Huskers transition on defense, at QB
When the Arkansas State football team departs for Lincoln, Neb., at 11:40 a.m. today, it will be heading toward a stadium with college football’s longest sellout streak (354), which includes two Red Wolves’ losses by an average of 32 points.
Arkansas State University’s struggles against Power 5 teams are evident: The Red Wolves have been outscored 208-79 in four losses to such opponents under Coach Blake Anderson, and the team last beat a Power 5 team in an 1814 victory over Texas A&M in the 2008 season opener.
Nebraska enters this season unranked after the Cornhuskers were ranked in the preseason Top 25 before their previous meetings with ASU in 2009 and 2012.
The Red Wolves coaching staff has said there’s not
much information about this year’s Cornhuskers for which to prepare.
New Nebraska defensive coordinator Bob Diaco has installed a new scheme for a struggling defense, and transfer quarterback Tanner Lee will lead an offense that lost more than 70 percent of its rushing production.
“It does present some questions in your mind of what they’re actually going to do,” ASU defensive coordinator Joe Cauthen said Monday.
Nebraska no longer has dual-threat quarterback Tommy Armstrong Jr. (8,871 career passing yards, 67 TD passes; 1,819 career rushing yards, 23 rushing TDs), and the offense will skew back toward the prostyle scheme third-year Coach Mike Riley used to become the winningest coach in Oregon State history.
The offense will revolve around Lee, a junior quarterback who sat out last season after transferring from Tulane. He threw for 1,639 yards, 11 touchdowns and 7 interceptions as a sophomore.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, NFL scouts have watched Lee in Lincoln, and enough praise from national and local media prompted Nebraska offensive
coordinator Danny Langsdorf to temper expectations.
“I would say cool your jets a little bit,” he said.
Three offensive linemen return who have each started more than 10 games. Lee also will have returning junior receiver Stanley Morgan Jr. (6-1, 195 pounds), who was second on the team with 453 yards and two touchdowns in 2016.
To counter an ASU defense that led the nation in tackles for loss last season, Langsdorf told the World-Herald that a screen game and pass protection schemes will be pivotal in slowing down pass rushers such as senior defensive end Ja’Von Rolland-Jones — who currently is tied at No. 21 on the NCAA career list with 30.5 sacks.
But Cauthen said he doesn’t expect Nebraska to have throw-first instincts, saying “they’re going to try and eat clock, and they’re going to do that by running the football.”
Riley’s teams have success when the offense controls time of possession. In Nebraska’s nine victories in 2016, the team averaged a time advantage of more than eight minutes — including a 10-minute advantage in a 2620 victory over No. 22 Oregon. In Nebraska’s four losses, they averaged a deficit of five minutes.
Much of that, Cauthen
said, relies on how the ASU defensive front plays against a Nebraska offensive line that outweighs it by an average of 38 pounds. A strong Nebraska running game, with returning rushers Tre Bryant and Devine Ozigbo (584 combined yards and six touchdowns), would wear out ASU’s defense.
“If we don’t stop the run, it’s going to be a long day,” Cauthen said.
Nebraska also has a size advantage on defense, with players such as 6-4, 280-pound defensive end Freedom Akinmoladun, who was second on the team with four sacks.
“We know we’re giving up size in this one,” Anderson said. “We have to play to our advantage, which is speed, and hope that we can get some guys that come clean and we can create some pressure with tempo.”
Nebraska was seventh in scoring defense (23.9 points per game) and sixth in total defense (363.7 yards per game) in the Big Ten before Riley told former defensive coordinator Mark Banker that his contract would not be renewed. Since then, Diaco — who won the Broyles Award in 2013 at Notre Dame before becoming the head coach at Connecticut for three seasons and posting an 11-26 record — has been transitioning
Nebraska into the 3-4 defense that helped the Fighting Irish reach the 2012 national championship.
But the defense will be without senior cornerback Chris Jones, a Jim Thorpe Award watch list member who had knee surgery in July, and ASU offensive coordinator Buster Faulkner said Nebraska will not resemble the classic 3-4 scheme Diaco normally runs.
“You pull up the spring game, and there was a lot of four-man fronts,” Faulkner said Monday. “You read between the lines, it looks like he wants to be very multiple … whether he has the personnel he wants right now to strictly be a three-man front is yet to be seen. We’re anticipating both fronts, and we look forward to the challenge.”
Cauthen says the game will come down to not being overpowered, which may require the Red Wolves to hold a Power 5 team below 30 points and 300 total yards for the first time since a 27-20 loss to Missouri in 2015.
“There’s not a whole lot of smoke-and-mirror stuff; this is real football,” Cauthen said. “This is downhill, in-your-face football. This is real ball that we’re about to play Saturday, and you better have two chinstraps buckled up because it’s coming.”