While Nebraska ended up taking command in the second half of its 48-23 win over Maryland, a big part of why the Huskers once trailed 23-14 was because quarterback Anthony Colandrea seemed unusually inaccurate throwing the ball. On Tuesday, offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen said the QB1's struggles weren't a puzzle at all and laid out what Colandrea has to do against Indiana if NU wants any shot to knock off the No. 7 team in the country.
"Calm down, take a big breath, get in the huddle, get the play and then execute the play," Holgorsen said during his weekly press conference.
"There are just some times in the game where he’s so active with everything that he does, and that’s my job — to try to control that.He gets out on some runs and stuff and gets pretty excited. I think it affects him on the next play. He was pretty frustrated there in the third quarter. Things were wide open, and he was just so caught up in the moment.."
Holgorsen went on to say that quite a few of the struggles Colandrea had were simply due to the quarterback being very amped up. He repeated several times during the press conference that Colandrea needs to catch himself and force himself to calm down.
Dana Holgorsen says Anthony Colandrea must calm down for Nebraska football against Indiana
It's possible that happened later in the game, as Colandrea still completed 66.7% of his passes against the Terps, but even when he was completing passes, the receivers were having to adjust back to the ball or dive or slide to make the catch. That was a far cry from most of the rest of the season where Colandrea has put it right where it needed to be.
At one point in the press conference a reporter pointed to a particular sequence where Colandrea made a huge 51 yard run only to miss the next couple of throws after that play. The reporter asked if that kind of situation was what Holgorsen was talking about as far as needing to calm down an reset.
"What do you think? I mean, those are throws he just makes. That’s a routine play for him.
So how do you explain it? Well, just calm down. You’re going to be in those moments a lot, so you’ve got to learn to calm down and just execute the routine plays the next snap."
Holgorsen posited that he might need to take direct action to make sure that Colandrea does that when he faces Indiana's defense on Saturday afternoon.
"Maybe when he gets back into the huddle, I’ve got to sit there and talk to him for about 10 seconds and calm him down and tell him to go through some breathing exercises. Deep breath in, out. In, out. Get your crap together, and let’s go play the next play."
The Nebraska offensive coordinator then laughed and said that Colandrea is such a good kid that if Holgorsen did that over his helmet mic, the quarterback would absolutely try it.
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