Nebraska football refuses to let Anthony Grant be the bellcow
To be clear, I am not the “run the ball” guy. I understand that a good passing game can be the difference between a win and a loss. However, at the moment the Nebraska football team does not have a good passing game. At the beginning of the game it did have a good running game. And then it abandoned it.
I don’t know whether Mark Whipple hates the ground game so much that he intentionally sabotages it or he’s not imaginative enough to keep feeding it to Anthony Grant like he should but it’s one of the two. That was never more evident than against Minnesota on Saturday.
Yes, Anthony Grant ran for over 100 yards in a game for the first time since Indiana. But the way in which it squandered that performance was hinted at early on.
In the Huskers’ first drive of the game, Grant carried the ball 6 times for 60 yards. Nebraska football went up 7-0. In the team’s second possession, Grant carried another 4 times for 20 yards. In other words, the Huskers saw Grant carry the ball 10 times for 80 yards in their first two drives, which made up essentially the first 10 minutes of the game.
In is halftime interview with the Husker Radio network, head coach Mickey Joseph said Nebraska has to get back to "running the ball" in the second half.
— Sean Callahan (@Sean_Callahan) November 5, 2022
For the next three quarters, Grant had 11 carries for 35 yards. Coincidentally, the Nebraska football team was outscored 20-3 when they stopped going out of their way to hand the ball to Grant. Even when Mickey Joseph made it clear, the plan was to give Grant the ball more. The approach was both annoying and confounding.