Agree. Often overlooked when discussing Nebraska’s glory days is just how good most of those defenses were. Everyone seems to focus on the option offense (which of course was very effective) but Osborne teams had some very good defenses as well.
We actually lined up in 4 man fronts a lot. I don’t think the annual DC swaps have helped our defense. Hopefully these guys pick up Aurich’s scheme quickly and can play fast.
Don't think it would be understating things to say that the real glory years under TO ( the 90s) may not have happened had he not retooled the defense with more speed aided by spending a few days consulting with Bobby Bowden and his FSU staff on how they did things. For all his offensive genius, it was his change in defensive philosophy that took TO from a very good coach to a legendary coach.
My key is offensive line.
I'd like to go one season without Husker defenders having their palms up.
Don’t tell Macho Man this but Tom finally beat OU with a defense anchored by a couple of small town white kids including Jim Pillen. Maybe Pillen wouldn’t have played for Tom’s national title teams. Maybe he would have.
Jay Moore is confident that the offensive line is going to be much better. He contended on Chris Schmidt’s podcast that the RBs we have are going to all look better behind this new O line.
Unfortunately they turned around and lost to Mizzou and then OU in the OB rematch.
Yep. OL/DL. When it comes to OL it can't be overstated how important your "particularly with a mobile QB" statement is. Raiola was zero threat to run, holding the ball way to long, zero threat to throw deep. The OL sucked but it never had a chance under those circumstances. We gotta make opponents just slightly scared to bring the kitchen sink every down.
We'll see on readiness, but freshman DT Berrymon is 340 plus and can move. Hopefully he has a natural strength component while he grows in the strength program.
You realize that OU had zero yards passing on two attempts in Tom’s first win when Jim Pillen. Defending against the wishbone is about sound assignment and is nothing like the offenses that Husker see today
None of that matters. The middle of the defense is where you stop teams. If you have elite DTs, your defense will be good to great. If you have bad DTs your defense will be bad. We moved to a 3 man front because Nebraska can't recruit DT depth...we thought we could get better lbs than dts. Our inability to find a solid DT pipeline either from the south or west is our undoing.
Emmett Johnson rushed for 1450 yards last season. Imagine what he could have produced if the OL was “physical” lol.
Pretty easy to rush the passer when you know where he’s going to be. Colandrea’s feet are going to help our pass pro immensely.
The defense was often arriving at DR at the same time the snapped football was in obvious passing situations because our OTs in particular had zero ability to pass block or even slow down the oncoming rush. It was brutal
Riola was very sluggish in the pocket- poor awareness. Not good at side stepping or moving up in the pocket past the rush. He was oustanding- world class level at backpedaling, getting sacked etc. he was also awful at throwing the ball away or running for easy first downs.
I don’t know if that had to do with 3-3-5 defensive scheme but never seen any hardly rushing comes off the edge.
