Healthy Husker receivers hope to keep big plays coming
You can draw it up this way and that way in the meeting rooms, but it often enough still comes down to your guy beating their guy to catch that coin flip and make sure it reads how you want it.
Like Samori Toure did on that first play against Northwestern. It looked like an interception for Nebraska’s foe. Think about the groans in the stadium and all attached to it if that happens. The Huskers probably still ultimately own the night, but perhaps it’s a more stressful event. Toure instead said, ‘Nah, I’ll take that.’ He was eventually tackled, but 70 yards from where the play began. The music on the juke box was set on the song Scott Frost’s team wanted.
“It was something that we had planned a few days before the game. It was something I could think about and get my mind right for it,” Toure said. “As far as what I saw, I just tried to beat the defensive backs and run as fast as I could and get down the field. I saw the ball in the air and the safety was too deep so I just tried to get in front of him and make a play.”
Make a play. Make that play. That play that doesn’t just feed momentum for a drive, but maybe a quarter, maybe a half, maybe a game. The Huskers will need more of those 50-50 wins to tilt Saturday’s game against No. 9 in their favor.
One thing working to Nebraska’s advantage, something that really just came to be last week, is Frost’s squad now has its full complement of top wide receivers and tight ends working together at the same time.
While Toure has remained healthy throughout, Oliver Martin missed four games after going for more than 100 yards in the opener. He just returned to play Northwestern and is now said to be 100 percent. Omar Manning missed a week but is at full operation. Zavier Betts has had stops and starts from injury, missing the second half against Michigan State after a 62-yard first half against the Spartans. Back against the Wildcats this past week, the explosiveness Betts brings was obvious: an 83-yard sprint for a touchdown, a drawn pass interference on a deep ball, another possible touchdown if the throw is there.
He’s becoming a guy you expect at least one explosive from a week. “Zavier has come a long ways,” Frost said Thursday. “Still has some growth but it seems like every week he’s getting better and better. He’s a guy that can make plays for us. He’s better when he’s out there on the field and hopefully we can keep him there.”
The big-picture attaching point to that, knock on wood, is Nebraska’s main receivers are now all at the ready, which Matt Lubick said keeps them fresher to try to bust those big plays. Also quite healthy are the tight ends, which have moved from Travis Vokolek missing the first three games and Austin Allen being out for almost all of the Buffalo contest, to having everyone back and being probably the deepest position group on the roster, with the return to the practice field this week of first-year freshman Thomas Fidone thrown in there for good measure.
“As far as our offense, we have a lot of playmakers,” Toure said. “We have the No. 1 playmaker in the Big Ten at quarterback in Adrian (Martinez). We have big play receivers and some running backs that can get it done too. Just having the weapons and the opportunity to take shots down field is something that is important for an offense.”
Guess who the top teams in the country are with plays of 50 yards or more? Nebraska and Michigan, both with nine of them. (Ohio State and Texas Tech also have nine). Granted, the Huskers have played one more game, but it’s a significant climb from a season ago when NU had just one such play in the eight-game season. The Huskers had 12 plays of 30 yards or more in 2020. They have 19 plays covering such a distance already. They are also one of just two teams that have seven plays of more than 60 yards.
“It has always kind of been in the works. There has always kind of been a thing where there is one guy not executing on the edge that would’ve sprung a play for 80 yards,” said the tight end and co-captain Allen. “Saturday was one of the first times that all across the board we were executing as an entire offense. It was cool to see what can happen when all 11 guys doing the same job. … There is a lot of stuff in our playbook that we really haven’t scratched the surface with yet. … Frost is a genius in the playbook so there is a lot of stuff we can really get to.”
Whether it can all come together on a night like this Saturday, against a top ten team with the national TV cameras on and a chance for a breakthrough, is the question dancing in the breeze around here. But the Huskers do know they’ll trying to answer it affirmatively with a team as healthy as you could hope at this point in the season, with the receiving options all popping back into availability for Martinez.
Maybe it will come down to Toure or Betts or anyone stepping in to make a play for his team that seems like it’s going the other way. But Frost also knows the Huskers have to be right in the trenches for that to come into play.
At the heart of the matter, Nebraska’s head coach summarized the fight ahead as so: “They want to run it, we want to run it. They want to stop it, we want to stop it.”
