Under new coach Pelini, Nebraska gets back to basics

By Steve Wieberg, USA TODAY
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nobody here is asking: Will he?

Locals have embraced Bo Pelini, and believed in him, from the day in December that Nebraska's 40-year-old football coach was introduced. He's hard-working and straight-shooting, a fine choice to represent a sleeves-rolled, cut-the-bull state. He understands what once made the Cornhuskers great — smash-mouth sensibilities and homegrown talent — and expectations are that he will make them great again.

The only detectable question being: How soon?

Pelini smiles. Fall camp opens Monday, when Nebraska's opener against Western Michigan will be 26 days away. "These days, they're never going to be patient," he says. "I think there's some sense of realism, but I don't know.

"I know where we are. I know where we want to get to, and I think I know how to get there. It's going to take some time. There's a lot that needed to be done, and it's not as much X- and O-wise. … It just takes time to heal so many wounds."
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On defense, alone.

There was a time when the Blackshirts, as Nebraska's starting defensive unit is nicknamed, featured names such as Glover, Alberts and Wistrom. They collected All-America plaques and their teams piled up conference and national championships. But they were a tattered and beaten bunch a year ago, surrendering more yards, touchdowns and points — with fewer sacks and forced turnovers — than any other defense had in Nebraska's 117-year football-playing history.

They allowed Ball State 610 yards. Missouri 606. Kansas gained 572 and scored an unfathomable 76 points.

"The low point?" linebacker Barry Turner says. "After every game. … It gives you a sick feeling."

It's no coincidence that, among other qualities that made him attractive to Nebraska, Pelini is a defensive deity. He oversaw the LSU unit that forced three turnovers and collected five sacks in a rout of Ohio State in the Bowl Championship Series title game and ranked as the nation's third-best defense overall last season. Pelini was the Tigers defensive coordinator for three years.

Nebraskans, including coaching icon-turned-athletics director Tom Osborne, recalled one earlier season Pelini spent with the Huskers. It was in 2003, when he signed on as defensive coordinator under the destined-to-be-fired Frank Solich.

Pelini's defense gave up almost 65 fewer yards and 9½ fewer points a game than Nebraska did the previous year and more than doubled the number of turnovers it forced, from 21 to a school-record-tying 47. When Solich was let go after the regular season, Pelini stepped in as interim coach and oversaw a grinding, 17-3 win against Michigan State in the Alamo Bowl.

He was a candidate for the head coaching job the school eventually handed to former Oakland Raiders coach Bill Callahan, who lasted four middling to miserable years before he was ousted last November after the Huskers finished 5-7.

"Was I prepared then? I don't know; I was a head coach for a month. I thought I was," says Pelini, who signed a five-year contract paying $1.1 million annually. "I'm a lot more prepared now."

Trying to dig out

Nebraska's hole is deeper now.

College football's fourth-winningest program captured three national championships in four years in the mid-1990s and owns five titles overall. But the Huskers have gone eight years without so much as a conference crown, and last season was particularly ugly. They gave up an average of 37.9 points and lost six of their final seven games.

The team lost confidence. By the end, it seemed to have little fight.

"People just lost their composure," senior linebacker Phillip Dillard says. "It's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen.

"This staff won't allow it. There's not even a question."

Pelini is reluctant to share his diagnosis of the collapse.

"A lot of things were just completely on the other side of the fence from where I am in all my beliefs," he finally says. "I do know this: They're good kids. They want to be coached.

"The stuff on the football field will take care of itself. It's everything else that leads up to that. Accountability. Discipline. Unselfish attitude, guys looking out for each other, the team first. That wasn't here."

He made it clear to his team from the start: This is how you'll play, fast and fevered and nonstop — the way you saw LSU play on television in January. Close to a couple dozen of you will have to get leaner. Everybody will have to get smarter. Buy in or here's the door out.

Nobody took it.

"Having a coach who's won a national championship," says Turner, who took off 10 or so of his 265 pounds, "I figure this is the right way to go."

The Huskers return six defensive starters, including Turner and the rest of the four-man line but no linebackers. With the physical and philosophical changes — blitzing from every angle and relentless aggression as opposed to a more reactive approach during the Callahan regime — recasting may mean little.

Average weight on the line is down almost 30 pounds, to 280. Dillard, who started two games at linebacker as a sophomore last season, dropped more than 30 pounds to get to 238.

"You think you can play at a certain weight," Dillard says. "I feel much better after practice. I'm a lot faster, quicker, more explosive."

Help at linebacker is expected from converted running back Cody Glenn. Cornerback Armando Murillo and safety Larry Asante are potential playmakers in the secondary after starting a year ago straight out of junior college.

The Huskers offense is of less concern, returning quarterback Joe Ganz, 1,000-yard rusher Marlon Lucky and experience on a line that averages 310 pounds.

Confidence grows

In drills and scrimmages the next 3½ weeks, the offensive unit will take daily measure of the retooled defense.

"We've got a great O-line, a good quarterback, a lot of good skill guys. And when spring started, they were moving the ball on us," says Carl Pelini, Bo's older brother and Nebraska's defensive coordinator. "There was a time those first five or six practices when they weren't sure how it was going to go.

"But then, it changed. Our guys started playing with the techniques we wanted them to play with. Those practices were physical, and they were hard-fought. The confidence started to come."

Of course, defending against the Big 12 will be another matter.

The younger Pelini is hardly cowed.

"I haven't been in this conference in awhile, but I know what it takes to play good defense," Bo says. "My track record speaks for itself on that side of the ball."

It certainly spoke to the man who hired him.

Osborne, 71, who retired from coaching after winning the last of three national titles in four years in 1997, took over as AD as the football season was unraveling and fractiousness in the state was growing last October. He replaced Steve Pedersen, who'd hired Callahan and handed him a new contract last September.

"Bo," Osborne says, "comes across as a guy who doesn't engage in a lot of double-talk and has a good work ethic. There's a feeling he's going to get the team to play hard, that there'll be a lot of passion."

To that, Osborne adds a note of caution: "There's somewhat of a renewed sense of optimism and hope. But they got beat down enough that they're going to need some success on the field to really get back. We'll just see how it plays out. … We'll know more before too long."