Arkansas State Post-Mortem

1 comment so far September 15, 2009 by Tom Cudd

Often times, the post game press conference is filled with coach-speak and half-answers that don't really provide any insight to what happened during a game. This week, the quotes tell the whole story. The coaches were direct and the players were accurate. Many of the words I found myself using to describe the Husker effort were utilized by both coaches and players from both teams.

Arkansas State Coach Steve Roberts came out and said it all about the offense.

"Their quarterback had a tremendous night. He was on fire."

Zac Lee's numbers were ridiculous. 340 yards and 4 touchdowns, all the while spreading the ball out. 14 different players caught at least one pass by the end of the game. Now we've seen that both the run game and pass game can be very dangerous. On defense, he took a look at what he saw on the field.

"They played us with a lot of high safeties, giving us an opportunity to at least gain a man advantage in our running game, our two-back running game."

Plenty of people I've talked with complained about the 8 yards or more plays. I tell those people that those would have been 20 yard plays last year. Look at what Coach Roberts says next.

"It was a good plan by them not giving up the big plays that lead to momentum and easy scores."

There were only a couple of plays by Arkansas State that led to 20 or more yards. I can live with that.

QB Corey Leonard elaborates.

"..like Coach (Steve) Roberts said, they were giving us too high of a safety look most of the first half... They're one of the bend don't break teams. They're not going to give you a big play, and you've got to take what they give you."

Coach Bo Pelini didn't see it that way.

"Defensively, I thought we were inconsistent, sloppy and we missed tackles at times."

Far from calling them soft, he things there is improvement.

"I thought we would be a little bit further. We're sloppy at times. Sometimes our inexperience at some areas shows. The communication is better, but still not where I want to be. We're coming, but we're not there. It's just not what I'm used to seeing on a consistent basis."

Apparently, LB Blake Lawrence sees that the mental part of the game may be getting in the way.

"We had to turn it from a mental game to a physical game. That's a transition we have to make."

DT Ndamukong Suh also agrees

"We were in the right place, but we weren't tackling and other times we weren't in the right place with certain situations."

On a happier note, there's only one thing that I hope I keep hearing every week, and that's QB Zac Lee's explaination of what went right.

"We had guys get open and it's easy to throw to open guys when you're protected and hanging out in the pocket. The O-Line did a great job and receivers got open, that's easy."

Music to my ears.

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