Welcome to the Hot Topic, a weekly feature that poses a key question about the Nebraska football team. On the "Life in the Red Podcast," Luke Mullin and Amie Just will discuss a topic heading into that week's game, and a transcription of the conversation will appear in the Journal Star's Huskers section.
How different will the Nebraska offense look against USC?
Amie: I don't know. I think there will be some base personnel differences — Marcus Satterfield really liked to run with your heavier packages like your 12 or 22 personnel in specific scenarios — and I think we'll see a lot more of 10 and 11 (personnel) with Dana (Holgorsen). That's usually what he likes to go with, just watching back some of his old tape. I think we'll see that and see more wide receivers involved in the action, whether they're coming out of the backfield like we've seen a little bit this season.
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I'm not sure what this is going to look like, because he still has to operate within the playbook that they have.
³¢³Ü°ì±ð:ÌýI think we see a simple, but more effective Nebraska offense. That was one of the criticisms of the Satterfield offense, that it was complicated with a big, hard-to-learn playbook for young players. Well, you've got Holgorsen coming in and he's not going to learn the whole playbook in a couple days. But what all offenses do have is the same concepts, so what he (Holgorsen) is really going to look at it is, what are the concepts that are working? What are the simple things that Nebraska can do effectively and consistently? And he's going to call those over and over. It's the same thing where if you can run the ball for 4 yards a play, you do it every time because you keep getting first downs.
It's going to be interesting to see that first scripted drive, like what does that look like? To me, that's going to show how Dana Holgorsen is going to call that game and the next two games. Does it look different? Are they running the ball? Are they taking shots down the field? Those first 10 plays are going to be really telling.
´¡³¾¾±±ð:ÌýI agree with you, with an asterisk — special teams cannot screw it up and have them start at the 1-yard line, because we won't learn anything. That's happened this year, and it happened last year. As long as things are as normal as they can get for Nebraska football, the first drive is going to be super telling. But you can't throw the script out the window before you even get a chance to run it.
