A deep-dive look at the Huskers’ QB reliance in the run game and what a rebalancing might look like | Football

NU had that in 2018 but has struggled to identify one since then.

The Husker running backs over the past three years have averaged 5.22 yards per carry, which is a productive number. However, after Devine Ozigbo (6.98) and Maurice Washington (5.91) combined to power a 6.36 yards per carry mark for the backs in 2018, NU’s running back corps has finished at 4.63 and 4.49, respectively, in the two years since. Part of the 2020 number is undoubtedly because Nebraska faced only conference competition.

There’s also the matter of self-inflicted problems like turnovers and drive-killing penalties.

“We did a lot of statistical analysis in the offseason and we were second in the league in rushing, second in the league in efficiency per play and near the bottom of the league in points per drive,” Frost said last week. “Some of that is that the defenses we played were really good and I give them a ton of credit. This is a good league with a lot of good coaches. But I think that discrepancy largely is just mistakes we made ourselves. Negative plays, turnovers, bad snaps, penalties.”

Meanwhile, with two dynamic playmakers at quarterback, Frost and company leaned hard on them. Martinez and McCaffrey accounted for 55% of the Huskers’ rushing yards and 46.7% of the team’s carries.

They also combined for half of NU’s 22 fumbles and seven of nine lost fumbles, which is part of the reason leaning heavily on quarterbacks in the run game has been a fine line for Nebraska. The other, of course, is injuries. At one point late in a win against Northwestern in 2019, Nebraska was trying to figure out who was “less hurt” between Noah Vedral and McCaffrey because Martinez was already out of commission. Nebraska has used at least two starters under center in each of Frost’s three seasons, though last year was performance-related rather than injury-driven.