Count me in the happy to have survived Ames group. I remember rejoicing
when I first saw the Big XII part of the schudule at the October placed in
front of "at Iowa State", as opposed to the traditional November. I
thought it might be nice to play in the Land of the Tall Corn under blue
cheery skies. Foiled again.
The Husker offense opened up a bit Saturday. Not the kind of opening up
where the barn door falls off and the people from Oklahoma steal all your
chickens (that happened in Dallas). But, the kind of opening up where the
Husker coaches quietly slip a couple messages to their peers down schedule
(and down south). If you had aksed me if the Huskers had shown anything
new Saturday right after the game, I'd have mentioned the pass to
Buckhalter and not much else. After looking at the tape though, there
were several small innovations to make conference defenders think.
1. The Pass to Buckhalter for 25 yards in the 3rd quarter. NU ran that
play from its favorite play action: inside zone to the I-Back. Buck dove
to the right, the TE on that side, Wistrom, crossed the field to the left,
clearing the area as Correll cut out to the sideline and into the wide
open green. Crouch bootleged to the left after faking to Buck and then
waited for him to clear the linebackers. He had to hold the ball for
quite a while and took a good shot. It was nice to see the bootleg
action. Before the season I would have said that NU throws a lot of
passing from bootleg action, but after watching the passing game the last
few weeks, they really throw more from just play action, without booting
in the opposite direction of the action. In other words, Crouch will fake
to a back and then throw from the area behind wher ethe back was headed
instead of peeling back to the other side.
2. Unbalanced Shotgun. NU has changed its basic shotgun formation this
year. In the past Shotgun meant four wide receivers, two to each side.
Now, NU generally runs shotgun with two WRs and a TE to one side and a
split end to the other (basically the Wide Trips formation). The RB lines
up on the split end side. On Crouch's 40 yard run in the second quarter
that set up NU's first touchdown, NU shifted the TE to the other side. It
still looked enough like regular shotgun that ISU didn't adjust. They may
not have noticed that the TE was covered by the split end in an unbalanced
set. NU ran QB counter trap to that overloaded side for a big gain.
3. Moving Bobby. Newcombe lined up more unpredictably at different WR
spots. This may have been plan, or it may have been response to Wilson
Thomas's unavailability and Matt Davison's nagging injury. Newcombe often
lined up on the backside ot the Wide Trips formation as the lone split
end. NU threw to him twice in this isolated position.
4. Dan Alexander, the FI-back. No, I don't want to get into the "Dan'd be
a better FB" conversation, but NU is using him as a hybrid back on several
occasions. First, in Double Wing he stays in instead of Miller to take
the FB role, even starting in a FB stance. Further, in some one-back sets
like Trips, Spread or Ace, D-Ax uses an I-back stance but lines up only 6
yards deep (instead of 8), and NU runs him on FB plays. This has been
used a couple times previous, but appeared several times Saturday. This
takes advantage of Dan's size and skill, and gives opponents another
factor to consider when they try to match personnel groups.
5. Back to the future of Sprint option. The Huskers' second option of the
day was an arc option where the fullback leads the pitch back around the
corner. NU usually blocks this with outside zone blocking, but on the
first play of the second drive, they used an old blocking scheme (I saw it
this summer when I rewatched the '84 Miami Orange Bowl loss) with the
backside guard pulling to lead the play and Crouch reversing out, though
he doesn't have the Jeff Quinn footwork down just yet. No idea why they
wanted to look at this vs. Iowa State.
6. Fullback short motion. On the previous play the fullback started his
arc path early by going just a step or two in short motion toward the
play. NU has used this a lot with the second FB (or WB) int he Power set,
but I haven't seen them use it with the regular FB much. They only
off-set the fullback once during the game. This short motion gives them
another way to do that.
7. The Notre Dame TE shift. NU tried the TE-on-the-wrong-side-shift that
worked so well at Notre Dame again. This time with no luck. It was
Golliday again. Maybe this time it was planned? K-State will never know.
Iowa State was still moving at the snap, but moved right to the play and
stuffed a third and three.
8. Play-action pass off of QB keep. NU's biggest play of the day, the
53-yarder to Wistrom, was new. They used the very effective QB keep
action, with FB and guard faking trap and the IB leading Crouch off-tackle
(the winning play from ND), to set up that pass. That one worked.
Problems in the Red Zone in the first half were mentioned earlier.
Problems were varied on those to my eyes:
Drive 2: Huskers moved from their own 24 to the ISU 23 before turning the
ball over on downs. ISU pretty much just stuffed this drive. NU had a
3rd and 3 at the ISU 24 and the Cys stopped an iso for no gain. This was
the play mentioned above where Crouch had to move the TE. That TE may
have not gotten ready on the other side as a defender slanted inside him
to make the play. No way to know for sure that that was his
responsibility though.
Drive 3: NU goes from NU 40 to ISU 22 and misses a field goal into the
wind. The Huskers tried to go for the jugular on first down from the 23,
but the Cys play Wistorom well on the play-action pass. Those first down
passes are necessary to keep teams honest and sometimes they are big
playss, but they put you off schedule when they fail. NU couldn't recover
from that and Davison got whallopped trying to make the third down catch.
Drive 4: Newcombe's punt return starts NU on the ISU 19, but the Huskers
back up four yards and kick a field goal. After only getting a yard on a
first down iso, NU is penalized for motion and two incomplete passes can't
get them out of that hole. The second pass is one that Davison will catch
almost every time, and on the first pass the ISU pass rusher made a great
play to foil a screen to Buck that looked good.
Drive 7: NU moves from the Husker 31 to the ISU 7 mainly on Wistrom
53-yard catch. On first and goal at the nine, ISU stuffs the off-tackle
FB trap. I'd argue that this was a nice job by the CYs on a good play
call. This was NU's first give to the FB and follow eight options called
in the game to that point, including two belly options that show the same
action as that off-tackle trap. That's the kind of play call that sprung
Cory Schlessinger into Husker history. ISU was just up to the challenge
in this case .
Drive 8: NU moves from the NUebraska 26 to the ISU 31 in a minute and
eighteen seconds. Not really red zone, but close. Three incomplete
passes with a watchful eye on the clock stopped this drive.
Overall, I'd attribute those problems more to the Cyclones than to the
Huskers. Still, I'm sure NU will not want a repeat of the first half red
zone efficiency.
One final note: if you want to hear an example of an NU audible, watch
Lord's TD in the 4th quarter. As he leans down the line you can hear on
the TV audio him yelling "49-11 49-11" and then they run an 11 Base
option for the score. Nice for him to get his first Husker score and do
it while showing command of the offense in such a manner.
The drive chart is up at Xs and Oz if you're interested: