Assumptions About Nebraska to Color Every Off-Season Conversation: Better Blackshirts

5 comments so far February 24, 2009 by Brandon Vogel

I thought this was supposed to be the off-season, a time of the year to be endured, a test of will, a newsless nuclear winter that we spent all fall fattening up for with real games, stats, stories and the such.

The past couple of days have felt like anything but your typical down-time what with all the comings and goings(both theoretical and real). But, as fun as those are to talk about, I've resolved to stop fretting about our own revolving door because ultimately no matter who stays or leaves I'll still be rooting for Nebraska come September 5th regardless of who is or isn't on the field.

Let's stay focused here, last week we were reasonably assuming Nebraska was a Big 12 North frontrunner regardless of who won the QB battle and that assumption, now reduced by one, leads to perhaps an even bigger assumption heading into 2009: The defense will show continued improvement.

Assumption #2: The Blackshirts will, yet again, be improved.

If you believe what many believe, that Nebraska is a legitimate Big 12 North favorite, almost by default--considering the question marks on the offensive side of the ball--you've put your money down that the above assumption will be true and that's probably not a bad bet. There are a number of supporting arguments for further improvement in 2009:

1) Ndamukong Suh - The first victory of 2009 came when Suh decided to stay. There's not even a need for any hyperbole here, just facts: Nebraska doesn't have to replace the best player on their defense. Done and done.
2) Experience - We saw the value of experience personified in the saga of Ganz v. Keller. Depending upon who is counting, Nebraska is going to have about half of their defensive starters back next season but any assumptions regarding the future Blackshirts has to look at more than just the starters. In this case, at this early stage in Pelini's tenure, program experience almost has an equal or higher value than starting experience for the purposes of preseason prediction.
3) Loosening the reins - Nobody believes that Bo Pelini ran his ideal defense in 2008. That notion didn't pass the eye test for anyone who was familiar with Peliniball and the coach's refusal to burn redshirts when the injury bugs bit only reinforced the notion that this staff was willing to simply play the hand they were dealt and ride things out last year. Basically it boils down to this: Lumps were taken in 2008 (quite well, actually) and it's only human nature to expect that to pay off down the road. Like, next year, down the road.

As sound as those reasons seem to be right now, it's not like they don't raise their own questions as well.

1) Who's going to be Suh's new Steinkuhler? - We saw during the first half of the Gator Bowl how important a player like Ty Steinkuhler could be when an offensive line was focused on Suh. That's going to be a weekly occurrence for big Suh next season so who will step up to wreak havoc while two big fellas are tangled in the House of Spears? We don't know and that's going to be a key aspect of the game to watch throughout the spring, summer and early fall. It would be nice, however, if that player could simply be another Steinkuhler. I'm all for symmetry, but that brings up another question...
2) Are the Not Used in Primetime Players ready to contribute? - We look at Pelini's refusal to burn redshirts last year and feel confident that a less disciplined regime (not pointing fingers, at least not physically, I'm typing) perhaps would've elected to put his best players on the field regardless of class. By not doing that it appears as if we have at least a handful of guys who could've contributed last year and therefore will contribute, maybe even excel, this year. The problem is, there's no real way to know that. We're banking on the experience of a year of practices and that's valuable but it's still a small roll of the dice. The general theory is that starting experience trumps all.
3) One year in, are we at the plug and play stage defensively? - Probably not totally. This defense is still developing and it's hard to judge based on last year how well Nebraska was able to transfer their practice situations to game situations. We saw our fair share of miscues and missed assignments last year but that was to be expected with a regime change. But for those players making their debut in the season to come, to what extent can we expect that transfer from theory to performance to be streamlined? Again, there's no way to know definitively. Logic dictates that it should be better but if football was totally logical it would be significantly less interesting.

That last bit about logic really defines most of the offseason expectations and predictions regarding Nebraska's next defensive unit and, ultimately, wins and losses in 2009. There's every reason to believe that a year of experience with this coaching staff will result in a better prepared, more efficient unit. That's the way it typically works, but you also have to consider exactly what sort of leaps are inherent in that belief and, regardless of how you come down on any of the questions asked above, any sort of Big 12 North title dreams are almost predicated on having a nearly dominant, if not plain dominant, defense.

We don't know who the quarterback will be, we don't know who Lee Greenspan (sounds so much less regal) will throw to, there's a big whole on the right side of the line and we've yet to see either Helu or Castille--perhaps the surest bets coming back outside of Alex Henery--shoulder the load for an entire season. That's a lot of question marks on offense. Makes the task of plugging in a few guys who probably could've played last year on defense seem pretty easy.

It better be.

Next week - Assumption #3: Momentum means something.
Last week - Assumption #1: Nebraska's next QB will be at least an average to good Big 12 QB.

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