Husker offense evolving into a success
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By BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
As players began to shuffle past to load a bus for a feel-good ride home Saturday, Tom Osborne stood outside the Husker locker room giving a few moments of attention to the stat sheet.
The coach-turned-athletic director must’ve liked what he saw. The numbers read like numbers from the good ol’ days — five Huskers rushing for at least 45 yards apiece, with a quarterback leading the way, no less.
The numbers of senior quarterback Joe Ganz were so good (270 yards passing, 95 rushing) that he was named the Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week on Monday.
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It was hardly surprising considering that aside from penalties bogging down a couple of drives in the third quarter, offensive coordinator Shawn Watson’s offense pretty much took what it wanted in a 56-28 win against Kansas State — piling up 610 yards, 340 of those rushing.
The Huskers currently rank 10th in the country in total offense — averaging 462.9 yards a game. Husker coach Bo Pelini talked before the season about wanting a multiple offense.
How’s this do?
“It’s getting there. You’ve got to evolve. You’ve got to keep moving along, and I knew Wats was a guy that could do that,” Pelini said during Monday’s Big 12 coaches teleconference. “You have to play to the strengths and weaknesses of your talent and putting the guys in the best position that they can be successful. And I think that we’re doing that and I think we use our personnel well. I like what I’m seeing on the offensive side.”
Pelini said Watson has done “a great job” of keeping defenses off-balance.
Nebraska has been close to 50-50 in its run-pass ratio, 400 rushes so far and 371 passes.
It was the run that really buried Kansas State late. Going into the game, Husker coaches thought they might be able to exploit the Wildcats with the zone-read play.
And they did. Big-time.
Ganz scored off the zone-read twice in the fourth quarter — first on a 25-yard run and then a 14-yard run. On both plays, K-State defenders bit hard on the fake and Ganz basically scooted untouched to the end zone.
“We’ve run the zone-read a number of times this year. It was open,” Pelini said. “Joe made the right reads and made guys miss. He played real well, ran the ball well, ran the team well.”
The 95 rushing yards were a career high for Ganz and the most by a Nebraska quarterback since Jammal Lord had 109 against Texas A&M in 2003.
The 340 yards rushing against K-State was Nebraska’s best rushing performance against a Big 12 team in six years.
The going was so good that Nebraska was able to rest Ganz most of the fourth quarter. Redshirt freshman Patrick Witt and sophomore Zac Lee both saw action at quarterback.
Witt came in with 10:53 left in the game. Lee came in on Nebraska’s next series, rushing twice for 17 yards.
Who’s winning the race between the backups?
“It’s kind of gone back and forth a little bit,” Pelini said. “We think they’re both capable, very good players. We were kind of in a run mode at the end of the game, kind of run the clock out. It’s kind of hard to evaluate them off of that performance in that situation, but I thought they both did well.”
Saturday came with a lot of positives for Nebraska, but Pelini knows his team still needs to clean up some of its mental lapses.
With a chance to bury Kansas State after going to the half with a 35-14 lead, NU was outscored 7-0 in the third quarter.
“Just being consistent and putting four quarters together,” Pelini said. “I don’t know if we’ve quite done that yet to our potential.”
Maybe not, but the coach of Nebraska’s next foe, Colorado’s Dan Hawkins, has sure noticed a change in NU’s level of play this season.
This is a Husker team playing with a lot more confidence, Hawkins said Monday.
“A lot more aggressive,” he said. “A lot more full-throttle.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com
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