It’s a time-honored belief. Tom Osborne acknowledged it every Nebraska football season.
“I remember Coach Osborne, Coach (Frank) Solich said it,” Matt Rhule said during his Monday media availability, adding, Penn State Coach Joe Paterno “used to say (it) to us all the time, (you) make the biggest improvement between week one and week two.”
Nebraska’s third-year head coach “is pretty adamant about game one to game two,” said Husker offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen. “I’ve always been game one to game two to game three. But with the same breath, we want to be playing our best football in December.”
Week-to-week improvement is “just a constant, game one to game 12,” Holgorsen said. “We continue to steadily increase what that thing looks like.”
That’s the big picture, of course. No one would argue Holgorsen’s point. But the subject here is week one to week two, making the biggest jump.
“I do think so,” said quarterback Dylan Raiola. “Getting out there the first game, you don’t really know what to expect, especially with the new guys playing together. Even though we do everything together in the off-season, a game setting’s a little different.”
“New guys” include first-year transfers as well as freshmen. Nebraska started six first-year transfers against Cincinnati; defensive back Andrew Marshall (Idaho), linebackers Dasan McCullough (Oklahoma) and Marques Watson-Trent (Georgia Southern), offensive guard Rocco Spindler (Notre Dame) and wide receivers Nyziah Hunter (California) and Dane Key (Kentucky).
Hunter and Key caught Raiola’s touchdown passes. Sophomore Kyle Kunanan, who transferred from California after the spring (and two seasons at Charlotte), kicked two field goals.
So despite the victory, improvement is the emphasis this week, when Akron comes to Memorial Stadium Saturday night. The Zips’ nickname is fitting, you might say, tongue in cheek. They scored zip in an opening loss to Wyoming (10-0).
Offensively, “we have to become more explosive, and right now we’re not,” said Holgorsen, who was happy about the victory but not scoring only 20 points. Settling for field goals is unacceptable.
The defense played hard but needs to play faster, Butler said.
“I think our guys give great effort. Their intent is to give great effort, but when you talk about playing fast, especially in the second half, it comes down to diagnostics, of reading plays, determining is it run, is it pass? Because obviously, when it’s run, we want them going, when (it’s) pass, we want them covering. So that’s just something we need to keep talking about,” said Butler.
“Like I said, I think we’re always in the mindset of, we want them to play hard, physical, execute at a high level and play for each other. But sometimes there’s a subset of that effort, which I think is just playing fast and trusting what you see and going, really, especially in the run game and some of the pass game’s rush stuff.”
The Huskers shut down Cincinnati’s pass game. Bearcat quarterback Brendan Sorsby finished with 69 yards on 13-of-25, with one interception — Malcolm Hartzog Jr.’s game-saver with 34 seconds remaining.
At halftime, “you could clearly see they … couldn’t throw the ball, didn’t have an interest to,” Butler said. “So they came out in the second half and it looked like he (Sorsby) said to himself, ‘I don’t really know what they’re doing coverage-wise, so I’m just going to take off and run.’”
Sorsby ran for 75 yards and both Cincinnati touchdowns in the second half. His running — he carried three times for 21 yards in the first half — gave the Bearcats 202 rushing yards for the game.
They had no carries-for-loss on 30 attempts.
Even though Akron’s quarterback Ben Finley isn’t a runner — he ran for a net of 52 yards last season — Nebraska’s defense has to be stronger against the run. That’s an area for significant improvement this week, particularly against a team that rushed for only 89 yards against Wyoming. One area …
