Looking Ahead to 2012 Husker Football: Safeties
by Husker Mike on Feb 16, 2012 6:41 AM CST
in 2012 Nebraska Huskers Football
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Returning: Daimion Stafford, Sr. (starter), P.J. Smith, Sr. (spot starter), Courtney Osborne, Jr. (starter 2010), Harvey Jackson, So.
Incoming: Alonzo Moore (LOI), Leroy Alexander (LOI)
Bo Pelini said on signing day that Moore and Alexander would initially start out in the defensive backfield. Let's assume safety for sake of argument. Are these guys who can help fix a secondary which didn't perform up to Pelini standards last season? In any event, Nebraska needs to find a replacement for Austin Cassidy. After the jump, the CN team talks safeties.
Jon: Stafford had an impressive season, ending up with 80 total tackles which was good enough for third on the team behind Lavonte David and Will Compton. Perhaps Stafford is the answer to the "guy always around the ball" question for 2012 as he lead the team in pass break-ups with 10.
Osborne was one of those guys who disappeared this season, only playing in five games, starting one. Smith played in 11 games, and ended up with 33 tackles.
Bill: Stafford was third on the team in tackles? Wow, I guess I never realized how big of an impact he was having. It's great to see yet another juco guy come in and make a difference right away.
Obviously, Stafford can hit hard. He announced that loud and clear during the first game of the season. Even though Courtney Osborne fell on the depth chart, he definitely made some memorable plays in 2010, including a couple huge sacks against Missouri and Texas A&M.
It's great to have safeties that can hit, but we need great pass coverage sometimes too. Stafford and Osborne have combined for one interception in their careers, and P.J. Smith had one in 2011 and three in 2010. Smith has plenty of experience, but has never really stood out during his Husker career.
Mike: Perhaps we'll find out that Courtney Osborne was suffering from some injury that limited him to just five games. Or maybe Dan Beebe somehow got a half-season suspension levied against Osborne just before he got sacked by the Big XII.
Heck if I know. One guy to keep an eye on this spring is Harvey Jackson. He made some contributions on special teams (like one Alfonzo Dennard) as a freshman and he caught my eye in last year's spring game.
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You guys are forgetting Cory Cooper. He played a little at CB was is really a Safety and I thought the coaches said he will only play S. He probably has the best coverage skills of the Safety prospects NU has.
You're right!
Yeah we need a coverage guy. Stafford and Osborne are great for big hits but we definitely need more help with pass coverage considering we don’t have a shutdown corner anymore.
Don't get cute.
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PJ Smith
in 2010 he looked like he was going to be a stud…then sloppy tackling got him pulled for osborne. I think Smith can be that stud but Osborne is the more consistent players. Smith kinda reminds me of Thenarse…loads of talent but someone it never really clicked for. Hopefully that changes this year.
D Line
The Blackshirt defense has seen a decline in interceptions the last couple years. I think the main reason is our D line isn’t as good anymore. With Suh and co. the opposing QB was running for his life 80% of the time.
Obviously, Suh was a freak. We all know that. However, I wonder if the scheme of the D line has changed to play more containment. Bo has talked about that in the past. That’s nice, BUT, we get next to no pressure on QB’s anymore. Maybe we get a few sacks against mediocre teams in September, but against the Big Ten we didn’t fair so well applying pressure and forcing the QB to make bad throws and give our secondary a chance to make a play.
I realize that our secondary needs help as well. They need lots of it. But the D line plays into it a lot too.
Ah, always good to see a comment from you
We did a preview on the defensive tackles and defensive line last month…and yeah, I completely agree with you. Good defenses need a bit of everything…good play in the secondary to avoid getting beat by big pass plays and a solid pass rush to take some of the pressure off the secondary…but now that we are playing more power running teams and less spread teams like there was in the Big 12, the defensive line also needs to clog the middle a bit more, and it’s hard to find big boys that are also fast enough to chase down a QB.
Don't get cute.
Follow @HuskerGrip
Speed
is what we need. Osborne realized it in the early nineties and look what happened. I can remember McBride trying to put a lumbering defense on the field that could compete with Miami and FSU in the late 80’s and really early ninties it wasn’t pretty till we went to the 4-3. How many national titles could Tom have had if he would have ditched the 5-2 six to ten years earlier? That was the missing piece to the puzzle. My point is he made speed priority NUMBER ONE across the board. If you have the speed to cover stopping the run is easy because you don’t have to commit 8 or 9 guys every play to stop it. Speed, speed, speed, the more the better.
Speed helps...
but you can be the fastest guy on the field and if you’re out of position you’ll still be made to look like a fool. I think we’ve got guys that are fast…they just need to mature and not make mistakes. Combine them and you’ve got something.
I don't
think they were fast enough last year at safety or across the board on defense. (With the exceptions of David and Dennard) How many guys from last years defense could have got significant playing time for LSU or Alabama? Coaching surely helps I don’t disagree but speed will cover up a lot of mistakes and we didn’t see enough of it last year in my opinion.
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