What's new
AllBuffs | Unofficial fan site for the University of Colorado at Boulder Athletics programs

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • Prime Time. Prime Time. Its a new era for Colorado football. Consider signing up for a club membership! For $20/year, you can get access to all the special features at Allbuffs, including club member only forums, dark mode, avatars and best of all no ads ! But seriously, please sign up so that we can pay the bills. No one earns money here, and we can use your $20 to keep this hellhole running. You can sign up for a club membership by navigating to your account in the upper right and clicking on "Account Upgrades". Make it happen!

Another reason to stay positive

Sexton Hardcastle

Club Member
Club Member
Shawn "Shortbus" Watson is the OC for the fuskers! Not just in name. He'll actually be calling plays! hooray!

It won't be a surprise to see NU on the run
By: Rich Kaipust, Midlands News Service
03/21/2008
Updated 03/21/2008 12:40:03 PM EDT

LINCOLN -- Joe Ganz won't lie: Those games were a lot of fun last season when he threw for 510 yards and seven touchdowns against Kansas State and followed with 58 passes, 484 yards and four TDs at Colorado.

They put Ganz in the Nebraska football record book and are the most recent air barrages in a four-year span that saw almost every Husker passing mark broken -- some over and over again.

Ten years from now, it will be interesting to look back and see if those four pass-happy years turn out to be an anomaly in a Husker history built mostly on the ground.

Bill Callahan, who ushered in the pass-heavy attack, was ousted as head coach immediately after the 2007 season. NU offensive coordinator Shawn Watson stayed and will assume the full autonomy he didn't have under Callahan, starting with the first of 15 spring practices Wednesday. How heavily the Huskers commit to the ground game is one of the questions of spring.

"There's two ways this can go, and I think it'll be a mix of both,'' guard Matt Slauson said. "Everybody knows what an amazing job he (Watson) did at Colorado and what an amazing job he's done here thus far. We've had a Top 25 offense, so we really shouldn't be changing much. But this is Nebraska and the running game is what this whole program here was built on, so I wouldn't be surprised if we're getting back to a smash-mouth style.''

The days of 50 passes might not be gone entirely, but they likely will be fewer and further between. Those passing records might be safe for a while.

"If I throw for zero yards and we win, I don't care,'' said Ganz, a senior quarterback from Palos Heights, Ill. "Whatever we have to do to win is the way I take it. If I have to throw for 500 yards, I'll take it. But if we throw for 200 and run for 200 and win, it doesn't matter how we do it.''

Nebraska passed on 53.6 percent of its offensive snaps last season, the highest rate in Callahan's four seasons. One reason was that the Huskers trailed in a number of games and were forced to throw.


Watson won't offer percentages when asked what kind of balance Nebraska will seek. Not before spring practice.

"You've got to find out what you've got in terms of your players,'' he said. "But I do know this: Philosophically, you've got to rush the football to win championships. It's just a fact of life. I think what that says is we'll spend time developing a run game.

"In 2006, we were a really good rushing team, so it's not like we don't know how. We do. Last year, obviously, situations predicated not being able to run the ball as much as he (Callahan) would have liked.''

Nebraska passed more than it ran in both 2007 and 2005. An improved running game was partly behind the Big 12 North championship and Cotton Bowl bid in 2006.

For a hint of what Watson might do, check Colorado's statistics in his six seasons as offensive coordinator. Not once did the Buffaloes throw it as often as NU did in 2007 or 2005, and they had more rushing than passing yards in both of their Big 12 North championship seasons of 2001 and 2002.

His personal favorite was 2001, when CU ran the football almost 65 percent of the time and totaled 2,742 yards rushing and 2,471 passing.

"We were a very, very balanced team,'' Watson said. "We could do whatever we really wanted to do. Then 2002 I enjoyed it because it was a big challenge. We had so many kids replaced and had to work through a quarterback issue, and we were able to protect him and win football games by being able to rush the football.''

On paper, Nebraska has the elements to run the football better.

Coach Bo Pelini said the offensive line can "be a strength for this football team.'' Senior I-back Marlon Lucky is the only returning 1,000-yard rusher in the Big 12.

"We have the pieces to be (better),'' Watson said. "What we become, in terms of how we look, will be predicated on using all those pieces.''

Ganz chucked 148 passes while starting the Huskers' final three games last season. Sam Keller threw it at least 35 times in six of the first nine games.

They followed Zac Taylor's two-year run as the starter in which Taylor set just about every NU single-game, season and career passing record.

Ganz said Watson will keep a lot of the same plays, but maybe change some of the language to make it shorter and more concise. His own running ability should mean more of the shotgun and zone read that the Huskers tried in the season-ending loss at Colorado.

"As a quarterback you want to throw the ball, but you've got to find a happy medium,'' Ganz said. "I'm sure Coach Watson will find that. He'll know when to dial up the long ball and when to run it. A lot depends on what other teams let us do.''

http://www.lavistasun.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19413106&BRD=2712&PAG=461&dept_id=556367&rfi=6
 
The NU assistants are pretty underwhelming. If you're going to hire a guy who has never been a head coach before, you would think you would want to surround him with quality assistants. But I guess not.
 
they'll be better this year.

shortbus shawn had his shortcomings but his playcalls generally didn't allow the offense to beat itself. this strategy works particularly well when you have superior athletes to your opponents. see CU in 01. but, if you get into trouble and need a little creativity, well, then you are screwed. see CU in 01.

if the fuskers have recruited as well as the pundits claim they have, then they will be improved on offense. and, compared to clown-a-han, watson knows a little more about how much playbook a college kid can learn and execute. watson still is crazy about all the variations and he puts way too much emphasis on different looks as opposed to better execution, but he is light years better than the clown.
 
they'll be better this year.

shortbus shawn had his shortcomings but his playcalls generally didn't allow the offense to beat itself. this strategy works particularly well when you have superior athletes to your opponents. see CU in 01. but, if you get into trouble and need a little creativity, well, then you are screwed. see CU in 01.

if the fuskers have recruited as well as the pundits claim they have, then they will be improved on offense. and, compared to clown-a-han, watson knows a little more about how much playbook a college kid can learn and execute. watson still is crazy about all the variations and he puts way too much emphasis on different looks as opposed to better execution, but he is light years better than the clown.


The D is what is exciting me..... there are some athletes there and they were just left out to dry last year. reports are the intensity is off the hook. Shortbus has his chance, he was getting looks for other jobs already last year, he wont be around long if he can make some noise at NU but make no bones about it, it will be the D that changes the most next year.

anyways, hope all of you are having a good spring and :drink2:here is to things coming back around our way (NU v CU) for the B12N if things go well.:thumbsup:
 
The D is what is exciting me..... there are some athletes there and they were just left out to dry last year. reports are the intensity is off the hook. Shortbus has his chance, he was getting looks for other jobs already last year, he wont be around long if he can make some noise at NU but make no bones about it, it will be the D that changes the most next year.

anyways, hope all of you are having a good spring and :drink2:here is to things coming back around our way (NU v CU) for the B12N if things go well.:thumbsup:

I hope you lose every game:smile2:
 
The D is what is exciting me..... there are some athletes there and they were just left out to dry last year. reports are the intensity is off the hook. Shortbus has his chance, he was getting looks for other jobs already last year, he wont be around long if he can make some noise at NU but make no bones about it, it will be the D that changes the most next year.

anyways, hope all of you are having a good spring and :drink2:here is to things coming back around our way (NU v CU) for the B12N if things go well.:thumbsup:

The same D that gave up 40+ points 6 times last year? Not to mention 76 and 65. I would be excited too...:thumbsup:
 
The D is what is exciting me..... there are some athletes there and they were just left out to dry last year. reports are the intensity is off the hook. Shortbus has his chance, he was getting looks for other jobs already last year, he wont be around long if he can make some noise at NU but make no bones about it, it will be the D that changes the most next year.

anyways, hope all of you are having a good spring and :drink2:here is to things coming back around our way (NU v CU) for the B12N if things go well.:thumbsup:

you are excited about that defense? :smile2: well, that's why i love college football-- it is spring and we all think our teams are going to be world-beaters.

i think we are going to see some wac-like scores in the b12 this year. offense will rule the day at ku, mizzery, nu, and CU in the north.

i do agree that we need to kick the pretenders to the curb and get back to CU v. nu for the whole enchilada. i prefer to hate rivals that i can get a good white-hot hatred going like the fuskers as opposed to these various upstarts. altho mizzery is so freaking obnoxious that i am developing a pretty good hatred for them, too.
 
you are excited about that defense? :smile2: well, that's why i love college football-- it is spring and we all think our teams are going to be world-beaters.

i think we are going to see some wac-like scores in the b12 this year. offense will rule the day at ku, mizzery, nu, and CU in the north.

i do agree that we need to kick the pretenders to the curb and get back to CU v. nu for the whole enchilada. i prefer to hate rivals that i can get a good white-hot hatred going like the fuskers as opposed to these various upstarts. altho mizzery is so freaking obnoxious that i am developing a pretty good hatred for them, too.

I'm going to try my damnest to get to the NU vs. CU game this season because I haven't gotten to go to one yet. Our defense is going to be better because there was no where to go, but up! I don't think they are going to be world beaters, but I would love to be proved wrong and see a miracle happen. Our offense will still be decent and if our defense can just make it a game we will win some games because of the offense.
 
:lol::lol::lol:

Bubble screen, zone stretch play and 5 yard out patterns on 3 and 7 may just put niblet fan over the edge....
 
A$$!!!! :lol:

:lol: to be fair, i admitted the same thing when he was here: if we could have nfl-calibur athletes at every position, his **** would work.

alas, not every team is so lucky. that translated to widespread joy when he was gone.
 
:lol: to be fair, i admitted the same thing when he was here: if we could have nfl-calibur athletes at every position, his **** would work.

alas, not every team is so lucky. that translated to widespread joy when he was gone.

Well, then it sounds like we don't want him going to USC anytime soon then. I'm not sure on how he's going to be as an offensive coordinator considering the only times I got to see him actually call plays last season were pretty small.
 
Well, then it sounds like we don't want him going to USC anytime soon then. I'm not sure on how he's going to be as an offensive coordinator considering the only times I got to see him actually call plays last season were pretty small.

Consider this: Remember 62-36? Well, that was the product of about 5 different plays run by a team that had two NFL O-Linemen, an NFL WR, an NFL TE, and an NFL running back.
 
Consider this: Remember 62-36? Well, that was the product of about 5 different plays run by a team that had two NFL O-Linemen, an NFL WR, an NFL TE, and an NFL running back.

No, I don't remember that, but now I get to pay more to my psychiatrist so we can go back over these issues................THANKS! :cry:
 
Back
Top