Lack of time together affects Huskers’ defensive performance

During the press conference following Nebraska's 49-10 victory over Western Kentucky Saturday night, coach Bo Pelini was furious with his defense, calling it an "absolute embarrassment."

But at Tuesday's press conference, Pelini was more subdued, saying that perfection is hard to come by, especially in the first week of the season.

"You want it to be perfect, but I knew it wasn't going to be perfect," Pelini said. "Everything is really fixable. There isn't a great deal of concern there."

The Huskers gave up 299 total yards to Western Kentucky, including 179 on the ground. The Hilltoppers averaged 4.5 yards per carry, while NU held opponents to just 2.8 yards per carry last year. Many NU players discussed communication problems after the game.

Pelini put the game into perspective, saying that it's only week one, and there's plenty of time left for improvement.

"If you look at my history, that's our style of defense. You get better as you go on, as you get more time together," he said. "I've been here before, I'm not real concerned. I'll be concerned if I'm saying this four or five weeks from now. I don't think that will be the case."

Defensive tackle Jared Crick echoed his coach's thoughts.

"After the game, he was pretty upset, as we all were. We knew we didn't play to our potential," Crick said. "After watching the film, we didn't play great, but we found the things that went wrong, our mistakes, and they are fixable. And either they've been fixed, or we're going to fix them this week."

In last year's case, the defense did get noticeably better as the season went on. After giving up 31 points to Texas Tech on Oct. 17, NU didn't allow more than 20 points in any of its final eight games. In their first three games against BCS opponents, the Huskers allowed an average of almost 20 points per game. Following the Texas Tech game, that number shrunk to 9.4.

"You think ten points would be good, but our expectations are blanking people every game. We expect perfection and we go out there and try to execute perfection every snap," Crick said. "If we continue to play for perfection snap-to-snap, then we can blank any team. We have to go out there and execute, and we didn't do that Saturday, and that was the biggest thing for us."

Pelini said this defensive group's lack of time together affected their performance Saturday. The Huskers had just 29 practices entering the game. Will Compton was injured at practice last Thursday, throwing a new face into the starting lineup just days before the game.

The more time this group spends together, the more cohesive it should become, according to Pelini. For that reason, he expects no drop-off from the end of last year's play.

"If you just watch and look at history, you should get better as you move on, as you make different decisions, as you slot your personnel in differently, as you figure things out about your guys after playing in a game," Pelini said. "I have no question that is going to happen. Our expectations of what our defense is going to be are exactly the same."

danhoppen@dailynebraskan.com