Defense steps up in 2nd half to shut down Griffin, Baylor
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BY BRIAN ROSENTHAL / Lincoln Journal Star
Mike Ekeler and Bo Pelini had faced this type of mess before.
Art Briles, now head coach at Baylor, was coaching at Houston, and Ekeler and Pelini were at Oklahoma — Ekeler a graduate assistant and Pelini the co-defensive coordinator.
So there was fair warning all week for Nebraska’s defenders.
“He said, ‘Listen, guys, this is a helter-skelter group,’ ” Ekeler said, referring to what Pelini said last week.
What’s so “helter-skelter” about Baylor’s offense?
“It’s hard to see what personnel there is until they’re all out on the field,” said Ekeler, the Nebraska linebackers coach. “They huddle out there, halfway on the doggone field, run people in and out.
“It’s like a circus.”
For a while Saturday, the same could’ve been said of Nebraska’s defense. Busted assignments were leading to big plays, and Baylor, with help from electric quarterback Robert Griffin, had scored 20 first-half points.
The Bears didn’t score again, thanks to big second-half plays by a defense that coaches said settled down at halftime.
Nebraska responded with a critical goal-line stand in the third quarter, a fourth-down sack of Griffin and a safety from walk-on Colton Koehler that sealed the Huskers’ 32-20 victory at Memorial Stadium.
“There weren’t really any adjustments made at halftime except, ‘Hey, guys, settle down, follow your rules, and you’ll be fine,’” Nebraska defensive coordinator Carl Pelini said. “And they did. They came out in the second half with confidence and they adjusted to all the different things that they saw, and they played a much better half.”
One thing that didn’t change was Baylor running multiple players on and off the field. That drew the ire of Nebraska defensive coaches, who cited the “intent to deceive” rule.
“A team cannot run multiple guys on and then run guys off,” Ekeler said. “The officials have to give us an opportunity to match personnel, or else you can’t play. You’ve got to be able to match up personnel, and that’s kind of what we battled today. … The official is supposed to stand over the ball and give the defense an opportunity to match personnel.”
Nebraska was caught in the wrong personnel, Ekeler said, when Jay Finley broke free on a 43-yard touchdown run, tying the game 7-7 in the first quarter.
“We actually thought it was a different personnel going in, and we didn’t get the adjustment the right way,” Ekeler said. “We didn’t have an edge out there, and it was just a myriad of things.
“Then we changed how we were calling (John David Weed). They had never shown him as a down tight end, so we just made an adjustment, and we were fine from that point on, in that respect.”
Griffin, who ran for 121 yards, had runs of 40 and 47 yards on Baylor’s next possession, the latter resulting in a touchdown. On fourth-and-1, Nebraska was loading up to stop the quarterback sneak. Two plays before that, on second down, Griffin gained 3 yards on a sneak.
This time, he darted free to the outside, sprinting down the Baylor sideline for a 14-7 lead.
“It was just a missed alignment on our part,” Carl Pelini said. “We were supposed to have a guy on the edge, and we didn’t get there.”
Three big first-half mistakes, three big Baylor plays.
“We missed some things that we’d done a million times all week in practice, the veer exchanges between end and linebacker, missing tackles,” Ekeler said. “It took us a while to settle down.”
That happened in the second half. Eventually.
Griffin hit Kendall Wright on a 44-yard pass, as Nebraska had a busted coverage on the wheel route. Baylor had first-and-goal at the 7-yard line, and advanced to the 1, on the verge of taking a two-score lead.
But on third down from the 1, Zach Potter and Larry Asante tracked down Griffin for a 1-yard loss — one of Nebraska’s nine tackles for loss. Ben Parks’ ensuing field-goal attempt hit the left upright, keeping Baylor’s lead at 20-17.
“We knew that we needed to get off the field, and we knew if we got the stop, the offense would get back on the field and put in a score,” linebacker Cody Glenn said. “That was really big at the time.”
Nebraska did score for a 24-20 lead, and Baylor drove to the NU 31 on its next possession, thanks in part to a roughing-the-punter penalty, when Will Henry leveled Derek Epperson well after the ball was kicked.
On fourth-and-4, Carl Pelini dialed up a blitz with Asante, who sacked Griffin for a 4-yard loss. That was one of three sacks — Pierre Allen and Prince Amukamara each had one in the first half.
“If we could put them in obvious passing situations and force them to execute, when we could be playing coverage, that was a key to the game,” said Pelini, whose defense held Baylor to 0-of-10 on third downs.
“We talked to the guys all week. We had to defend the run on early downs, we had to adjust to their formations, and just follow our rules and put them in long-yardage situations where we could get our coverage guys out there and just play coverage and let our four guys rush the passer.”
One of Nebraska’s nine tackles for loss came from Koehler, who tackled Finley in the end zone in the fourth quarter. Koehler had replaced injured Phillip Dillard at MIKE linebacker in base coverage.
“He wasn’t stunned at all,” Pelini said of Koehler, who’s from Harvard. “He just ran right out there and he actually played well. He knew what he was supposed to do, and he’s been getting a lot of reps with the twos in practice.”
Reach Brian Rosenthal at 473-7436 or brosenthal@journalstar.com.
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