Nebraska vs Tennessee Chattanooga - Postgame Overreaction

Taylor still stares down to his receiving targets. The option needs a lot of work. It looked really bad at times. I didn’t get all the quick 3-yard out passes that they ran, especially on 3rd-and-long. Those didn’t do anything for me.

That being said, it was game one and a lot of people saw playing time.

The students attempt at a new cheer between quarters was a complete failure. They could come up with something that will work, but I don’t think what they currently are chanting works. It doesn’t sound great. I did like the “Enter Sandman” the loudspeakers played after that. Might be kinda cool to get the whole stadium jumping up and down when that is being played.

Very cool and breezy day today for September 3rd. Shorts and a shirt were fine, but it did get a little cooler towards the end of the game.

Very little zone read. Taylor’s long TD run was more of a fake hand-off instead of a zone read. No wildcat, though a play was ran that was designed for Burkhead to throw. Rex had trouble getting his yards because he was getting hit too soon.

Even though it was just the first game, I left with the impression that I’ve had the past few seasons. This team will be ok, but not great.

The Good
Football is back!
Maher is good.

The Bad
Team seemed more rusty than media reports would’ve indicated.

The Ugly
The offensive line was simply out-manned and failed to live up to their hyped-up improvement.

And to me it sounded about how I thought it would go (minus the kicker, where the hell did this guy come from). Anyway sounded like the line still needs some time to gel as a unit and the biggest problem was run blocking.
The secondary seemed to be a bit soft at times but was also without its best player. Davids name was called all afternoon not really surprised at this tho. And the D-Line did what they do and made some plays when we needed them.
T-Mart seems to have his speed back and seemed comfortable in what i saw on the highlights and Burkhead rattled off the longest run of his career( way to go Rex)

The offensive play calling seemed bland for the most part but I was not surprised due to the team they played today. why break out the good china for kids birthday party? I figured that they didn’t pass more at the end because we had this win in the bag and there was no need to look like the Big Red Bully. with that being said I’m not sure how good the pass protection will be but it has to be better then the run blocking.

Next week they play a much better team in Fresno State and I imagine that we will see a much better offensive game plan then we saw today.

Keep in mind tho, we are in a new conference and need to keep our offense under wraps as long as possible to give us a better chance at winning. I’m sure that by the time Washington rolls into Memorial Stadium we will be opening up our playbook and some whoop ass just like last year we did. I remember aside from the thrill of T-Mart running past everyone we looked like a very bland offense.

Sure, there are reasons for concern…but now the first game jitters are gone and the freshman have actual game experience, I think next week will be better, especially on the O-line. The coaches are going to have a lot to work with this week and areas to fine tune.

Even the most optimistic of kool-aid drinkers have known all along that the offense was still a work in progress…but it seems like the same people who would have admitted that yesterday forgot it today.

Hopefully very soon (like next week) the offense run a nice long sustained drive…because today almost all if not all our TD’s came on big plays, and we know you can’t count on big plays very often against better defenses.

Did we do any zone read today? Watson ran that play into the ground last season but I hope it’s still in the playbook because Martinez was pretty good at running it…as long as you only do it here and there and catch the defense off guard with it.

Some people are complaining about the short passes and I don’t see why. If it’s first and 10 and you do a little 4 yard pass, isn’t that just as good as doing a running play for 4 yards? As long as the ball is being moved down the field and we are getting 1st downs, I don’t care if Martinez announces who he is throwing to over the PA system. It seems like our receivers have a bigger problem with catching passes than Martinez does throwing them.

Overall though, it was good enough. Things will get better from here and I’m already looking forward to next week. GBR!

He was pretty good in 09’ and this is his first real game coming off a nasty injury…he will be more than fine…I think he just had to knock off a little rust.

Good: Maher. He’s not Henery, but if he keeps that up, it’s huge for us. Having a kicker who can consistently hit from 50 on in (in pretty windy conditions!) is a big deal.

Mostly good: The defense had some lazy 3rd downs but when they switched it on, you could tell. Just total carnage when they went into attack mode.

Bad: I understand growing pains, etc, but the offense just looked out of sync all day. Most of our yards/points came from tmart busting a play (sound familiar?).

Ugly: The offensive line frankly got manhandled by a middling at best FCS defensive front. I argued for Barney Cotton’s dismissal last year and if this isn’t by far the worst performance we see from this group I’m going there again pretty quickly. I know they’re young and inexperienced but we can’t get into a position where we’re trying to win every game 14-10 on the strength of a couple big runs from T-Mart.

Yes, the o-line looked out of sync, which resulted in some very bad plays for Nebraska. The line has some very young guys on it and this was their first battle test. I think that it will be a learning moment and hopefully they address it in practice this week. I would rather them make mistakes in a game like yesterday, than against a team where any little mistakes could be costly. Young team everyone, this is a young team. I am not expecting a national championship this year due to the youth, but I do expect us to be very competitive moving forward. I think Dr. Tom needs to come to a practice or two and work with Martinez and Carnes on the intricacies of running the option. Maybe bring Frazier and Crouch with him. I do not think these two QBs get the option yet. I like how we are going back to it, reminded me of the glory days, but it needs some refinement. In order for the option to work, you need offensive linemen who know the blocking schemes and the QB-RB duo need to be on the same page. I do not think they have all the pieces together. On the plus side, who loved that long pass from Martinez to Kinnie?? I hope we see more of that down-the-field attacking. Will really help our run game. I still think overall the offense was kept a bit vanilla (yes, I consider the option to be vanilla for Nebraska), so our better foes do not get a whole read on our offense yet. Overall, I think this will be a very competitive team that should challenge for the Big 10 championship. I do not think they will get into the national champ picture, but close enough. I am just glad that Nebraska football is back, both for the season, but also in the long run! Seems like the dark times are now behind us!

They use hand signals to send in the plays. There were three coaches and one player all signaling at the same time, so I think it’s safe to assume that three of them are decoys.

We saw on that first drive how if you go 3-and-out on the no-huddle, it just leaves more time on the clock for the opposing team to score (UT-C actually had more Time of Possession than we did).