Emphasis on Pre-Snap Reads Could Pay Big Dividends
Former Florida and current South Carolina head coach Steve Spurrier often talks about the offense and in particular the quarterback avoiding negative plays as an important key to winning football games. While the 1996 Fiesta Bowl might be remembered for his Gators' inability to tackle Nebraska ballcarriers, his offense yielded three interceptions (including a pick-six), a safety, another half dozen sacks, and a lost fumble. That made a bad day substantially worse. You can similarly track NU's performance and find a pretty striking difference between games when Taylor Martinez avoided negative plays, and when he had four or more.
Nebraska did not lose a game in 2012 when the combination of sacks, fumbles, and INT's involving Taylor Martinez was three or less. NU only won a single game when there were four or more such negative plays. That game was against Michigan State where NU appeared dead but was helped by a pair of Spartan turnovers, a horrific 9 for 27 passing day by MSU quarterback Andrew Maxwell and 100 yards in penalties assessed against their opponent. That still required a miracle drive by the Huskers to win with under two minutes remaining.
The four losses by NU saw four such plays (UCLA), eight plays (Ohio State), ten plays (Wisconsin), and seven plays (Georgia). While the defense took a lot of blame for those losses, the negative plays were evident on the scoreboard. NU gave up a safety against the Bruins, a pick-six and two more turnovers that became scores against Ohio State, a pick-six and another pick turned touchdown against Wisconsin along with some red zone opportunities stifled. If four or five plays determine the outcome of most games, it's often negative plays by a quarterback that are among them.
Improving the recognition by Martinez and the entire NU offense of blitzes could do a lot to reduce these critical errors. Getting sacked on 3rd and long can be almost unavoidable at times. What's particularly painful (and costly) is when the miscues happen on 1st and 10, as it did fifteen times to Martinez in 2012 as well as on a handful of second and short situations. Cleaning that up could do a lot toward helping the Huskers break out of the 4+ loss season cycle that's plagued them since 2004.
So hearing that offensive coordinator Tim Beck has been emphasizing diagnosis by Martinez is an encouraging sign. Cutting down on those plays could be the difference between 9-10 wins and a Capital One Bowl berth and 11-12 wins and a trip to a BCS game.