Nebraska Football: Friday’s final drive was textbook football
Nebraska Football was at their best this drive.
Nebraska football defeated Rutgers by a 28-21 score on Friday. However, there was a certain part of the game that I really enjoyed. The final drive of the game for Nebraska was a thing of beauty.
Lasting 15 plays, tallying 63 yards, and taking 7:35 off the clock, it was a master class in how to drain clock while also moving the football effectively. As was the case throughout the entire night, Dedrick Mills, Wan’Dale Robinson and Adrian Martinez where huge components of that drive.
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It started off with a run by Mills, but the run itself was negated by a penalty. The actual first positive play was a four-yard run by Robinson. From there, Adrian Martinez ran for nine yards for a first down. Following those couple of plays, we saw the Nebraska football offense get into a nice, calculated rhythm. Nobody was rushing, and everybody knew their roles on the drive.
There were some plays where Nebraska football accumulated negative yards. However, it always seemed like they were able to bounce back and get positive results on the next play. In particular, I was impressed with the clock management on this drive. It’s not easy to manage a clock in college football, particularly when it stops after every first down. However, Nebraska football made it work.
This drive was something that I wish I saw the entire season. It was simple smash mouth football and it worked. Smash mouth football was a theme of Friday night, and Nebraska was able to execute that well. I also saw Martinez really step up this drive as well. In addition to the runs he had, he was also very calm, cool, and collected. It was a nice change of pace from earlier in the game, when he seemed a bit rattled.
If I am Nebraska head coach Scott Frost, I am saving tape of this drive and telling my future teams that this is how you run an offense effectively. What Nebraska did during that final drive was textbook football. They didn’t try to go for any home run plays, and they took what the defense gave them. They looked like they knew what they wanted to accomplish the entire drive, and they did exactly that.
In what was a wild night, this drive provided a sense of calm for many. Nebraska football struggled in a lot of areas on Friday, but this was something they did to perfection.