NU's defensive back seven hope to have answers in '08
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
It can’t get here fast enough for plenty of fans. August doesn’t come alone. It brings with it a high degree of anxiousness, a buzz, the creation of paper chains to count down the days before the Huskers tackle another football season.
It’s different for a coach. Every day of preparation is valuable, another chance to get better before they turn the lights on.
“I wish we had 90 days until our opener,” Carl Pelini said earlier this week.
Related Media
Football equipment tour
University of Nebraska Assistant Equipment Manager Chris McQuillan guides a tour of football equipment and student equipment managers prepare for the ...
Vidcast: Players of interest
Steven M. Sipple and Brian Christopherson eye the start of preseason drills. (Hilary Kindschuh/JournalStar.com)...
As fall camp begins, here are five questions that loom large as Nebraska tries to rebound from just its second losing season in the past 47 years.
1. Can the back seven players on Nebraska’s defense, full of inexperience, develop into the kind of crew with enough depth and talent to match up against all the wide-open offenses in the Big 12?
2. Can Nebraska find playmakers at wide receiver to fill the void left by Maurice Purify?
3. Coaches expressed confidence in the spring that the offensive line could be a strength of the team. The depth and potential is an upgrade from recent years, but is this unit, which was hit-and-miss last year, ready to really tear teams up on the ground?
4. How much of the spread and zone read does the offense utilize this year?
5. Can Bo Pelini bring the mojo back to a team coming off a season in which it was beaten down both physically and mentally? The biggest thing: How will this team respond when it first faces adversity?
Fall camp information
* The first day of practice is Monday.
* According to NU’s current fall practice schedule, which is set through Aug. 24, the Huskers will practice Monday through Saturday, taking Sundays off.
* Practices are scheduled from 3:45 to 6 p.m. On six days, the team will workout twice, going from 9 to 11:15 a.m. and then at the regular time at night.
* The first two-a-day is scheduled for Saturday. The last two-a-day is Aug. 22.
* Fan Day is Aug. 17 from 2 to 3:30 p.m.
* The first game is Aug. 30 (vs. Western Michigan).
Live from Memorial Stadium: JournalStar.com will broadcast live Monday as Bo Pelini opens his first fall camp as Nebraska's head coach. Go to media.journalstar.com/live/ to see the coach and some of his players talk about the upcoming year at a preseason press conference starting at 11:30 a.m.
No such luck. The first game is 27 days away, and today Husker players report to fall camp.
Practice begins Monday and Pelini admitted the camp will be a bit of a whirlwind as a new staff continues to implement its defensive philosophy.
“But one thing about this scheme is everything builds upon everything else,” the Husker defensive coordinator said. “You want to move as quickly as you can, but you would never sacrifice understanding or knowledge just for scheme. We will move as quickly as our players can handle it, knowing that as we open (the season), we’re going to be fine. We’ll have plenty in to perform against Western Michigan.”
Husker head coach Bo Pelini said the first week of camp will feature a decent amount of time revisiting concepts learned in the spring.
“And then we start to get ready to build on it,” he said.
Of course, the start of fall camp also comes with plenty of questions for a team coming off a 5-7 season.
One of the biggest questions revolves around Nebraska’s back seven on defense — linebacker and secondary units that are heavy on inexperience and seemingly light on depth.
But Carl Pelini has great optimism, partly because of how much progress he saw from those groups in just the four weeks of spring ball.
Pelini saw tentative defensive backs at the beginning of spring practice, too easily allowing receivers to catch the ball in front of them. But coaches preached an attacking style and players seemed to respond.
Sophomore cornerback Anthony West began to thrive. Safeties Larry Asante and Rickey Thenarse began showing signs of comfort with the new schemes.
How far those players — along with the likes of probable starting corner Armando Murillo and young guys such as Prince Amukamara — can come along throughout August will be critical to a team that will see a heavy dose of wide-open offenses in the Big 12.
Spread offenses will require Nebraska to play with five defensive backs at times. Building depth is not an option. It’s required.
“Confidence becomes so important at that position — confidence almost to the point of cockiness,” Carl Pelini said. “And as the spring wound up, you started to see that out there. They wanted the ball thrown their way and they wanted to lock down the receiver instead of sitting back in zone. You just start seeing more and more of that and you start to feel pretty good about where they are developmentally.”
Carl Pelini said it took a while for the safeties to grasp the different system. But the summer has allowed them eight weeks to work on concepts and techniques in seven-on-seven drills.
“I have no question in my mind that they’re going to be a better secondary on the first day (of fall camp) than they were on the last day of spring,” he said.
He carries those same hopes for a linebacker corps that is low on game experience.
Going into fall camp, Nebraska’s No. 1 linebackers are Cody Glenn, Phillip Dillard and Tyler Wortman. Dillard is the only one with starting experience, but just for two games.
The incoming recruits will help. Touted recruits Will Compton and Sean Fisher are among the newcomers, joined by Micah Kreikemeier and Alonzo Whaley.
“I think we’ll be fine there. I think we’ll have depth by the end of camp,” Carl Pelini said. “I don’t think we have it yet. But I think we will.”
Though Glenn is new to the linebacker position, having moved from running back during the spring, Pelini said he considers the senior a veteran.
“He understands football, he understands game day,” Pelini said. “There are not going to be a lot of jitters on game day.”
And then there’s a player such as Wortman, a walk-on fifth-year senior from Grand Island, someone who didn’t play in a game through his first three seasons in the program.
But this spring, despite missing some practices because of his demanding mechanical engineering major, Husker coaches saw the type of player they feel can work well in their system.
The back seven is no doubt a work in progress, and there aren’t 90 days until the Western Michigan game, but smart players such as Wortman can sure make the learning go faster.
“In our scheme, our backers, they need to be smart,” Pelini said. “The smarter they are, the better they can play. Regardless of their ability level, they can be an All-American or they can be just a good football player. But if they’re smart and they think the game, and they understand what they’re doing, they can really excel in our system.”
Reach Brian Christopherson at bchristopherson@journalstar.com or 473-7439.
