In the immediate aftermath of Nebraska’s loss to Northwestern on Saturday, head coach Scott Frost sought answers.
The Husker offense, which had started the first and third quarters on fire, collapsed late. NU’s final six drives resulted in four punts and two turnovers. Something had definitely gone wrong.
What was it?
“I think we’re going to have to learn as an offensive staff that you have to be a little creative in this league,” Frost said after the game. “So, we have some things that we can work on. I thought we did a lot of good things, but it’s got to be more of a complete game.”
Three days later, on Tuesday, Frost clarified that those comments — particularly the remark about creativity — weren’t directed toward offensive coordinator Mark Whipple, who took over play-calling duties this season.
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Speaking at his weekly news conference at Memorial Stadium, Frost directed his focus toward NU’s run game. Apart from a long Anthony Grant touchdown run early in the third quarter, Nebraska’s rushing attack went missing.
“I was referring to the run game more than anything,” Frost said. “Coach Whip’s really good, he knows his stuff and I thought he did a really good job calling the game. We’ve got to be better up front, there’s no doubt about it (because) in the Big Ten it’s hard to just turn around and hand it to a back and think you’re going to be real consistent.”
Take out Grant’s 46-yard touchdown scamper, and Nebraska ran for 13 yards on eight attempts in the third quarter and 4 yards on six attempts in the fourth quarter — a total of 17 yards on 14 attempts in the second half.
Many of the attempted runs were handoffs up the middle.
“Defenses in this league are tough. If you line up and go head-to-head and just try to push, you don’t see a lot of teams doing that a lot anymore,” Frost said. “Give them a lot of credit, but that needs to be answered and we’ll keep getting better with that. There’s a lot of good things in some of those concepts that we do.”
Even amidst all the discussion of different offensive philosophies, Frost said there’s no tension between him and Whipple. Instead, they’re focusing on how to build the best, most efficient offense possible.
That sounds pretty good to starting quarterback Casey Thompson, who also fielded a question about NU’s nonexistent rushing attack in the second half.
“Anytime you can run the ball and have success on the ground that sets everything else up so you can control the clock and get ahead of the chains on first and second down,” Thompson said. “We had 42 pass attempts, and going into the game I don’t know if we’d like to have more or less than that.”
“But, whatever it takes to win on offense, and if we can establish a good run game that’s obviously going to help.”
In fact, one of Nebraska’s most successful rushing plays against Northwestern was a zone option run where Logan Smothers picked up 7 yards in his only attempt. The success of that play, which came in the fourth quarter, begs at least two questions. Where were the QB runs? And why didn’t the Huskers roll out the option package they gashed Northwestern with a year ago?
Frost said an entire offensive package was designed for Smothers, meaning the backup quarterback would have seen the field more “if the fourth quarter didn’t dictate that.”
The absence of any other quarterback runs, option plays or staples of NU’s previous offenses was because the decision was out of Frost’s hands.
“If I was calling the game I wouldn’t want somebody else shoving a lot of things down my throat,” Frost said. “You get in a rhythm as a play-caller, that’s the approach I took, Whip’s an elite play-caller and I think that showed up for the first three-and-a-half quarters. We did run some of it and if I was calling it, maybe we would have called it a little more but I also wouldn’t have been able to call the things he did that scored us the first 28 points.”
As for the future of Frost and Whipple’s combined offense?
“It’s going to have to continue to be a marriage of different things,” Frost said.