MINN RECAP: Make It Stop
P.J. Fleck is still an all-time goober, I don't care
This bad boy’s already super long and there are only so many ways I can say "Nebraska lost a close game in incredibly painful and frustrating fashion." Let’s get on with the breakdown:
OFFENSE
OFFENSIVE GAME CHART:
Google Sheet link HERE
Downloadable PDF link HERE
NEBRASKA GAME STATISTICS:
YARDS PER PLAY: 5.98 Yards Per Play
Pregame Season Average: 6.75 yards per play (NCAA rank: 19th)
Postgame Season Average: 6.66 yards per play (NCAA rank: 24th)
National Median: 5.86 yards per play
POINTS PER DRIVE: 1.91 Points Per Drive
Pregame Season Average: 2.46 points per drive (NCAA rank: 46th)
Postgame Season Average: 2.35 points per drive (NCAA rank: 53rd)
National Median: 2.14 points per drive
EXPLOSIVE PLAYS: 11 Explosive Plays (Pass: 6, Run: 5)
Pregame Season Average: 9.14 explosive plays per game
HAVOC PLAYS ALLOWED: 8 Havoc Plays Allowed (10.13% of plays)
Pregame Season Average: 7.28 Havoc plays allowed per game
NEBRASKA GAME TRENDS:
RUN/PASS: 42.86% Run, 57.14% Pass
TEMPO: 27.66% No Tempo, 46.00% Slow Tempo, 0.00% Check With Me Tempo, 25.54% Fast Tempo
PERSONNEL: 73.02% 11 Personnel, 26.98% 12 Personnel
FORMATION: 46.66% Doubles Formations, 35.00% Trips Formations, 5.00% Quads Formations, 6.67% Empty Formations, 1.67% Two-Back Formations
MOTION: 46.00% of Plays Used Motion
PASS DATA (Percentage out of pass plays only): 63.88% 3 Step Concepts, 27.78% Play Action, 5.55% Screen, 5.55% Sprintout/Boot
PASS PROTECTION: 61.11% 5 Man, 22.22% 6 Man, 5.55% 7 Man
ELEMENTS: 7.94% of plays had triple option element, 4.76% of plays had RPO element, 40.74% of runs had read element
OVERVIEW:
Nebraska’s offense seemed in a deep funk for about the first 35 minutes of game time, something that probably took this from “perfunctory Nebraska win” territory to “close game” territory. Then when the offense did start playing better in the second half, it couldn’t sustain drives or convert in key moments to lose the close game.
The biggest difference in the offense’s performance — though not the only — was quarterback play. Nebraska offensive line had its highest grade from Pro Football Focus of any game that wasn’t Fordham or Northwestern, and Minnesota was loading up to stop the run — a predominantly Cover 4/6, two-deep safety team entering this game ran run-stopping Cover 1 or Cover 3 on nearly half its snaps. It frequently used a quarterback spy (or two, or three) on passing downs. This is to say, a pretty average Gopher secondary was not devoting many resources to coverage, daring Nebraska to beat it in the dropback passing game. And quarterback Adrian Martinez left a lot of meat on that bone in the first half.
I am extremely loathe to criticize college kids for their performance in something all of us come to as a leisure activity, and I am especially loathe to do so to a player who has taken a lot of unnecessary and unfair grief from this fanbase. But it’s also warranted and fair to say that some of the things Martinez struggles with were big factors in this loss. I talked about it a little bit in the breakdown of the Michigan State game, but Martinez issues in the quick passing game can derail the steady play of an offense and prevent it from getting some of the easy gains that are schemed open/allowed by the defense.
This is the play he was sacked for the safety on:
This is a basic “Stick” concept with the field side with the tight end and the running back, and a “Double Slants” concept to the boundary with the two stacked wide receivers. This is a play NU runs a ton.
It’s a “quick game” passing play. In terms of responsibilities, the quarterback has to make a very fast read here and throw the ball on timing without being certain or 100% seeing if a receiver is open. The defense’s reaction to the pre-snap motion should already tell him which of the two route concepts he’s throwing to. It’s: “Catch The Snap, One, Two, Ball’s Gone.” The offensive line’s job here is not to form a pocket or hold up for 5 seconds in pass protection, and there are no routes here deeper than a handful of yards downfield. This is not a “Run Around And Scramble And Make Some Magic Happen” play; this is a “Get Four Or Five Yards On A Rhythm Throw And Have A Manageable Second Down” play.
Minnesota does cover this well; it’s a cloudy read. But that’s beside the point: This isn’t simply Martinez playing out of structure here and getting burned; this is Martinez completely ignoring the structure (a quick, rhythm passing play) to try and be creative when there is almost no chance of something good happening. That’s a problem. Failures on plays such as this are a huge reason why the offense is so all-or-nothing and dependent on big plays right now. You can’t sustain drives when you’re not taking the gimmees. And not being able to have that offensive consistency when they need it is a big part of why the team struggles with close games (or plays in close games against lesser teams to begin with).
Other backups to Martinez have been better at this facet of the passing game: Noah Vedral and Luke McCaffrey were better “quick game” players than Martinez. That’s why the offense has occasionally looked better and more consistent under those two in parts of the past two years. But neither has the ceiling or playmaking ability of Martinez to hurt a defense once those easy completions get taken away; neither can go “get you a bucket” (as Nate Tice likes to say) when the defense has a play well covered. And you make the upside coaching bet that you can take a talented player and teach them to be good in the quick game 100% of the time (See: Mahomes, Patrick or Allen, Josh).
But so far with Martinez, that hasn’t happened. I’m sure playing behind porous offensive lines and throwing to bad receivers he can’t trust for most of his career has had something to do with that, and some of it is definitely endemic to his nature. To make a baseball analogy, Martinez is the power hitter who can crush 40 homers in a season but is never going to hit for average because his swing/approach has to be turned up to 1,000,000 all of the time. You love it when they hit two monster bombs in a game, but it’s also deeply frustrating when they can’t just hit a single when you need it and go 0-for-5 with a few horrid strikeouts (as a Cubs fan, he’s Javy Báez).
So some percentage of the issue is the talent around him and some percentage is just his approach to the game. But also some percentage is on coaching. Patrick Mahomes did this stuff at Texas Tech and then stopped when he got to the NFL because … Andy Reid is a good coach who taught him how to harness the creativity and combine it with the keeping-the-offense-on-the-train-tracks stuff. That hasn’t happened with Frost and quarterbacks coach Mario Verduzco. I don’t think either is bad at their job, and this is the same duo that turned McKenzie Milton into a quick-game god at UCF. They know how to do it. But for whatever reason, it’s not happened with Martinez, and, four years in, there’s enough of a sample size to believe that maybe it never will.
This is, to some degree, nitpicking. It’d be insane to act like Martinez hasn’t been an overwhelming net positive for the offense this year. He has the ability to nuke a defense at any moment. He has to be one of the more terrifying offensive players in the conference to face. And anyone who is advocating for him to be benched is someone whom I would say is not applying proper context here. And the goal shouldn’t be to turn him into some automaton Air Raid guy who never plays out of structure or occasionally doesn’t make a negative play when hunting for a big one. The goal is to harness that explosiveness and apply it when it’s warranted but also be able to take the short gains that present themselves. It’s OK to hunt for the home runs, but you also have to be able to hit the singles when your team needs to advance some runners.
Beyond giant diatribe I just did on QB play, there were some positive things about the offense Saturday. I am … cautiously optimistic the offensive line seems to be coming around? Center Cameron Jurgens was already very good and guard Matt Sichterman was already fine. That’s two pieces. But Nouredin Nouili is an excellent run blocker and has not allowed even a pressure through three starts, which is a massive upgrade from what NU previously had at left guard, and Bryce Benhart has been (a little) better since his benching. Turner Corcoran continues to mostly be a black hole at left tackle, but he’s also drawing every opponent’s best pass rusher, who seemingly are, like, top-15 national guys every week and is rumored to be injured. I’m willing to give him a pass for the rest of the season, but I’m starting to get worried.
Offensive trends-wise, Nebraska ran a season-low by my tracking of both running plays with a read element and Run-Pass Option plays, going with way more traditional standard handoffs and dropback passes. This made a lot more sense when Frost revealed early this week Martinez was limited with a lower-leg injury than it did immediately postgame.
I also wanted to give a shout-out to Austin Allen, the Big Ten’s best tight end.
(NOT THE BIG) RED ZONE
Obviously all the requisite qualifiers for that fourth-down series on the goalline that essentially decided the game: Rahmir Johnson was absolutely targeted on second down; it sure as hell looked as if Martinez scored on third down; Jacquez Yant was only in because of the Johnson injury, etc., etc.
But when you’re on the 3-inch yard line … just get under center and run a sneak. I’m not some weirdo sneak evangelist, either; if you’re a yard or more out, I have no problem getting in the shotgun and trying to be creative. But when you’ve got only a few inches to go, from an efficiency standpoint, there isn’t really a better answer than just trying to brute-force push ahead for a very short distance. That doesn’t mean you’ll never get stuffed or always convert — ask Josh Allen on Monday night — but it’s a much higher-percentage play when you consider what can go wrong or how much penetration can happen when you add the yardage to make an exchange in the shotgun. Frost said he didn’t call a sneak because Minnesota had been good against them this season, and it did have a good defensive line, but, still, I’m struggling to see how giving the ball to your backup freshman running back three yards away from the goalline was a better answer than just having your Basically A Running Back quarterback try to push ahead for a few inches behind your NFL center. I’m calling bologna there.
Nebraska obviously has had its struggles in the red zone in past years under Frost, and the failed conversions against Michigan and Minnesota have, fairly, made this a talking point again. The surface numbers don’t look great again this season — Nebraska is 105th nationally in the number of times it scores on all red zone trips — but digging a little deeper, the problems with the actual red zone offense have not been quite as bad as they seem. While NU is 105th in all red zone scores, it’s 61st in percentage of red zone scores ending in touchdowns — not elite, but also average. The real disconnect is happening in the kicking game. Nebraska (a) not being able to convert kick attempts it tries into points, and (b) being forced to go for fourth downs they otherwise wouldn’t if they felt confident in their kicker (AHEM, 4th and 10 from the 34) is making an average red zone offense seem bad.
A COUPLE COOL PLAYS:
Gun Doubles H Wing Weak — PA Freeze Option Weak Flood
Nebraska added a nice little wrinkle to its passing game Saturday, giving a quick couple-step option fake on a handful of passes that emulates its “Freeze Option” run concept. It’s not much, but look at how the run fake pulls the linebackers and nickelback forward and the separation it gives Allen between the second and third layers of Minnesota’s Cover 3:
Nebraska was 3 for 5 passing when running this “option step,” with gains of 22, 20 and 30 yards (one of the two incompletions was batted down and looked like it might have gone for a big gain, too).
Gun Doubles H Wing Strong — Split Zone Midline Triple Option
As previously discussed, Nebraska didn’t run much triple option in this game, but when it did, it broke out a “Midline” variation on a couple reps that was new for it.
On a normal triple option play, the “Dive” read is the last defender on the line of scrimmage. That’s No. 34 in the blue circle in the diagram below. But with a midline option, the offense instead reads the first defender outside the offensive center; in this case, the 3-technique, No. 5, in the orange circle in the diagram below:
The 3-tech (Nyles Pinckney) stays relatively wide and doesn’t crash down on the dive player, so it’s a give:
You run midline because you want to test the interior of a defense at its midpoint, as most running plays are outside-hitting and defenses flow to the edges. It also was a nice changeup/curveball to NU’s typical triple option plays; just about everyone in the stadium knows what’s coming at this point when that Orbit motion starts coming around. Changing who’s being read throws the defense off. Also, the Huskers’s staff might have also thought it smart to try to read Pinckney instead of trying to block him, as he was wrecking the game at that point. All in all, NU ran four Midline plays against the Gophers, both out of the triple option and out of shotgun QB-RB exchanges. One was Johnson’s touchdown run in the second quarter.
DEFENSE
DEFENSIVE GAME CHART:
Google Sheet link HERE
Downloadable PDF link HERE
GAME STATISTICS:
YARDS ALLOWED PER PLAY: 5.82 Yards Allowed Per Play Allowed
Pregame Season Average: 5.01 yards allowed per play (NCAA rank: 35th)
Postgame Season Average: 5.11 yards allowed per play (NCAA rank: 43rd)
National Median: 5.50 yards allowed per play
POINTS ALLOWED PER DRIVE: 2.33 Points Allowed Per Drive
Pregame Season Average: 1.54 points allowed per drive (NCAA rank: 35th)
Postgame Season Average: 1.68 points allowed per drive (NCAA rank: 28th)
National Median: 2.18 points allowed per drive
HAVOC PLAYS: 11 Havoc Plays (16.17 percent of plays)
Pregame Season Average: 11.00 Havoc plays per game
EXPLOSIVE PLAYS ALLOWED: 8 Explosive Plays Allowed (Pass: 5, Run: 3)
Pregame Season Average: 5.71 explosive plays allowed per game
GAME TRENDS:
NEBRASKA GAME TRENDS:
RUN/PASS: 62% Run, 38% Pass
PERSONNEL: 47.62% Base, 41.18% 2-5 Nickel, 8.82% 4-4 Heavy, 1.47% Dime
FRONT: 63.24% Even Front, 36.76% Odd Front
BOX NUMBER: 22.06% Light Box, 44.12% Standard Box, 33.82% Heavy Box
SAFETIES HIGH: 1.49% 3 High, 67.22% 2 High, 26.87% 1 High, 4.48% 0-High
PASS RUSH: 1.47% Light Rush, 63.24% Standard Rush, 35.29% Blitz
COVERAGE: 10.29% Cover 0, 8.82% Cover 1, 1.47% Cover 2, 54.41% Cover 3, 14.70% Cover 4, 0% 2 Man
OVERVIEW:
Nebraska’s defense wasn’t sound early vs. Minnesota’s six offensive lineman package and the RPOs or heavy play action off of it, which the Gophers hammered most of the game. NU eventually made the proper adjustments and shut that nonsense down — the six-lineman package averaged 8.06 yards per play in the first half on non-situational drives and 3.53 yards per play after the break — but by that time had already given up 21 points, which Minnesota clung to like a life raft while the Husker offense imploded in the red zone.
Nebraska played primarily four-down even fronts as usual, with Cover 3 behind it. Early on, they seemed especially keyed in on stopping Minnesota’s running game, which got taken advantage of when quarterback Tanner Morgan pulled the ball and threw. NU’s linebackers did an especially bad job in the first half of not reading plays, flying downhill any time they saw a puller or run blocking action, like the plays below. Watch the linebackers here:
Cover 3 is a popular coverage because it creates three levels:
You have the three players deep responsible for thirds of the field, the linebackers forming a second level in the middle “Hook” depth, and a shorter, outside level playing a curl/flat zone. Good quarterbacks can tear apart Cover 3 by layering in tough passes between the second and third levels. It gets considerably easier for a bad quarterback — like, say, Morgan — to layer those passes in when the Hook level is doing this any time it sees run action:
Linebackers doing this is why you saw so many safeties one-on-one with Minnesota receivers down the field.
The Gophers also hammered a curl-flat concept for a lot of success in the first half when they did have to pass. This is an especially potent passing concept vs. Cover 3 because it requires the outside Curl/Flat coverage player to choose between two equal responsibilities:
This player circled in purple here has to choose: Do they cover the flat route, or the curl? Whichever one they don’t will be open. Nebraska had been running a ton of Cover 3 in past games, so attacking in this way was good scouting and good game planning.
So Minnesota had a bye week and used it to its advantage to come up with a smart gameplan. And their offensive line is legitimately very large, experienced and good. But some of this is also just on the Blackshirts not playing well: not fitting gaps, tackling poorly and not getting any pressure on Morgan. A lot of times it seemed as if they were juuuuuust missing plugging a hole, getting glancing shots or arms on Gopher backs instead of square tackles. This led to 12 missed tackles by Pro Football Focus. The linebackers seemed out of position a lot; Nick Henrich in particular missed three tackles and seemed to not be getting to his spot.
The other failed element here was pressure. NU got almost no heat on Morgan the whole game. Its one sack came on a trick play they sniffed out; otherwise they recorded four other quarterback hurries. Games like this are where the Huskers really miss just having a dude who can go get a sack; a good offensive line that isn’t going to fall for stunts or twists with four-man pressures and an RPO attack that hurts you for brining extra blitzers.
But things got better in the second half. From what I can tell, that just came from … playing better. Nothing really changed schematic or percentage-wise, aside from NU run blitzing a little more in the second half (a stat that’s also skewed by the final drive when they were desperate to get a stop ). Nebraska defenders just squared up tackles and didn’t find themselves out of position as often as they were in the first half. Unfortunately, it came a little too late to make a difference.
PROGRAMMING NOTE
Apologies for being a day late, but, with the bye next week, I took a more leisurely pace. The newsletter will be taking a much-needed break along with the Huskers, where I plan on enjoying having some free time again. You can expect a preview for the Purdue game in your inbox sometime next week, but nothing until then. Thanks as always for reading, and enjoy your week off from a crippling Husker loss. GBR.