Monday, July 27, 2009

Big 12 Media Day in Big D

The Nebraska football team (well not the entire team) took center-stage in Dallas on Monday for Big 12 Media Day.

Head coach Bo Pelini, defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, offensive guard Jacob Hickman and running back Roy Helu represented the Huskers. I did not have a chance to listen to any sound bites due to my work schedule at my regular job. However, I did have a chance to read the quote transcription from Pelini.

There are four things that Pelini addressed that stood out to me:

“I think right now our football team now understands what it means to put a good hard day's work in.”

What I take out of that sound bite is that any time a new regeme comes in and asks players to work harder than they did under a previous coaching staff, there is going to be resistance at first. Pelini admitted as much. On the other hand, those that are not on board are thrown overboard rather quickly. Granted, no football coach is going to outright say to the media, “Our team is a bunch of lazy asses.” On the other hand, you just get the sense from Pelini that this team understands that to achieve success (short term or long term), there are no shortcuts.

“Zac Lee came out in the spring. No one's won a job yet. We still have a whole camp ahead of us before we play the first game. Zac came out as the clear-cut favorite. He'll go into fall camp as a starter.”

Pelini said this in reference to the starting quarterback job as the team looks to replace the graduated Joe Ganz. This approach is quite the departure of Bill Callahan in 2007 when Sam Keller transferred from Arizona State. Callahan said over and over that Ganz and Keller were competing for the job when everyone in their right mind knew that Keller would be the starter. After Keller got injured, Ganz showed why he should have the starter. I like the fact that Pelini stated explicitly that the job belongs to Lee until he proves he is not worthy of being the Huskers starting signal-caller. On the other hand, it’s good that Pelini said, “No one has won a job yet” if for no other reason than to not give Lee a false sense of security. The real question is how the No. 2 position shakes out between Kody Spano, LaTravis Washington and Cody Green.

“Our players don't feel Nebraska's back. Our expectations in the program are very, very high. I think (the team) is starting to feel the momentum from last season.”

While there is every reason to think the Huskers are “on their way back” after a 9-4 season in 2008 that included winning six of their last seven contests, there’s a difference between “being back” and “on your way back.” I’ve stated numerous times on this blog (some postings come with Kool-Aid sipping, others do not) that going from 5-7 in 2007 to 9-4 in 2008 was the easy part but going from 9-4 in 2008 to say 11-2 in 2009 will be the hard part. Since two of Nebraska’s four defeats came by less than seven points (a 35-30 loss to Virginia Tech and a 37-31 overtime loss to Texas Tech), an argument can be made that the Huskers could have been 11-2 last year. Well, coulda, woulda, shoulda but didn’t. Therein also lies the issue, the higher a team shoots up the ladder, the smaller that margin for error becomes.

“Well, I've only been back in the league for a year. But I don't – my expectations aren't going to change.”

Pelini said this in reference to the Big 12 offenses producing basketball like scores and the fact that he is a defensive minded coach. Pelini has coaching dominant defenses wherever he has been and is cocksure in his ability to do the same at Nebraska. The Huskers improved last year defensively from 112th to No. 55, enough to where they didn’t lead the world in crappy defense. With another year of seasoning under Pelini’s system, there’s every reason to think this team will get better. In 2007 when teams went through the Husker defense quicker than a pizza at a Weight Watchers convention, there was often a lack of passion, fire and purpose. Last year’s team played hard but not always smart. To that end, Pelini added: “Part of that is coaching. Part of that is players being accountable.” Even in the era of high scoring Big 12 offenses, part of slowing them down is executing assignments.

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