Nebraska coach Mike Riley’s still a nice guy. Open-minded.
Generous with a story. Generous with questions; he puts up with some doozies,
including from me.
He’s getting savvier to this place. He’s hip to the mood of
NU Football, 2017, where fans are restless and irritated, according to my voicemail,
Twitter DMs and email inbox.
A couple answers in this week’s press conference suggest he
is, too, though in his usual muted way.
At Nebraska, yes, it’s about tradition and culture and
walk-ons and Blackshirts and balloons and PR. Plenty of PR. It took pluck and
perseverance and salesmanship for Nebraska football to stand out as a national
commodity, and no athletic department works quite as well to remind the fans —
some of the media is a willing partner in this — that there’s no place like
this place.
(This is the athletic department, remember, that willingly
tried to rehab Bo Pelini’s image with a cat meme.)
Riley is perfect for the brand. From January through August
— when the Nebraska football PR machine harmoniously runs at full speed, much
of the media in tow suggesting the recruiting class of fans’ wildest dreams —
Riley is ideal. He’s aggressive with satellite camps, willing with interviews,
active on social media. He’s taking happy birthday pictures for recruits, who
then share those on Twitter. He invites the fans in, instead of shutting them
out.
But Riley knows. His job is about results September through
January.
He knows Nebraska football, beyond all the PR and traditions
and the 15 pieces of flair, is still, at bottom, really about winning and
losing games and winning championships. That’s why one building is named after
Bob and another is named after Tom, and all the rest since those two have
either been fired or, in Riley’s case, criticized.
Two answers — to innocuous questions Riley would have
happily entertained in the past — underline his awareness.
The first question was about NU playing in an 11 a.m. game.
The “11 a.m.” thing has been pretty popular since Nebraska’s near-loss to McNeese State in 2014. In 2015, the
Huskers lost a pair of clunkers to Northwestern (30-28) and Purdue (55-45). Both at 11.
So Riley entertained the question last season, explaining
stuff about getting better sleep and changing methods. The 11 a.m. thing is the
new “struggling with home games” thing from 2008-2010, when the Huskers lost
five home games and were in the nascent phases of their “we prefer road games
where everybody hates us” persona.
Anyway, the 11 a.m. thing is a thing.
Riley had none of it Monday.
“We should be so hungry to practice today,” Riley said.
“When they look at that video (of the Oregon game), if they haven’t yet, they
should just be sick, and they should want to get out there and work to
be
better than that.”
Translation: Enough of the morning football stuff. Let’s just
do well in a practice first.
The second question centered on Nebraska having four of its
next five games at home.
“Obviously, we have great pride in playing here in front of
our fans,” Riley said. “It’s great to have that stretch. The other thing is, it
doesn’t matter where we’re playing as much as how we play. That is what’s
important to me. I try to teach the kids that; it’s no different. The bus picks
us up out here and we end up at a hotel, there might be a plane ride in
between, but we are going to end up at a hotel. And then there’s a stadium,
lines in the field and then we play the game. So we try to ingrain (in) our
people that it doesn’t matter what time the kick-off is because in our world
the kick-off will be from 11-7:30.”
Notice the return to the comment about kickoff times.
Translation: Seriously, enough with the where and when we
play the football game.
It was a course correction from Saturday’s Oregon game,
where Riley was asked about going back to Oregon and Husker fan support and
indulged both questions.
Oregon was an odd postgame atmosphere. It was held in a
hastily assembled cheap tent that was out on a concourse.
(That doesn’t bother me, by the way. Just the opposite. The
rattier the setting, the better. I love that stuff. Riley sat on a bucket in a
shed at Purdue. I nearly passed out from bus exhaust at 2010 Kansas State,
where Taylor Martinez sat in a school desk. That last game at Baylor, Pelini
was basically in a cage surrounded by Husker fans, one of whom screamed, “YOU
SUCK, WATSON!” for, y’know, Shawn Watson. Pelini went up the bars of the cage,
inquiring of fans standing there, wide-eyed, just who said that about his
offensive coordinator. All of these things were absolutely great.)
At Oregon, Husker fans were walking around, and a few were
on a hill, watching Bob Diaco’s press session with reporters. Riley had family
there, friends, reporters who knew him, etc. It was tough spot for him. He
couldn’t just sore-thumb it and grump his way out of there. Well, he could
have, but it wouldn’t have been him to do that. So he didn’t.
Monday, Riley was a different guy. The loss has sunk in.
Maybe that it was another winnable game had sunk in — Riley
is 1-5 at Nebraska in road games decided by ten or fewer points. Or perhaps
it’s was that Nebraska played sloppily for a half; good teams tend to be beyond
falling behind 42-14 after 30 minutes.
Can Riley’s shift translate to the team’s play?
A few more thoughts:
» In our podcast, we discussed how Tanner Lee isn’t Baker Mayfield;
that is, Mayfield can create new passing plays with his mobility and improv.
Oklahoma’s receivers know Mayfield has that talent, and, at some point, the
Sooners can get a playground play or two that Nebraska probably won’t. Lee’s a
classic, stand-tall quarterback who works from a fixed position and throws to
routes that are designed with a fundamental quarterback in mind. Late in the
Oregon game, I didn’t see a lot of receivers open, though, and if receivers
don’t get open — or the scheme isn’t creative enough — Lee’s not likely to
scramble 12 yards to his right to make an across-the-body throw to a receiver
who broke off his route. Watch for that in the fourth quarters of games, when
Nebraska naturally is going to call some passing plays that worked earlier in
the game.
» After watching both of Northern Illinois’ games, the
Huskies are strikingly similar to Arkansas State on offense. Spread, no huddle,
occasionally up tempo. Good play design to get the tight end open on wheel
routes and out-the-back-end throwback routes. They don’t have as many good
athletes. NIU lost to Boston College, which runs a pro-style offense and busted
a few runs longer than ten yards, but no real whoppers. If Northern Illinois
played Rutgers, it’d be a tight, low-scoring game.
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