Out of the blog: NU vs. San Jose State

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By the Lincoln Journal Star

1. When you have three running backs splitting carries, how do you get them into the flow of the game? Roy Helu had a great run, but overall doesn’t seem in sync. Isn’t it harder for the quarterback and O-line to build rapport when running backs are being shuffled in and out?

O-line coach Barney Cotton shot that theory down in a hurry when he told me: “We could put you back there and we would block the same way if we put Marlon (Lucky) or anybody. We don’t look who’s back there, anyway. We’ve just got to do the things that our five guys up front can do, and hopefully we block the five guys that we’re counting for, and do a better job of doing it from here on out.

Cotton acknowledged Nebraska has to do better than average 3.3 yards per carry. But neither is he about to start reaching for the white flag.

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“I think we’re better than we played,” he added. “We’ve seen an awful lot of movement (from the defensive fronts) these last couple of weeks and we’ve got to do a better job with movement.”

2. When are the coaches going to stop praising Joe Ganz when he successfully threads the needle, as he clearly takes too many risks with the football?

Ganz would definitely like to have back the second-quarter throw that Duke Ihenacho intercepted.  And while there’s a fine line between taking chances and making crisp throws, Ganz did complete 17 of 25 passes (68 percent). Most coaches will take that any day.

“If you’re referring to that one pick before the half, it looked like it was open, but they had the underneath guy that kind of dropped back and I didn’t see him,” Ganz said. “I don’t force throws. I try not to go out there and look for the big plays. I just kind of, ultimately, let them happen. We had a big play called in the first quarter for Nate Swift. It wasn’t there and I checked down to Roy for about 30-some yards. Playing within my offense is what Coach (Shawn) Watson’s been coaching me about. I’m not going out there trying to take chances. I don’t feel the pressure if we’re in a game like this to go try and throw a bomb. Just kind of stay within my offense and let the offense work for me and not try and go outside of it, because (if I did) we’d be in even worse shape.”

3. What’s up with the tackling?

We’re pretty sure defensive coordinator Carl Pelini wouldn’t label what his unit did in the first half as ‘tackling.’ The Spartans had 107 yards rushing on 18 carries, but then managed just 30 more the rest of the game.

“It was a technique thing,” Pelini said of the early problems. “We got our head caught behind. I don’t know if our angles were real good — caught ourselves arm-tackling a lot, and good backs are going to run through arm tackles.”

— Curt McKeever