Docs Diagnosis: Anatomy of a Sack, 2023 Nebraska vs. Michigan
Transcript
00:00 Welcome back to the Doc's Diagnosis presented by Census Federal Credit Union.
00:03 I'm Travis Justice.
00:04 He's Dr. Rob Zadiska, a member of the original pipeline, may we add.
00:09 If you missed behind the point spread last week, we went into great detail about third
00:14 and two, third and five, third and seven.
00:18 Third and two is ideal, man.
00:19 It is ideal.
00:20 It's the position you want to be in, and Nebraska found itself in that position in the second
00:24 half on its very first drive.
00:26 They did.
00:27 And this is a play where they're lined up.
00:28 It's going to be a run play.
00:31 You got two yards that you got to get.
00:33 And this kind of goes back to what we've talked about over the last several years, those little
00:37 things that have haunted Nebraska football, the penalties, the turnovers, the special
00:42 teams miscues.
00:43 And again, here you're going to see a penalty.
00:45 And what are kind of the two guys I want to, I think it was Anthony Grant got called for
00:50 the illegal motion.
00:52 If you look at Ethan Piper right here as well, too, both of these guys have just a little
00:56 hitch, like a little flinch right before the snap.
01:02 And they get called both.
01:03 I don't know which one the ref actually called.
01:05 I thought it was Anthony Grant.
01:06 Yeah, but they called it on Grant.
01:07 You see both of them move there.
01:09 So this moves it from third and two to third and seven, which is a completely different
01:14 and forces Nebraska to pass.
01:15 Yeah, this is not a run play for Nebraska.
01:19 Might have been when we were in school, but not now.
01:21 So the thing I want you to watch here, there's kind of several things happening here on this
01:25 play.
01:26 Ben Hart actually has a pretty good block.
01:28 He's got a smaller edge guy here, but he actually does a nice job keeping this guy outside.
01:34 You're going to see a tackle end stunt here over Ben Scott and Newelli at right guard
01:40 where the tackle's going to come out.
01:42 The end's going to loop back around.
01:45 What ends up happening, though, is Newelli gets his shoulders turned.
01:49 He doesn't stay square to the line.
01:51 You want to see the shoulder pads of guys kind of staying parallel to the line of scrimmage.
01:57 When you see that, that's how you know guys are in good position.
02:02 You're able to pick up these stunts if you're staying parallel to the line of scrimmage
02:06 because you can see everything and pass it off to the next guy.
02:09 Now, the other guy that I want you to pay attention to on this is Corcoran at left tackle.
02:17 You can see the sack here comes right here with Corcoran.
02:22 His back is to the line of scrimmage.
02:24 That is a bad position to be in if you're still pass blocking.
02:29 What you want to do is if you get turned like this, he should be facing forward parallel
02:35 to the line of scrimmage as long as he can and force that guy on a wide arc.
02:41 What he does, he turns his shoulders to the outside, which gives this edge guy right here,
02:48 basically gives him a corner to the quarterback.
02:51 By turning as much as he does, and you'll see this on the end zone shot, the edge guy
02:56 here beats Corcoran literally with a one-arm push to the chest.
03:00 You'll see it coming right there.
03:03 He's got one arm, got to turn my pen on here, but he's got one arm into Corcoran.
03:09 All he needs is one arm.
03:11 He's got a free hand to sack the quarterback here.
03:14 The guy that is ideal on this play is if you look at Ethan Piper at left guard.
03:21 See how he's still parallel to that line of scrimmage?
03:25 That's exactly what you want on this play.
03:27 By staying parallel like this, he can pick up.
03:31 He sees that end coming around, and Piper really does a nice job here.
03:35 Now if you come over here, you've got Ben Hart's block and his guy.
03:41 Ben Scott is trying to stay square and keep up with the guy on the tackle stunt here.
03:49 Nuelli gets caught up here because he gets turned, and as we go ahead and progress with
03:54 the play, you see Nuelli right there, kind of in the middle of the screen, just sort
03:58 of wandering around blocking Casper, the friendly ghost.
04:03 That's one of those situations which is highly not ideal for several guys on that play.
04:10 The center and guard have got to stay square to the line of scrimmage so they can pass
04:14 off that stunt.
04:15 Piper picked it up because he was staying square.
04:18 And then Corcoran has to stay as square as he can to that edge guy and not get turned.
04:24 The moment he gets turned, it creates an edge for that rush end to come around the outside
04:30 and get the sack.
04:32 These are technique things that I worry about with these guys.
04:37 With Corcoran, you've got a guy who's fairly ingrained with that bad technique.
04:41 We just haven't seen that change.
04:43 That's coaching though, right?
04:45 Some of it's coaching, some of it's player.
04:49 It's hard for me to tell because these are the only guys we've seen over the last three
04:57 years.
04:58 It's been Corcoran, it's been Ben Scott, not Ben Scott, it's been Ben Hart, it's been
05:04 Nuali, it's been Piper.
05:06 We haven't seen a lot of other guys because right now there's not other guys in this program.
05:12 It's year one.
05:13 What's it going to look like with Gunnar Gatula?
05:15 What's it going to look like with Sam Sledge when you get some of these other guys in there?
05:20 When you see some of the recruits they're going after right now, I don't know if we're
05:24 going to see a wholesale change in technique or capability on the offensive line until
05:30 we get some other players in there.
05:32 So to recap, third and two turns into third and seven, which turns into a sack, which
05:37 turns into a misfield goal.
05:39 It is about as typical Nebraska offensive line over the last three to four years.
05:45 That one play encapsulated all of it.
05:48 The small mental mistakes, the technique mistakes.
05:52 These are the things that kill you as a football team.
05:55 For Dr. Rob Zaduska, I'm Travis Justice.
05:57 We'll see you next week on the Doc's Diagnosis presented by Centris Federal Credit Union.
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