instead, it comes from USC beat writer Scott Wolf’s blog about USC’s struggles versus Washington State.
Is that what Callahan meant when he said we want to model ourselves after USC?
Sticking with the defensive side of the ball, here is a recent list of the The Top 10 defensive coordinators in college football. Hard to argue with most of those included. Husker fans will immediately notice a former interim head coach on the list. I don’t know how I feel about that. In light of Saturday’s performance by the Blackshirts, it is a little hard to swallow having had one of the top defensive coordinators in the country only to lose him in the messy divorce.What have you done for me lately?
The logical and rational side of me cannot, however, forget that my view of Pelini is based on a relatively small sample size of games. In addition, there were several blowout losses included in that sample. Dr. D and I watched UT kill us with the zone read play on their way to racking up 484 yards of total offense in Austin. The only thing that kept the Longhorns from scoring 50 that day was Mack Brown insisting on giving half of Vince Young’s snaps to Chance Mock. The 2003 season also saw Missouri put up over 400 yards of offense and Kansas State top 500 yards.
Coming back to 2006, my hunch is that we have a good, but not great defensive coordinator. We also have good, but not great talent on the defensive side of the ball. Given that combination I think we can expect to continue to see inconsistent performances by the Blackshirts. What do you think?
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