NU Concludes Week?s Full-Scale Workouts

LINCOLN ? The Nebraska football team concluded the full-scale phase of its game-week practice schedule with a two-hour workout inside Memorial Stadium on a cool, breezy Thursday afternoon. The Husker coaching staff continued to emphasize finding success in the red zone area, as well as the kicking game during exercises.

"We reviewed a lot of those special situations that you don’t normally get a chance to throw in during the week," Head Coach Bill Callahan said. "We try to bring up one new situation for the team to practice on, so it was a good practice in that respect."

While Callahan said that he knows the Memorial Stadium crowd will be raucous on Saturday against Texas Tech, he expects the Red Raiders to be prepared for the environment, even if that means employing a no-huddle offense.

"I think, for the most part, when you encounter a hostile environment like we have with our crowd noise, you can expect them to come in and no-huddle our defense, try to quiet the crowd and put our fans on their seats with that no-huddle situation," Callahan said. "It’s just as important to get noise when they’re in no-huddle at the line of scrimmage trying to get signals and plays as when they come to the line of scrimmage. It’s going to be an interesting dynamic Saturday to see how they come out and if they’re going to feature the no-huddle system, which they’re capable of doing."

Callahan also talked about the NU offense developing the ability to spread the passing game evenly, as evidenced by last Saturday’s contest when quarterback Zac Taylor distributed the ball to 10 different Husker wide receivers. Callahan said that Nebraska’s offense attempts to rely more on balance than on one single target.

"I think the Iowa State game is indicative of what we do structurally, from a formation aspect and what we did with the routes that we were running and the people we were featuring. We just tried to get a little more balanced in our attack."

Nebraska will continue its game-week preparations Friday afternoon with a short walk-through practice.

NOTE: Husker defensive linemen Adam Carriker and Le Kevin Smith were named to the updated Rotary Lombardi Award Watch List Friday. The two Blackshirts join NU center Kurt Mann, who was named to the list during the summer. The Rotary Lombardi Award is given annually to the nation’s top lineman. Four former Huskers (Rich Glover, Dave Rimington, Dean Steinkuhler and Grant Wistrom) have been tabbed winners of the honor. For more information on the Lombardi Award, visit www.rotarylombardiaward.com.