Nebraska football: Aggressiveness being reinstalled in Black Shirts approach

Nebraska football’s defense has been a weak spot for a number of years. New defensive coordinator Erick Chinander thinks the issue is about to be fixed.

If you have been paying attention to Nebraska football the last few years, you’ve likely noticed a trend. As the defense goes, so goes the Cornhuskers.

That’s why the Huskers have been as bad as they have been. New defensive coordinator, Erick Chinander thinks he has figured out just why the Black Shirts have been among the worst defenses in the country.

The new DC has noticed that he’s had to reinstall a sense of real aggressiveness on the defensive side of the ball. After the team’s Saturday practice, one of the first where the team wore pads, Chinander told the media the biggest adjustment is “learning to play with aggression at all times.”

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That doesn’t just mean that the players weren’t wanting to tackle or were passive when it came trying to make a stop. Chinander made it clear that wanting to do those things, and knowing how to carry them out are two different things.

The defensive coordinator said it’s easy to get the players wanting to do the attacking. Where the challenge for the new staff comes in, is getting the players to trust themselves.

While this is not a real deep dive into what’s wrong with the defense, it’s surprisingly simple. The previous coaches were not against the Black Shirts being aggressive. The defense simply did not know how to be aggressive in a way that led to great numbers.

The big question now is whether or not Chinander and the rest of the defensive staff can do what the previous defensive coordinators could not.

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Turns out, that might be the question of the fall. While there will be plenty of people who are looking at whether the Nebraska football team can adopt Scott Frost’s offense, the Black Shirts getting aggressive is the real key to 2018.