Under-pressured: One big step for Blackshirts in 2021? Making opposing QBs lives more difficult | Football

Nebraska showed some signs in 2020, but opposing quarterbacks too often had too much time to throw and felt too comfortable against the Huskers.

NU averaged 1.63 sacks per game, which tied for 10th in the Big Ten. Sack rate, of course, is not the lone measure for quarterback pressure, but over a long period of time, if you’re pressuring the quarterback consistently, you’re probably accumulating sacks, too.

The Huskers have not finished higher than seventh in sack rate for conference games since 2013. The median number in the league tends to be about two per league game — seven finished with 2.25 per game or more in 2020, seven were at 2.22 or more in 2019, five with two or more in 2018 — but Nebraska hasn’t hit that mark since 2016 (2.22, tied for seventh) and has done it only three times since joining the Big Ten in 2011.

Not coincidentally, two of those years came back-to-back in 2013 and 2014 when Randy Gregory had eight and five Big Ten sacks, respectively, finishing atop the league in 2013 and tied for sixth the next year.

One dominant rusher makes life a lot easier for everybody else, but Khalil Davis (seven in 2019) is the only Husker to have more than 3.5 sacks in Big Ten play since Gregory.

Can Payne — or junior Caleb Tannor or a defensive lineman such as Ben Stille (Nebraska’s active sack leader with 13) or Ty Robinson — break through and become a force that has to be accounted for on every play? Or will NU again have to rely on the by-committee approach to rattling quarterbacks?