LINCOLN, Neb. — Sunshine? Check. Keyshawn Johnson? Check. As for the rest of the takeaways from Memorial Stadium on Saturday …
NEBRASKA CORNHUSKERS SPRING GAME NARRATIVE CHECKLIST
1. THOSE NEW QUARTERBACKS √√
All of them brought something to the party. Tanner Lee and Tristan Gebbia brought just a little bit more.
2. THOSE YOUNG RECEIVERS √√
JD Spielman can really, really, really, really fly, kids.
3. THOSE YOUNG (ISH) TAILBACKS √√
Assuming Tre Bryant’s good to go, plenty of options there. Got your Wyatt Mazour (141 all-purpose yards) replica jersey picked out yet?
4. THE TIGHT ENDS √√
Ya know, we didn’t realize just how much we’d missed you. Especially in the red zone.
5. THE INTERIOR OF THE OFFENSIVE LINE √√
The starters (Red team) ran for 195 yards and rolled for 8.1 per carry against the backups (White). Good-bye, zone reads. Hello, shotgun draws. And more traditional ‘I’ and broken ‘I’ formations. More good than bad, but …
6. THAT NEW 3-4 DEFENSE
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Um, yeah.
“It’ll be exciting, everybody will be flying around,” LB Luke Gifford promised after the Red stomped the White, 55-7. “It’ll be fun to display. And we’re all excited about it … there’s a lot of stuff we can do. There’s a lot more.”
And it’ll have to wait.
While a lot of offensive questions on Saturday were crossed off the bucket list, for better or worse, defensive coordinator Bob Diaco left his box of tricks safely under lock and key.
If you came to see the chaos and confusion that were a reported spring trademark of Diaco’s 3-4 sets, what you got instead was a lot of 4-down-linemen fronts or nickel and dime packages and no blitzing to really speak of.
After weeks of reading about this incredible, intense Mint Oreo shake, Diaco and head coach Mike Riley instead served up 2-and-a-half hours of vanilla.
“This game now, being on TV like it is, just becomes another evaluation scouting tool for all of our opponents next year,” Riley explained later. “So there was no way we wanted to do anything out-of-the-box at all.”
So they … didn’t.
(Shakes fist at the digital heavens) Blast you, Big Ten Network! You and your tape delays!
“We certainly didn’t want them to see what blitzes, all the different fronts, all of the different stuff we practiced all spring,” Riley continued.
“I don’t want that on tape for somebody. So this was a pre-planned deal. I’m kind of sorry to have to say that, but that’s the way it is. And that’s a really smart thing to do.”
Or a really paranoid thing to do, but whatever.
Diaco is going to peel layers off this thing, like an onion. And that’s fine. Nothing in April. A little more for the home opener against Arkansas State on Sept. 2 — but not too much. Then a little more for the trip to Oregon on Sept. 9, the first “marquee” test.
Then you can probably sit on what you’ve got for Northern Illinois, Rutgers and Illinois, save for the occasional dribs and drabs. And for the epic/huge/season-defining/program-defining/Riley-defining back-to-back home games with Wisconsin (Oct. 7) and Ohio State (Oct. 14) …
“We’re going to keep adding stuff as it goes,” DL Khalil Davis said.
Rather than unleashing hell Saturday, we got a lot of very leashed — no live contact on the quarterbacks, kids — holy heck. Although that didn’t keep some individual defenders from planting a flag, Gifford and Davis (a half sack, two tackles for losses) chief among them.
A local wunderkind (247Sports rated Gifford a 3-star playmaker at Lincoln Southeast), No. 12 got the Red rout going with a pick of freshman QB Gebbia with 3 minutes left in the first half, corralling a laser — Gebbia wasn’t shy about showing off his arm strength — that appeared to be slightly tipped by its apparent target:
Just before the half Luke Gifford snatched the football for an interception. #huskers pic.twitter.com/E0bgXPULoZ
— Omaha Sports Insider (@OSIsports) April 15, 2017
“I think that’s huge. Definitely huge,” said the 6-foot-3 Gifford, who would also record 2 tackles with the first team, including a stop for a loss. “Coach Diaco preached it, so I think that’s something I think, not just me, a lot of our guys have done in practice. There have been plenty of them. I was just lucky to get one (Saturday). But our guys have worked hard at it and I think it’s going to translate, definitely, to the field.”
And on that, well, you’re just going to have to trust him. Just like with the rest of the scheme.
“Oh, we feel real comfortable,” Davis said with a grin. “We know there’s so much more we can do. We haven’t even scratched the surface.”