Landlordos7 said

From another Husker fan, don't listen to the guy above me. He's trying very hard to refute the contributions of our graduating players from last year in order to somehow make it seem like we'll be that much better this year.

Swift and Petersen were absolutely fantastic receivers…for our offense. Nate Swift absolutely was a gamebreaker, and had a great year (a dropped pass in the Gator Bowl would have given him touchdowns in a season and yards in a season records to go along with his career receptions record) and Petersen was the perfect compliment, always finding the open hole.

Lucky struggled quite a bit his senior year but his contributions aren't forgotten to the intelligent Husker fans.

Blah blah blah blah more statements about how all his points are greatly exaggerated.


Sorry about that.

i disagree.  Lucky did underwhelm with the hype he had, he was…the number 5 recruit in the nation coming in?  i never said he was bad  but you have to admit he never was able to find the hole he was to indecisive about what he was going to do in the back field.  in space he was great, but that was it.  Helu was a much better threat at running back and by the end of the year lucky wasn't even thought of.  If they wanted to use lucky they should have moved him to slot where he would have shined, hell most husker fans were saying that after wake in 07 when we got gashed by the converted running back they had.

Peterson and Swift are possession receivers and that is all.  they were consistant for the most part but we did not have a game breaker you over estimate their talents.  Both of those guys sold out on everything they weren't afraid to block they could catch the ball but they aren't that good and if your saying i'm overselling what we have then you can go to the football offices off of vine and tell the coaches that they are overselling.

and to the point that swift was 1 td short of having the school record for tds, he did that in…4 years compared to a guy who did in 3 years in a completely different sort of offense(read running)…it doesn't compare.

and lets see what else you have problems with since i'm sure i can find the quotes to prove otherwise that you are in fact in error.

Sorry about changing subjects but does anybody have any clue what time the game is going to be?

Florida_Owl said

Landlordos7 said

From another Husker fan, don't listen to the guy above me. He's trying very hard to refute the contributions of our graduating players from last year in order to somehow make it seem like we'll be that much better this year.

Swift and Petersen were absolutely fantastic receivers…for our offense. Nate Swift absolutely was a gamebreaker, and had a great year (a dropped pass in the Gator Bowl would have given him touchdowns in a season and yards in a season records to go along with his career receptions record) and Petersen was the perfect compliment, always finding the open hole.

Lucky struggled quite a bit his senior year but his contributions aren't forgotten to the intelligent Husker fans.

Blah blah blah blah more statements about how all his points are greatly exaggerated.


Sorry about that.

No need to apologoze…glad we have a level headed guy like yourself, and Hopefully 100 more to discuss things with as game day gets closer

Where do you see NU being most effective on offense??

As for us:

Your defensive line has me concerned…even with a weighty tailback possibly emerging this Spring for us, you're clearly prepared from a DL talent stand point.

Your secondary, not sure as of yet…WR is our strongest suite…and with a new OC who is a former WR, well we could be going heavy there - although HS always has the final say.

On your offensive end:

Offensive line is a problem if your coach goes with a running game for sure…we do seem to have somewhat of a pass rush emerging with Cyrille, but given what we have done as a whole with the other guys in the mix, and given the obvious double team, questionable.

Your Coach is not a "pound it" guy…but, whatever it takes to win the game is always the protocol…

What says you?

actually owl you are mistaken that our coach is not a pound it out guy.  they tried doing that the first 5 games last year and found with the talent they had they couldn't do it(lots of single and double te i sets) and after the mizzery game they changed to a spread and found it worked with the talent they had.  Shawn Watson perfers the pound it out guy pass to the tightend or wide out on a play action as he did at colorado.  but he is also flexible(going from a top 10 running game i believe in 2001 to a top 10 passing team in 2002 after bobby purify graduated(cousin of former husker mo purify).  since it's early in the season i'd expect a large dosage of helu and castile.

fins09065 said

Sorry about changing subjects but does anybody have any clue what time the game is going to be?

we won't know until the week before the game, it depends if it's picked up for tv and what not.

Florida_Owl said

Landlordos7 said

From another Husker fan, don't listen to the guy above me. He's trying very hard to refute the contributions of our graduating players from last year in order to somehow make it seem like we'll be that much better this year.

Swift and Petersen were absolutely fantastic receivers…for our offense. Nate Swift absolutely was a gamebreaker, and had a great year (a dropped pass in the Gator Bowl would have given him touchdowns in a season and yards in a season records to go along with his career receptions record) and Petersen was the perfect compliment, always finding the open hole.

Lucky struggled quite a bit his senior year but his contributions aren't forgotten to the intelligent Husker fans.

Blah blah blah blah more statements about how all his points are greatly exaggerated.


Sorry about that.

No need to apologoze…glad we have a level headed guy like yourself, and Hopefully 100 more to discuss things with as game day gets closer

Where do you see NU being most effective on offense??

As for us:

Your defensive line has me concerned…even with a weighty tailback possibly emerging this Spring for us, you're clearly prepared from a DL talent stand point.

Your secondary, not sure as of yet…WR is our strongest suite…and with a new OC who is a former WR, well we could be going heavy there - although HS always has the final say.

On your offensive end:

Offensive line is a problem if your coach goes with a running game for sure…we do seem to have somewhat of a pass rush emerging with Cyrille, but given what we have done as a whole with the other guys in the mix, and given the obvious double team, questionable.

Your Coach is not a "pound it" guy…but, whatever it takes to win the game is always the protocol…

What says you?

On offense I think most Nebraska fans would agree that our strengths are our runningbacks and tight ends. At runningback, Helu put on a good ~15-20lbs. and has been receiving a ton of praise through spring, apparently running faster and more explosively than he did when he weighed less. He had some extremely impressive runs in '08 (youtube documents this) so people are excited about the possibilities with him, and everyone is also very high on our #2 back who will knock linebackers and secondary over repeatedly but he has good speed also. He's been known to have fumble problems and be inconsistent but he stepped up in the Gator Bowl and rushed for 125 yards against a pretty decent Clemson defense.

At tight end, Mike McNeil(l?) very quietly broke the school record for single season receptions last year. We just have a ton of depth at that position that a few guys won't get their due.


Our wide receivers and quarterback are obviously the biggest question marks to most people, but the most interesting position to watch for me is the O-line. Vuren is right we tried pounding the rock at the beginning of last year and found out that it wasn't what 08's strength. Who knows what will happen this year, but we've got more questions than answers on the O-Line this year as of right now. As far as quarterback, if Lee is the starter which is a fairly safe bet right now, our offense is very friendly to a quarterback once he learns the system (ie, giving him plenty of options and knowing which options should be open due to good scheming and simultaneously lowering the amount of times that he has to make a play on his own).



Our d-line should hopefully be the strength of the defense again this year, but our defense all around should be much improved from last year after the players have a year under their belts. Potter and Steinkuhler were pretty underrated if you ask me, and both contributed a lot to the success that Suh had.




Also vuren, I misspoke somewhat. I think most of the points in your first two posts were quite a bit exaggerated, but you had some valid points also, especially about the linebacker position.

And as far as Nate Swift, I'd like to see any other "possession" receiver in the country do what Swift does at 4:01 here:

what points were exaggerated the fact that the reciever swift is compared to is wes welker who as i remember was not a game breaker but is known for always being consistant.  He does not have blazing speed, he uses the ability to run great routes to make plays, he doesn't have break away speed.  that is all.

vuren said

…they changed to a spread and found it worked with the talent they had.

That's what i meant…at least from the action i saw…

Honestly, calling our offense any generic term used by any other school is absurd. Shawn Watson has studied this offense so much under Bill Callahan, and has tweaked it in a ton of different ways, but it's still a version of the West Coast Offense in philosophy. Yeah we go shotgun a lot (or we did last year, Watson is very flexible and good at working with what he's got), we run zone reads and all that, but it's such a hybrid thing that it can't really be called anything specific.

With a QB with little or no experience….how do you think the coaches will play call and what style offense will they use for this new QB?  I imagine they will run something different than they did last year with a Senior QB at the helm.

walty12 said

With a QB with little or no experience….how do you think the coaches will play call and what style offense will they use for this new QB?  I imagine they will run something different than they did last year with a Senior QB at the helm.

Well like I pointed at in an earlier post, once a quarterback gets the offense down well, it almost does the job for him. Combining Shawn Watson's notable talents at molding the offense around the players we have along with the extremely complicated nature of the offense make it a well oiled machine in a matter of time. The reason our last three quarterbacks have had the success that they did (and noticeably, Keller had the least amount and had the least amount of time in the offense) would have to be the offense if you ask me.


Anyways, about Lee specifically. This is just what I'm guessing, but I think we'll see a great deal of rollout passes like last year, and even more options/zone-reads. Reports from the media and also quotes from players say that Lee's athleticism is very impressive and that he can run nearly as fast as most of the runningbacks. He didn't really have any noteable rushing statistics in JUCO so the jury is still out but if the hype is to believed in that regard I would guess that the quarterback would be involved in just as many plays as Ganz was last year, except that a higher percentage of them will be with his feet.

We've had reports of the coaches opening the offense up a bit in the passing game though, trying more deep stuff than before.