NU finally puts end to end-arounds
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BY BRIAN ROSENTHAL / Lincoln Journal Star
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Kevin Cosgrove spoke with reporters under a blazing sun outside the locker room Saturday afternoon.
As if Nebraska’s defensive coordinator wasn’t already feeling enough heat.
Cosgrove never sought shade. With beads of sweat rolling down his face, he calmly explained his team’s problems — and ultimate solution — in defending Wake Forest’s bread-and-butter play on this day.
A closer look at the rest of Saturday's college football scene
Michigan can’t rebound from earlier collapse
Michigan got embarrassed again, just in a different way.
A week after being upset by Appalachian State, the Wolverines were handed their most-lopsided loss in 39 years as Dennis Dixon and the Ducks cruised 39-7 on Saturday.
Michigan (0-2) has opened a season with two straight losses at home for the first time since 1959 and has dropped four straight, dating to last season, for the first time in four decades.
Unlike the stunning loss to the second-tier Mountaineers, the Wolverines didn’t even keep it close against Oregon. The 32-point setback was Michigan’s worst since losing 50-14 at Ohio State in 1968, the season before Bo Schembechler’s debut in Ann Arbor.
“We have good kids and they’re hurting,” Wolverines coach Lloyd Carr said. “If losing doesn’t make you hurt, you shouldn’t be at Michigan.”
The Wolverines haven’t won a game since Schembechler died the day before the Ohio State game last year.
Michigan’s Chad Henne sailed an ill-advised pass into double coverage that was intercepted with the ease of a punt return and a lower-leg injury knocked him out of the game for the second half and will probably keep him sidelined against Notre Dame.
Other games of note
* While its fans found new ways to celebrate the monumental upset of Michigan a week earlier, Appalachian State showed no signs of a letdown.
Backup Trey Elder threw four touchdown passes and ran for another - on the Mountaineers’ first five possessions ” in a 48-7 win over overmatched Division II Lenoir-Rhyne on Saturday in front of a record crowd still delirious about the school’s recent fame.
A week after pulling off perhaps the biggest upset in college football history, Appalachian State fans jammed every corner of Kidd Brewer Stadium and beyond.
Swaths of fans wore T-shirts saying “We Brought Down The House 34-32.” Other shirts read “Betcha know where Boone, N.C. is now!!!” and “Where’s Ann Arbor?”
The lingering celebration didn’t affect Appalachian State (2-0), whose speed was too much for the Bears (0-2), even as quarterback Armanti Edwards sat out with a sore shoulder.
* Drew Weatherford threw for 332 yards and three touchdowns as Florida State rallied from an early two-touchdown deficit and held off UAB 34-24. The Seminoles fell out of the Top 25 after losing Monday at Clemson and found themselves in a hole to UAB, which has lost nine straight but was up 17-3 lead in the first half.
Star performers
Dennis Dixon, Oregon: Accounted for 368 yards and a career-high four TDs, helping the Ducks rout Michigan.
Sam Bradford, Oklahoma: Completed 19-of-25 passes for 205 yards and tied a school record with five TD passes against Miami.
Curtis Painter, Purdue: Tied a school record with six TD passes as the Boilermakers defeated Eastern Illinois 52-6..
Brian Hoyer, Michigan State: Completed 17 of 29 passes for 250 yards and two TDs to help the Spartans hold off Bowling Green.
Jonathan Dwyer, Georgia Tech: Had 138 yards rushing and three TDs on only nine carries in a 69-14 win against Samford.
Snapped!
Heidelberg snapped a 36-game losing streak with a 37-26 victory over Oberlin on Saturday. Division III Heidelberg (1-0) had not won since beating Marietta 21-13 on Oct. 4, 2003.
Heidelberg rolled to a 24-7 first-half lead.
That's a lot of points
Western Kentucky tied the record for most points in a quarter by a National Bowl Subdivision team in an 87-0 victory over NAIA West Virginia Tech.
The Hilltoppers (1-1) scored 49 points in the first quarter to earn their first victory as a member of the Bowl Subdivision, formerly Division I-A. The 87 points were a school record.
The Hilltoppers put up three touchdowns in the first five minutes. The defense and special teams each scored two touchdowns in the quarter. Western Kentucky led 52-0 at halftime.
Three other teams have scored 49 points in a quarter, the last time by Fresno State against New Mexico on Oct. 5, 1991.
The all-division record for points in a quarter is 52, set by Division III Mount Union in a 75-7 win over Averett on Sept. 1.
The end-around.
“It’s a multiple play,” Cosgrove said after Nebraska’s 20-17 victory. “It’s a naked in the pass game, it’s a zone cutback, and it’s a reverse, so you have to defend all three plays.
“They do a great job of executing.”
Too great of job, in fact, for the liking of many arm-chair coordinators.
Using mostly the speedy wide receiver Kenny Moore, the Demon Deacons gouged Nebraska time after time on the end-around.
Finally, Cosgrove did something he didn’t want to do, but knew he had to. He rolled up, or “see-sawed” his safeties, as he explained it.
That adjustment, though, didn’t occur until the third quarter — after Wake Forest had successfully run the play twice on its opening drive of the second half.
Moore, who finished with eight carries for 116 yards, had a 38-yard gain on the play, setting up Wake Forest first-and-goal at the Nebraska 9.
He scored on the same play on third-and-goal from the 5.
Cosgrove didn’t make the adjustment with the safeties earlier, he said, because he feared it’d leave the Husker vulnerable up the middle.
“They motion, they stop ’em, and if you start running the safeties over, all of the sudden they run the cutback play,” Cosgrove said, “and they get you outnumbered that way.”
But after Moore gained 34 yards on Wake Forest’s next play on the end-around, Nebraska adjusted, and with fair results. Safety Larry Asante, who led the Huskers with nine tackles, dragged down Kevin Marion for a 1-yard gain on the end- around.
“They were out-leveraging us,” Asante said in describing Nebraska’s problems with the play. “Normally, the safety coming with the motion … they were kind of beating us to the punch.”
The final time Wake Forest turned to the play, Steve Octavien tackled Moore for a 3-yard loss.
“I had to shoot the ‘B’ gap harder, stuff like that,” Octavien said, taking blame for some of the earlier long runs. “That was the main problem. We finally got that done.”
Still, Wake Forest amassed 236 rushing yards on 54 attempts. That’s coming a week after the Demon Deacons ran only 24 times for 2 yards at Boston College.
“It wasn’t their normal run stuff that got to us,” Nebraska linebacker Bo Ruud said. “It was that end- around stuff. That’s something that not many teams do often or do nearly as well as Wake Forest.”
Ruud said the Huskers prepared for the end-around but were still surprised Wake Forest ran as much as it did.
Quarterback Brett Hodges, playing in place of injured Riley Skinner, completed 12 of 24 passes for 140 yards.
“We were expecting a lot more throwing, to tell you the truth,” Ruud said, “because they showed so much pass game.”
Wake Forest burned Nebraska deep once, on a 61-yard completion to Marion, and had Marion behind the defense on an earlier deep pass that grazed his fingertips.
But the Blackshirts also had two interceptions — one by Corey McKeon in the first quarter, the other a game-saving grab by Zackary Bowman in the end zone in the fourth quarter.
Bowman’s play came after Wake Forest had taken over at the Nebraska 10-yard line following a Sam Keller interception. It was the second time the Huskers answered with a key “sudden-change” stop — a defensive series after a turnover in Nebraska territory.
Sophomore nose tackle Ndamukong Suh came up huge in both situations. Wake Forest, after recovering a Keller fumbled snap at the Nebraska 38, drove to the 2 and had first-and-goal. But Suh wrapped up Kevin Harris for a 3-yard loss, and Wake Forest eventually settled for a field goal.
The play before Bowman’s interception, Suh tackled Micah Andrews for a 6-yard loss on second-and-goal.
Cosgrove also said he was “100 percent” in favor of head coach Bill Callahan going for it on fourth-and-2 from the Wake Forest 35 … with nearly 2 minutes remaining and Nebraska ahead by three points.
Nebraska didn’t convert, putting the Blackshirts on the field one last time. They answered, forcing four straight incompletions after Wake Forest gained one first down on a penalty.
“The time on the clock, I knew they had to throw the football,” Cosgrove said. “When we had to stop ’em, we did.”
Reach Brian Rosenthal at 473-7436 or brosenthal@journalstar.com.
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