September 13, 2009
Thank God they remembered to turn up the volume on the sound system this week because the crowd did not seem to have that much energy, granted they were playing Arkansas State.
Lets start with the offense:
Zac Lee-Made the adjustments in reading the defense from last week. I thought he looked much better this week in terms of decision making. Any time you get 27-35 for 340 yards you will take it. Still not impressed by his arm, I just dont think he can put much on the ball, it's working out for him so far but he will have to see what happens when he has to throw against VT. Another thing that kind of bothered me was that when Lee missed his WRs he missed big time. The ARST defense dropped 2 INTs in this game. Overall though Lee played well this week.
Helu-Was not much of a factor in this game just 60 yards on 14 carries. Last week I thought Helu looked like an NFL RB and this week I thought he took a step backwards. He had an opportunity to really rack up some yards against a terrible defense. I realize they only gave him the ball 14 times but they only gave him 14 carries because he was unproductive and they were scoring through the air. He did do some things catching the ball he had 4 catches for 44 yards. All in all though I thought Helu was unproductive.
note-The only rushing TD was an end around by Niles Paul that went for 30 yards.
Offensive Line-I thought the offensive line was pretty good job of keeping the pressure off Lee and when they did get to Lee he scrambled and got out of it. ARST did not have a very big defensive line so it wasn't really that big of a test, but they played well.
WR-ARST corners were the worst I have seen all year so this game wasn't really telling of how good they will be. One thing they did differently this week is I think they only dropped one pass. Last week they dropped 3 or 4. They caught the passes they were supposed to for the most part.
Now lets get to the Defense:
Defensive Line-It was a tale of two halves for the defense as a whole. In the first half the defense looked really good. They got sacks and they were stopping the run OK. Looked like it was going to be a really solid day for the defensive line. In the second half I thought they came out very flat. They had no energy, the entire defense had NO energy. The ARST RB ran pretty well in the second half going for 83 yards on 14 carries and a TD.
LBs-Same with the defensive line, really nice first half and bad second half. It's almost like there are no LBs on the field sometimes for Nebraska. They don't get a ton of pressure on the QB and it doesn't seem like they cover all that well although it's too early to tell right now. It's interesting, when Nebraska wants to get pressure on the QB it seems like they rush their secondary players and rely on their D Line to get pressure. If they rush their secondary against the likes of Kansas they will get burned because of the great WRs that KU has, and the same will go for any other team with a good group of WRs.
Secondary-Played pretty well this week, not a whole lot here to report. They didn't really face a good receiving crew. They did give up a 43 yard pass but they only allowed 131 passing yards. ARST only threw the ball 20 times so I didn't get a very good look at the secondary.
note-The defense only gave up 274 total yards. I think if you are very dependent on your defense you would like to give up at the most 300 yards. I think the defense is pretty good but I dont think they are going to be good enough to consistently stop Big 12 offenses. Nebraska's defense is a big part of their team but the offense is going to tell how good they are going to be.
Overall I though Nebraska played well this week. Not a real telling game. Hard to tell how good they will be this year. Next week's game at VT will be a good game to tell how good they will be this year. I do think Nebraska has a shot to win that game. Their defense will be tested but I think their offense will face a very tough defense and Im not sure how they will fare against VT.
I will not be doing a review of the Nebraska game next week since it's on ABC at 2:30 central. I will only be reviewing the games that I attend this year. This blog is just to give KU fans a look into how good Nebraska will be this year since it seems like Nebraska is the other main contender for the Big 12 North.