Nebraska Football: Third down was elephant in the room for 2020

Nebraska football  struggled on third down the season.

When I look at the Nebraska football statistics from the 2020 season, there are a lot of good numbers and there are also a lot of bad numbers. In this piece, I’m going to take a look at a bad number. Nebraska had a 36.5% conversion percentage on third down.

This is something that they are going to need to improve on for the 2021 season. This number really comes as no surprise to me because in order for Nebraska to succeed on third down, they needed to have a successful first and second down. Too often, that did not happen.

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At times, the offensive line really struggled this year. At times, Adrian Martinez struggled to make the right reads quickly enough.

At times, Luke McCaffrey could not get the ball to his receivers. It wasn’t just one player or one specific issue, it was a combination of things. This is what makes this statistic so important to correct. This was a team issue, this wasn’t something that working with a specific player could fix.

This is where I believe that Nebraska could use their running backs a little bit more in 2021. I talked a little bit about this earlier in the day. Nebraska football did not seem to use their running backs enough. As result, they could not get into a rhythm. Heading into 2021, of the things I would like to see the program do is utilize the running backs on first and second down.

Too often, I saw them want to go for the big play or try to make a big  play on the first two downs this season. This obviously put them in a hole. On third down, they sometimes had to make up big gains, which therefore put pressure on Adrian Martinez or whomever was under center.

If they could balance or pace the offense a little bit more in 2021, that third-down conversion percentage would go way up. This is something I believe they can improve on. It’s also something I believe is an easy fix. Too often the season, they shot themselves in the foot by not making enough out of the first two downs. As a result, they made their life extremely difficult.

Consistency leads to winning, and both of those things are foreign concepts to the program right now. With a strong 2021 class coming in, that could change. Who knows, more third-down conversions could go a long way. This is certainly an area that they need to focus on for the future.