Curt McKeever: Pelini emphasizes staying focused
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LUBBOCK, Texas — It’s not like Nebraska should have been brimming with confidence any way, but then this:
Missouri smacks the Huskers so silly that they’re left trying to shake out the cobwebs entering Saturday’s game at equally potent Texas Tech.
In the wake of that Mount Everest-sized challenge, you most likely go into the second half of the season with tails down.
Yes, this week may represent the closest Bo Pelini will ever come to walking in Dr. Phil’s shoes. Though no one admits to this, his club teeters with fragile confidence.
And so as he prepped Big Red for its next test, Pelini could have found that he needed to serve as much counselor to his players as coach in his quest to instill his belief system.
Just one thing, though, Dr. Phil he’s not.
While both guys seem to paint situations in black and white, Nebraska’s first-year coach isn’t into coddling. Definitely, he’s not going to try and B.S. his way through this.
So if the Huskers are feeling sorry for themselves for not being anywhere close to where they needed to be just to even play with the Tigers, they’re going to have to get used to a different kind of soothing touch.
“We talked about why it happened. You’ve got to dive into the elements of what really matters,” Pelini said. “It’s black and white why it happens in this game. It doesn’t happen by chance. You either create for yourself or you create bad fortune for yourself in what you do. And if you take care of you. …”
No, he’s not trying to re-enact one of those Stuart Smalley skits from “Saturday Night Live,” where Al Franken’s sorry character would look in the mirror and declare, “Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone, it people like me.”
Pelini’s method for getting results hinges on a much less inconvenient truth.
“You can’t oversimplify it. Just because you think you’re going to play good, you’re not going to play good,” he reasoned. “You have to be focused enough on your job, in knowing and having enough confidence that you can do your job that your confidence comes back. It’s when you don’t know what you’re doing, or when there is gray area to what is being asked you, that’s when your confidence is fragile, because you’re not sure. You’ve got to become sure, and that’s about preparation, that’s about teaching, that’s about coaching, that’s about getting on the same page.”
On that front, Nebraska fans should take some comfort in what Pelini’s seen in his team this week (even if he does allow that he worries whether what’s being taught is sinking in).
His theme of the week has been how focused the Huskers have been, and by that he means their awareness for what they’re being asked to do is growing.
“At the same time, you’ve got to take it from the meeting room to the practice field, and then from the practice field to the game field,” Pelini said. “That’s a process. We haven’t always done that.”
Of course, against a team like Missouri, and now Tech, it’s a lot easier said than done.
As Kansas State’s Ron Prince said after watching the Red Raiders bury his team 58-28 in Manhattan last Saturday, “The reality is with a team that precise in what they are doing, with the quality players they have, being a step away is like a mile away.”
Oh, boy. Is anyone else thinking that Nebraska’s current state is not all that different from the Wildcats?
With Tech, the Huskers run into a quarterback who’s the Big 12’s all-time passing leader and hasn’t thrown an interception in his last 144 attempts. Graham Harrell AVERAGES 405.4 yards a game. And for once, he’s complimented by an effective running game.
Could there be a more adverse setup for a first-year coach than that? Well, in Pelini’s world, there has been.
In 1994, when he was an assistant secondary coach with the San Francisco 49ers, Philadelphia went into Candlestick Park on the fifth week of the season and pummeled the home team 40-8.
The Niners, 3-2 at the time, recovered quite nicely, winning 13 of their next 14 en route to becoming Super Bowl champs.
OK, Bo, but dealing with the psyche of professionals early in a season is a lot different than that. Right?
“No it’s not,” he countered. “Football is football. … Everybody said we were done. ‘We were done.’”
Something tells me that story has been told a time or two since last Saturday down at Husker headquarters. Will it have any bearing on what happens here Saturday? Let’s just say Pelini’s squad will need to be extremely focused.
“I try and look at the reality of it,” Pelini said. “Things have not changed a whole heck of a lot (after back-to-back losses). The results are a little bit different, but. …
“You’ve got to keep working for ways to get it to them. You’ve got to keep looking for better ways to teach them. You can’t get skewed. You can’t get off your beliefs. The process continues.”
Reach Curt McKeever at 473-7441 or cmckeever@journalstar.com.
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