Notes from presser: Riley wants cleaner play

By Brian Rosenthal / Huskers.com

Anyone standing outside the Nebraska locker room after the Huskers’ 43-10 victory over Fresno State on Saturday night could hear the team jubilation.

“Hip-hip, hooray! Hip-hip, hooray!”

The team yelled out four or five of the cheers, which has become a tradition under second-year coach Mike Riley after victories.

Never does Riley want his players leaving the locker room feeling unhappy after winning a football game.

Yet Riley, after the game on Saturday night and again at his Monday news conference, seemed upset at some penalties, missed assignments and other errors that smudged what the scoreboard revealed as a convincing victory.

“I don’t mean to be a downer on the win,” Riley said. “I like that a lot better than losing on the Hail Mary on the first game of the season. It’s also encouraging to know I think we can fix this stuff, obviously, and improve some other parts and be better for it.”

Bottom line, Riley really likes this team, particularly it’s maturity, and doesn’t want silly miscues holding it back from what he believes can be a really good season.

“Who do we want to be?” Riley said he asked his players, “because these things will get you beat.”

Penalties for celebrating, targeting, late hits and an illegal substitution particularly ate at Riley, as did a punt block that resulted from a missed blocking assignment.

“It’s so simple, something that’s a day-one thing,” Riley said, “and we blew it.”

Riley also frowned at the punt return team’s inability to field short punts into the wind.

“It looked a cartoon, us trying to get out of the way of the ball,” he said.

Again, Nebraska won by 33 points, played a turnover-free game and, unlike this time last season, is 1-0. For that, Riley is happy, and he wants his players to feel the same way. He also wants them aware.

“You can’t overlook in a win what you would never overlook in defeat. You’d be really mad about it,” Riley said. “We’ve just got to clean that up if we want to be the kind of team we want to be. We get rid of some of those things, then that game is even better.”

Offense striving for balance

When’s the last time a Riley team attempted only 13 passes in a game?

“The last time I remember that is when I was the quarterback,” Riley said, eliciting laughter. “That would’ve been a big number. The coach was smart. I couldn’t throw very well.”

Yes, Nebraska coaches like the 292 rushing yards, out of 406 total yards against Fresno State. Riley, though, knows his team will need to strive for more balance if it’s to succeed.

He admitted the 13 attempts (with six completions) is pretty unusual.

“In the flow of the game, we didn’t have a conversation about, ‘Let’s throw more.’ But we got into that mode where, most of the time, we got to running pretty effectively,” Riley said. “That was probably, as we went through it, the thought that this is how we were going to win this game.”

Dating to the bowl victory over UCLA, that’s two straight games Nebraska has leaned heavily on the rush. Had the Huskers looked as sharp Saturday in the passing game as they did against UCLA, Riley would feel better. But he didn’t sense the same consistency.

“It felt a lot better (against UCLA) even though there were (only) six more attempts. It felt better,” he said. “It didn’t feel that way to me the other night.”

Riley praised all of the running backs – Terrell Newby, Devine Ozigbo and Tre Bryant – against Fresno State. The only part lacking was a long run, something Riley said could’ve happened with better downfield blocking by the wide receivers.

“Those blocks at the end of the play like that are the touchdown blocks,” he said. “We were not necessarily pleased with that.”

Blackshirts make mark

Riley said linebackers Dedrick Young and Josh Banderas stood out against Fresno State, that cornerback Chris Jones “had a real solid night,” defensive end Ross Dzuris (two sacks) had a good game, and that cornerback Joshua Kalu “was really productive” as well.

“I was really impressed with how our defense ran to the football. That was impressive,” Riley said. “When you watch the video and you see completion of the plays, you see a lot of hustle.”

What’s more, a defense bitten time and again last season by big plays allowed only one play of more than 20 yards against Fresno State – a 32-yard passing play. The next biggest gain was 19 yards on a quarterback scramble.

Lightbourn paces special teams

Considering the outpouring of emotion Saturday night – the first game without senior punter Sam Foltz – Riley was proud of freshman punter Caleb Lightbourn in his first career game.

Lightbourn averaged 36.2 yards on four punts. He had one punt blocked, the result of poor coverage, not Lighbourn’s timing.

“I thought he handled the night well,” Riley said. “His get-off time was good. He gets a punt hammered, which was not his fault. His times were actually really good. His get-off times were good, and he kept his poise that way.”

Riley noted the spark freshman Tre Bryant gave the kickoff return team, and was pleased with the hangtime kicker Drew Brown had on kickoffs, allowing for strong coverage.

The biggest special teams bugaboo came on punt returns.

“Our punt return in general was not good. It was just not very executed in anyway,” Riley said. “We were trying to handle short kicks into the wind, and we were our own worst enemy in that part of that.”

Partly because of the weather conditions, Nebraska used sure-handed Jordan Westerkamp to field punts, but Riley admitted it’s time junior De’Mornay Pierson-El, who returned three punts for touchdowns as a freshman, returns to his role.

“We just need to get him in there,” Riley said. “He is a weapon there, and we just need to get him going with it. I’m going to talk to him about that this week.”

Going for two

Riley said holder Zack Darlington, who scored a two-point conversion off a swinging gate formation, has no freedom to change the play, which is called from the coaches upstairs. That doesn’t mean Riley can’t or won’t tweak that scenario.

“Eventually as we do this a little bit, you should have a green light-red light deal,” Riley said, “where something’s on according to what you might see.”

Riley joked he put in the swinging gate formation on PATs because he got tired of other teams putting it on film, forcing him to spend extra practice time on it. So he’s forcing other teams to spend time defending it now, too.

In reality, Nebraska had put in the play in the spring because of Foltz, who was the top holder and displayed the necessary athleticism.

“Then we didn’t even know if we’d be able to continue to do it, but Zack is actually the perfect guy to replace him and try to do some stuff with him, as he showed the other night,” Riley said. “He’s a good athlete, he’s a former quarterback. It just gives us one more little threat there in the game, and I kind of like it.”