ILLINOIS RECAP: Fumbled Opportunity
ILLINOIS RECAP: Fumbled Opportunity
Miscues cost the Huskers a chance at a win and a fresh start
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Saturday’s 30-22 loss to Illinois was a microcosm in some ways of coach Scott Frost’s entire tenure with Nebraska. Good, exciting plays and promising moments where you can legitimately see a coherent, successful vision for the program interspersed with mind-numbing miscues by experienced players, various special teams blunders, and the illest-timed of penalties or opponent big plays. They even made sure to throw in a bad snap late just to make sure we hit all the squares of the Frost-Era Mistake Bingo Card. It was incredibly frustrating to watch, especially after months of offseason assurances that things would be different. At this point, it’d be hard to blame anybody for wanting to pronounce Frost’s tenure dead, and there’s plenty of compelling evidence to suggest they might be right.
But I think we need to see more. If a college football season is a set of 12 data points, Saturday’s game is just one. It could be that the coaches and players were full of bologna, that the mistakes haven’t been fixed and the Illinois loss was the first of many in another hellscape of a season. But it also could be that the mistakes ARE getting corrected, and that Saturday was a blip in a season that ultimately showed real improvement in those areas. We don’t know yet.
I think there is some pretty compelling evidence to suggest this loss was more flukey than genuinely telling — even disregarding all the “what-if” plays on Saturday, of which there were many (and I don’t find it worth it to get into), Nebraska STILL held an advantage in yards per play, points per drive, Havoc plays, and explosive plays over Illinois. That’s almost always an airtight way to win a football game.
But that’s all moot until Nebraska shows it has the ability to stop stepping on every landmine in existence. I don’t know if the errors and mistakes have been fixed or can be fixed, but I also don’t think we have enough data yet in 2021 to say conclusively that they haven’t. If the Huskers are able to come out and People’s Elbow Fordham and Buffalo, I’ll probably be back in. But they’ve lost the benefit of the doubt — and all room for error — and need to start showing something, soon. I broke down the defense first below, as we all had nicer things to say about them.
As this is the first one of these, some brief notes. I’ve divided up the offense and defense, with individual sections looking at (a) links to the spreadsheet where I charted the basic information of each unit, (b) key statistics of the game and how they compare to Nebraska’s season so far and their national rank, (c) a general review of the game for the unit, (d) sections on any compelling trends I noticed or post-game discussion points, (e) one cool play, and (f) any further notes, if necessary.
On the statistics section’s methodology, I chose the four best statistics for what I consider the four most important elements of a football game: how many yards your plays are gaining, how many of those yards are turning into points, and how many big plays are you causing and are being caused against you. I favor yards per play and points per drive as statistics over raw yards or points per game because they account for pace and efficiency instead of valuing raw totals. Points per drive includes all extra points and two-point conversions, but they don’t count scores by the opposite unit — for example, Illinois’ fumble return touchdown didn’t factor into Nebraska’s defensive points per drive, as the defense played no role in the touchdown being scored and shouldn’t be penalized for it. “Havoc” plays are a stat designed by Bill Connelly of ESPN and are all tackles for loss, sacks, quarterback pressures, passes defensed, fumbles, or interceptions. Explosive plays are the standard coaches’ definition of rushes of 12 yards or longer or passes of 16 yards or longer. Scrambles count as explosive passing plays, not rushing plays.
DEFENSE
DEFENSIVE GAME CHART:
Google Sheet link HERE
PDF link HERE
STATISTICS:
YARDS PER PLAY ALLOWED: 4.7 YARDS
Season Average (2020): 5.3 yards (NCAA rank: 49th)
National Median (2020): 5.5 yards
POINTS PER DRIVE ALLOWED: 1.75 POINTS
Season Average (2020): 2.55 points (NCAA rank: 81st)
National Median (2020): 2.36 points
HAVOC PLAYS: 11
16.18 percent of non-garbage time snaps
EXPLOSIVE PLAYS ALLOWED: 5
Pass: 2, Run: 3
OVERVIEW:
It’s hard to criticize the Blackshirts for this one. All three of the touchdown drives came with some pretty unlikely occurrences/tough breaks:
on Illinois’ fifth drive before halftime, the defense’s only two penalties of the day occurred on the same play as an interception;
on Illinois’ first drive after halftime, a backup quarterback converted three consecutive third downs to lead a 14-play drive; and
on Illinois’ second drive after halftime, a 31-yard punt left them with a short field, and then a corner making his first start blew a coverage (along with said backup quarterback making the BEST THROW OF HIS LIFE).
For the most part, the defense was pretty baller, actually. Taking out the one big Mike Epstein run in the first quarter (for which they weren’t lined up correctly and gave up a gap to the weak side), they held one of the Big Ten’s best offensive lines to 2.98 yards per non-sack carry. They made 11 Havoc plays, eight of them coming in the first half before Illinois went into its four-minute-offense mode after the break. In the late third and fourth quarter, they delivered three consecutive stops to give the ball back to the offense to give them a chance to win the game. Not committing the penalties and getting off the field on the long drive would have made this an elite performance, but it’s hard to really fault a unit that delivered when it needed to at the end of the game.
And there were a few promising moments and data points regarding the pass rush, which was a major offseason question after three years of little production under coordinator Erik Chinander. Damion Daniels and Caleb Tannor posted very good Pro Football Focus pass rush grades (78.6 and 71.1, respectively); neither has ever has had a pass-rush season graded over 50 (average to below average). Pheldarius Payne (68.0) also graded well as a pass rusher. It’s just one game, but should that hold up, that would be a big boon for a defense that really needed to find some ways to organically generate pressure.
A lot of that improved pressure didn’t translate into production in the second half because Illinois went into TURTLE MODE after getting the lead at the end of the second quarter, trying to kill clock and not expose backup quarterback Artur “CLENCHED FIST MEME” Sitkowski. The Illini ran the ball on 25 of their 33 second half non-garbage time plays, and just two of Sitkowski’s seven pass attempts travelled more than five yards downfield in the air (he scrambled once). Illinois used pre-snap motion (effective at causing misdirection to generate lanes in the run game and making pass reads easier for quarterbacks) on 56 PERCENT of its plays with Sitkowski in the game, compared to just 28 percent of the time with Peters. It was full-on Bielema Ball in the second half.
NICKEL USAGE
One interesting thing in this game was Chinander’s nickel usage. One small note before getting too deep: “Nickel” is a defensive personnel used in passing situations that typically takes a linebacker or defensive lineman off the field to bring in a corner, but because JoJo Domann, an outside linebacker in the base defense, is Nebraska’s’ nickel corner, NU actually ends up bringing an extra linebacker onto the field to replace Domann in nickel personnel.
Nebraska was in nickel for 39 of its 68 non-garbage time plays Saturday. As it’s a situational personnel best suited for passing situations or spread teams with three or more receivers on the field, it was strange to see it being deployed on over half the snaps against a run-heavy team like Illinois.
One advantage I think Chinander may have been chasing was getting an “even” front on the field. In Nebraska’s version of nickel personnel, its base defensive ends move into traditional even-front defensive tackle positions, and its outside linebackers move into traditional even-front defensive end positions, forming a four-lineman front — four is an EVEN number. Nebraska’s base defense is a three-lineman “odd” front. Here’s what the nickel alignment looks like:
An even front is typically better against teams that favor outside runs, as it covers the C gaps outside of the offensive tackles. Considering how much outside zone Illinois was running Saturday, that could have been the thinking. But it’s also pretty simple to make Nebraska’s base 3-4 defense into an even front by bringing an outside linebacker down to form the four-man front, something that Nebraska does pretty frequently. It should be noted that when NU really needed to stop the run late in the game, it was in base personnel.
A COOL PLAY
Not necessarily any groundbreaking concept, but the stunt on the Not Interception was really well executed by Ben Stille and Tannor. Stille, as the 3 technique, is essentially responsible for blocking on this play, pushing the offensive guard backward to set a pick against the offensive tackle who’s responsible for Tannor, who starts upfield and then reverses field to cut under Stille’s pick.
Stille pushes the offensive guard straight back and Tannor starts rushing upfield, causing the tackle to backpedal. When Tannor stunts back to the inside, the offensive tackle can’t get around to him because the guard is in the way, and the guard doesn’t switch off of Stille in time to catch Tannor before he flies through the hole. The running back is supposed to help clean up any missed assignment, but with the misdirection, he’s not looking for it and Tannor swims right by him.
This is a very common pressure move used by most teams — the Bill Belichick Patriots teams and Iowa love doing this — but it’s tough to run it more cleanly than this:
OFFENSE
OFFENSIVE GAME CHART:
Google Sheet link HERE
PDF link HERE
STATISTICS:
YARDS PER PLAY: 5.2 YARDS
Season Average (2020): 5.4 yards (NCAA rank: 69th)
National Median (2020): 5.5 yards
POINTS PER DRIVE: 1.83
Season Average (2020): 2.0 points (NCAA rank: 86th)
National Median (2020): 2.21 points
EXPLOSIVE PLAYS: 8
Pass: 8, Rush: 0 (Scrambles count as explosive pass plays)
HAVOC PLAYS ALLOWED: 7
9.7 percent of non-garbage time snaps
OVERVIEW:
We all saw it. It wasn’t pretty. It’s tough to really even take much meaningful away from Saturday, as Nebraska got knocked very far off its original plan by the game script and resorted to chucking the ball.
The running game was absolutely abysmal. Take away quarterback Adrian Martinez’s 111 yards, most of which came on scrambles, and you’ve got 21 carries for 63 yards. Some of that was Illinois’ front shenanigans — that discussion’s coming later in the newsletter — but a lot of it was poor offensive line play. Three of NU’s five starting offensive linemen posted PFF run blocking grades considered below average against a defensive front the same site ranked second-worst in the Big Ten in the preseason. Ethan Piper had another extremely bad day, as he was the second-worst graded run blocker on the team, including all receivers and tight ends. Piper also allowed three sacks and another hurry per PFF in pass pro, while fellow freshman starter Bryce Benhart (45.6) also graded out as below average in pass pro. Both received significantly higher grades than Turner Corcoran at 18.1, who allowed six hurries (though Corcoran is rumored to be dealing with some injuries). For a bright spot on the o-line, center Cameron Jurgens did play very well, though, with a good run blocking grade of 66.9 and an EXCELLENT pass blocking grade of 84.7, and Matt Sichterman also pass-pro’d well. Good job, Beef Jurgy!
In the passing game, Illinois DID follow their defensive coordinator’s previous history and run a metric ton of Cover 1, and Nebraska responded smartly by running a metric ton of man-beaters. On Nebraska’s 44 dropbacks, Nebraska ran what’s traditionally considered a “man-beating” concept on at least 34 of them (the number could be higher because I couldn’t see a few of the route combos with the TV feed).
This was a particularly nice Cover 1-beater. With all the coverage players locked onto man and one deep safety, watch how the motion and the boot action and routes to the field (a) pulls the deep safety away from the running back on the wheel route, and (b) creates traffic that the RB’s man defender gets caught in.
It was a very aggressive way form of defense for Illinois to play. As discussed in last week’s preview, Cover 1 leaves corners on islands and vulnerable to big plays. If you get beat, you’re giving up a lot of yards. Nebraska didn’t make them pay enough. They were able to hit several big plays on the Cover 1 — the above wheel route to Stepp, the seam balls to Oliver Martin, all the scrambles against the man-defenders not watching the quarterback — but they also missed several more. The missed throws to Wyatt Liewer and Chris Hickman late in the second quarter and the big gain to Samori Toure called back by the pick were all massive gains schemed open against man that Nebraska didn’t execute on. THAT, TO ME, IS WHERE THE GAME WAS LOST. Hit some of those plays — especially the one to Hickman that occurred two plays before the fumble-six — and Nebraska likely goes into halftime leading, and Illinois can’t get into clock-killing mode and has to ask Sitkowski to actually play. If we’re doing one “what-if”, that’s it.
ADRIAN MARTINEZ WAS BAD. BUT THEN HE WAS GOOD.
The fumble was inexcusable. Especially after an offseason where not doing that exact thing was a focal point. And while every quarterback is going to duff some throws every once in a while and pressure played a role in some of the misfires, he’s good enough to not miss the ones he did in the second quarter Saturday.
But he was also the only reason NU was in the game in the second half. The 75-yard run speaks for itself, but his scrambles and pocket movement also routinely bailed out the offensive line on would-be sacks and led to big plays rushing or throwing.
His processing and decision-making were also good all day. Take the missed throw to Hickman (I couldn’t find my own video of this so I had to use this guy’s tweet):
Watch Martinez’s eyes go from his first read (the wheel out of the backfield), to his second (the crosser running to the top of the screen), to his third read (Hickman) in a couple seconds. Now watch Luke McCaffrey run this exact same play last year:
Martinez needs to hit those throws in the future. No question. He completed 70 percent of his passes last year, so I expect him to. But advocating throwing away his level of experience, smarts, and movement ability because you’re mad about a half-quarter of play to start a freshman with no collegiate snaps is crybaby stuff. He’s the only reason they moved the ball in the second half Saturday. Absolutely ZERO respect from the newsletter for any Adrian Haters.
GAMEPLAN-GATE:
Trying to figure out what the Illini’s new staff was going to run Saturday was a big part of the leadup to the game. In the Illinois preview, here’s what I predicted:
This is where previewing a brand new staff in Week 0 gets a little tricky. Walters said Monday that the Illini’s defense will be “something (he’s) never done.” That could be coach speak to throw off an opponent’s preparation, or it could be a genuine sign of this being a collaborative, new unit. The Illini almost exclusively ran Walter’s Missouri scheme during the spring game and I doubt he’d throw out what’s worked for him before, so I’m leaning toward the former. … Considering that Illinois spent most of its spring game running Walters’ exact Missouri defense, and I doubt he’d waste valuable spring reps on an elaborate ploy to get an advantage for one week against NU, I’d say the talk of something new from him is largely bologna.
That was wrong, as Illinois played primarily an even front and not the Tite/Bear odd look its coordinator showed at his previous stop, Missouri, or in the Illinois spring game. It caught Frost and the Nebraska staff off-guard, too.
What a time to have started a Husker scheme newsletter.
This quote been dunked on by fans and haters alike as proof that the staff doesn’t know what it’s doing. But assuming that Illini would come out in the odd Tite/Bear front was the highest-probability move. I thought they would run it, too! About every coaching staff in America would have done the same. And Matt Lubick confirmed Tuesday that NU had contingency plans because of the unknown of the first game, so this isn’t really a bad-process issue, either.
But that does suck! The plays you practice more often in the week leading up to the game generally work a lot better than the plays you don’t practice as often. If the reasonable assumption was you were getting one thing, then you get the other, that’s a real tough break. You move forward and ADJUST — AS NEBRASKA DID, running a lot of even-front concept runs such as midline the few times it did rush in the second half — but you’re still throwing your original plan out the window. No coach likes that.
Getting upset about this seems absolutely silly to me. If you’re interested in examining WHY this maybe was a big deal (and not using an innocuous quote as a cudgel on Frost because you’re mad he’s not winning more games), it goes back to the odd and even fronts discussed in the defensive section of this post. The Tite/Bear Front Illinois’ coordinator ran at Missouri looked like this (diagram from the Illinois preview):
Notice three defensive linemen inside the tackles in the 0 and 3 techniques. An odd front (this is an odd front because there are 5 players on the line of scrimmage) takes away the “B” gaps, which are the gaps between the center and both guards. Against an odd front like this, plays such as inside zone or gap-scheme runs designed to hit in the B gap aren’t going to work — there are guys there. So most teams will attack an odd front to the edges, by running outside-hitting plays such as outside zone or toss, or using tight ends to try and manufacture gaps on the perimeter of the formation. The above is an extreme example; Missouri has linebackers walked up in the 5 and 7 techniques as well here, but that’s generally the play for trying to run on an odd front.
But with most even fronts (screenshot from Saturday below), the defense sacrifices an interior gap to put two players in 5 techniques (outside the tackles) and is typically giving up one B gap.
That means your inside zone and gap scheme plays are going to hit better, but your perimeter runs are not going to work as well. This was discussed more in-depth last week in the Illinois preview, but that’s the general gist.
A COOL PLAY:
Freeze Speed Option
Freeze Speed Option is a play I’ve seen NU run a few time before, but it got broken out three times Saturday in big moments, so I thought it merited a shout-out.
Freeze Speed Option got its name because of how it freezes the linebackers with misdirection. The quarterback and running back start one direction, faking a run play to that side — and getting the defense to flow with them — before fast pivoting to the other direction and carrying out a normal pitch option against the end man on the line of scrimmage on a defense that has hopefully run itself out of position. Freshman tailback Gabe Ervin messes up here (this was the only rep of the play I could find video for), but here’s what it looks like:
Ervin continues with the initial fake and doesn’t reestablish option relationship, but the read man ran himself out of the play and Martinez was able to make him miss to get the first down.
Nebraska ran this same play in the first quarter (on the facemask penalty) and on the goalline of the final touchdown drive (the play that led to the fourth down/first down spot fiasco). Coastal Carolina got this play some press for how much it ran it last year during its undefeated run. If you want a more in-depth explanation, check out this Youtube video on how the Chanticleers run the play.