Big Ten openers might be sloppy
The Big Ten is starting football this fall at what normally would be midseason, but don’t expect the teams to be in midseason form.
The COVID- 19 pandemic limited or eliminated most spring practices across the country. Positive tests and precautions, along with uncertainty about whether there would even be a season, caused disruptions in summer workouts and preseason practices.
As a result, conferences that started their seasons before the Big Ten experienced a lot of early games filled with gaffes on special teams and poor tackling, among other problems.
“You’ve heard the stories about a couple of teams not doing any live tackling going into the game. I don’t think I needed to hear that to know that that’s probably not a good idea,” Nebraska coach Scott Frost said. “Obviously, you don’t want to get a punt blocked. That’s cost some people some games.”
According to Associated Press and NCAA research comparing seven-week averages this season with the 2019 full-season averages, penalties are up 7.6% nationally and blocked kicks or punts are up 38%.
The per-team scoring average of 30.3 points is more than a point higher than it was last season and slightly ahead of the record of 30 points per game in 2016. The total offense average of 412 yards is on pace to be the second-highest since the NCAA started keeping records in 1937, behind 417 yards per game in 2016.
“There does appear to be a lot of high- scoring games, that’s pretty obvious. Entertaining games,” Indiana coach Tom Allen said. “As a defensive coach, it’s rough to watch sometimes. When we were in the pandemic period, you couldn’t do a lot of defensive things.”
Even programs around the country with traditionally strong defenses have struggled at times. Clemson and Alabama, the top two teams in the current AP Top 25 and the dominant programs of the
past decade, are both averaging double-digit missed tackles for the first time since Pro Football Focus began tracking that statistic in 2014.
Alabama has allowed an average of 10 more points per game than it did last season, and as a whole the Southeastern Conference scoring defense average of 29 points is up nearly a touchdown from 2019.
Like the SEC, the Big Ten is playing conference games only. The luxury of working out kinks and getting timing down
in nonconference games, usually against overmatched opponents, doesn’t exist this year.
No. 5 Ohio State, which opens at home against Nebraska today, is considered the Big Ten’s best hope of making the College Football Playoff. Coach Ryan Day won’t predict how sharp his Buckeyes will be.
“I feel like it’s been so long since we played a game,” he said. “Sometimes you don’t know — just trying to figure out what kind of team you have.”