Ron Johnson-USA TODAY Sports
Stryker: Fourth Year, No Cohesion
Bret Bielema was gone from the Big Ten for almost a decade, but he remembered all he needed to remember about Nebraska. Just play close to your vest and wait for the Huskers to screw it up. The formula worked against Bo Pelini and Mike Riley, and it worked like a charm against Scott Frost on a hot, humid opening day in Champaign.
Sloppy, undisciplined football is still the name of the game in Lincoln. The Cornhuskers are still slow starters who lose close games. They made no discernible progress in a 30-22 loss at Illinois Saturday, not on anything important except ramping up fan apathy another notch and making internet trolls look like prophets.
Bielema and his barely-know-each-other-yet Illinois staff walked off the field winners over Frost and his staff who still look like they’re bewildered by the Big Ten. But, baffled as they are, there are two things they know for sure: Their offense still has no rhythm and continuity as they begin Year 4, and their offensive line is not as good as they thought. It’s sure not as good as I thought it would be. The offense is not cohesive, and you have to wonder if the coaching staff is, either. We learned during the Osborne era that stability on coaching staffs is a good thing. You have to ask, why isn’t it paying dividends during the Frost era? The Frost naysayers look wise indeed after this game.
Nebraska fans are solidly in “Show Me” mode now, as well they should be. It’s getting harder to make the argument that Frost deserves the benefit of the doubt, and that’s coming from someone who still thinks that a head coaching change would be catastrophic for the Husker football program, but is becoming more convinced that sweeping changes need to be made among the assistants. Coming off a lackluster 2020, Frost and his staff produced no overall improvement on offense and special teams, and very little on defense after a full spring and full fall camp of preparation for Nebraska’s most important opening game in more than half a century of football, at least as far as program momentum is concerned.
Over the past few months, the thoroughly disgruntled section of Husker Nation analyzed the Illinois game this way: “They beat us by 18 points last year, and they’ve got a lot of the same people coming back. Luke McCaffrey was the main problem last time, but Adrian Martinez is still a turnover machine. There’s no reason to expect it to turn out any differently this year.” And by golly, they were right. Those of us who predicted more cohesiveness from what appeared to be a more talented Husker offensive line, who expected more game-breaking ability from a beefed-up crew of wide receivers, who expected the Husker tight ends (two catches for 13 yards) to be a big part of the attack, well, we look like chumps. Is Austin Allen not an NFL talent after all? I’m not ready to admit that, but I do think Ryan Walters, in his first year as Illinois’ defensive coordinator, knows how to stop Allen after a few months of film study better than the Husker brain trust knows how to use Allen after three years of coaching him.
It was a nightmarish day for the Nebraska offensive line. Cam Jurgens rarely got to the second level to block, and he uncorked yet another bad snap. The o-line had communication problems galore, surrendered five sacks and allowed the Illini to roll up a 10-minute advantage in time of possession and, more importantly, 28 consecutive points. They lost the majority of their one-on-one battles and simply did not punch back. The final rushing total (167-160 Illini edge) was close, only because of a 75-yard TD run by Martinez in mop-up time. Brant Banks started at left tackle but didn’t stay there long; Turner Corcoran came in and had a very ordinary day. Banks saw some time at guard, but nobody really looked good up front for the Huskers.
To be fair, Illinois has a veteran team, but they were a consensus last-place choice in the Big Ten West, and their senior quarterback went down early. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Nebraska’s opponent loses its first-string quarterback to injury, and its second-stringer, Artur Sitkowski, someone nobody has ever heard of, comes in and more than holds his own against Martinez, who continued a career-long trend of getting plenty of yards, but having a devil of a time getting his team into the end zone. Meanwhile, Nebraska keeps doing what Nebraska does. More total yards than the opponent? Check. More penalties and penalty yards than the opponent? Check. No advantage in turnovers? Check. Mind-numbingly poor play on special teams? Check. Chronic third-down problems on both sides of the ball? Check.
Martinez sometimes played as if in a trance in the first half, vainly searching for open receivers, retreating and tossing the ball off his back foot. In general, the fourth-year starter reacted slowly, as though he were unsure. Maybe that’s because Frost and offensive coordinator Matt Lubick were baffled by Illinois coverage and were reacting slowly, as though they were unsure.
Speaking of receivers, Frost and Lubick didn’t have anyone who could get separation early in his route. With talented larger-bodied receivers much more prevalent than ever on the team, this was unexpected. I was amazed at how much I saw of walk-on Wyatt Liewer Saturday.
With the Huskers struggling to run the ball effectively with their running backs, the passing game came out of the gate misfiring like a lawn mower with a fouled spark plug. Samori Toure and Omar Manning were underwhelming, catching a total of five passes for 63 yards. Manning played small on Saturday. His first catch was not an auspicious beginning, as the 6-foot-4, 225-pound Manning caught a short hitch pass, got one-on-one against 6-0, 180-pound sophomore Devon Witherspoon, and promptly went down easily. The more athletic wideouts didn’t show up Saturday, and by game’s end, Frost and Lubick were looking to Liewer more and more. That’s not a good sign.
Also not a good sign: 19 carries by Husker running backs, and 17 by Martinez. Running back coach Ryan Held did not earn a vote of confidence; neither did o-line coach Greg Austin. True freshman Gabe Ervin got the start, but didn’t provide a spark. He seemed tentative at times, which can be forgiven because it was his first start. The tentative first-half play of Martinez (six completions in 14 attempts) is not so easily forgiven. I am still looking for reasons why Frost kept his quarterback coach, Mario Verduzco, instead of hiring a full time special teams coach.
Once the Huskers trailed by 21 points, Martinez came to life, doing what he’s spent half his career doing, ad-libbing rollouts and scrambles in a crisis, including the TD run, but it was too little, too late to do anything but pull within a touchdown, lowering Frost’s record in one-score games to 5-13.
Speaking of special teams, Nebraska’s first-year punter, Daniel Cerni, didn’t play well, but he played better than Connor Culp, the Huskers’ returning All-Big Ten placekicker. And he played better on special teams than did Cam Taylor-Britt, who inexplicably made a high school sophomore decision, racing backward to field a punt at the 1-yard line — a kick that was obviously rolling into the end zone — and cost his team a two-point safety. So in effect, Nebraska started off like they did last year against Illinois, with a “What-the-hell?” brain-dead play, only this time it was made by a talented, experienced NFL prospect defensive back instead of a talented, inexperienced quarterback.
The Huskers’ kickoff return game was as impotent as ever. Yet it could still be argued that special teams produced the brightest moment of the day for the Huskers, because kickoff specialist Brendan Franke of Gretna chalked up four touchbacks on his six kickoffs.
Possibly I’m being a touch hard on the Blackshirts. It could be argued that they played well enough to win. They had a good pass rush during the first half, but when they allowed Illinois to start the second half with a 14-play, 8-minute, 75-yard touchdown drive, the game was firmly in the control of Bilema and the Illini. The crusher: giving up a 9-yard scramble for a first down on third and 6 near midfield to keep the drive moving.
The Nebraska defensive backfield allowed Illinois to complete 15 of 19 passes and had a grand total of zero pass breakups. They did have an interception by Taylor-Britt that was nullified by an inexplicable penalty on a roughing-the-passer penalty by Caleb Tannor, who knifed between guard and tackle and arrived soon enough to disrupt Sitkowski's timing , and hit him in the sternum with his facemask just after the pass was released.
Targeting was not an issue; Tannor didn’t go for the headgear, and neither did he try to take out the quarterback’s knees. He hit his target in the midsection. If that’s not legal, how can you play defense? The FOX TV crew called it a dynamic play by Tannor and diplomatically termed it a “difficult” call. I think Tannor made a legal hit, and the Blackshirts got the wrong end of a blown call. Then again, that doesn’t excuse the subsequent unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. There’s no doubt the Huskers let that call beat them two or three times later in the game. The entire team was never the same after that moment. The Huskers are still a long way from developing mental toughness. At this point, they cannot fathom how to make their own breaks instead of waiting for them to happen.
Try to wrap your head around this: Nebraska captains were personally responsible for at least 12 negative points. Besides Taylor-Britt’s baffling two-point blunder, Martinez missed an open Liewer in the Illinois end zone midway through the second quarter, which cost the Huskers three points (maybe four if Culp makes the extra point). And of course, tack on the seven-point giveaway by Martinez just before halftime. True, it was his only turnover, but it was a back-breaker, and it came on a scramble where he had time to tuck the ball away safely.
“This looked like the same movie today,” Frost said in his postgame press conference. “We can’t let it be that way.” In his interview with the Husker Sports Network, Frost seemed to recognize that he had once again abandoned his running game, saying, “I thought if we got ahead, we could lean on the run game but we got pinned back inside our own 1-yard line and made some critical errors. Then they got ahead, and they leaned on the run game.”
He also seemed to realize that he is leaking fan support badly; his only other comment of note was, “Hang with us. This can still be a special team and we can have a good season.”
It’s a mystery whether enough Nebraska fans will take him up on that offer to keep the sellout streak going next Saturday. It appears to me as though it’s in extreme jeopardy.
