Thursday, August 16, 2007

Return of the Pipeline?

The best news to come out of fall football camp so far is this: The offensive line physically looks the part. That wasn't the case at the end of the Solich era and the begin of Callahan's reign. There were plenty of fine young men playing up front at the time, but there's no doubt the football talent was down. I remember looking at the offensive linemen one August at the media day and thinking, "This is the pipeline?"

Now the Huskers are building up the depth on the offensive line. Freshmen are going to come in and redshirt like in the old days. The upper classmen are good enough that the freshmen don't have to play. That's a good thing. It takes time for everyone to learn Callahan's offense, but offensive line is particularly difficult.

Make no mistake about it. Those championship teams back in the '90s were built around the offensive line. There were great players in the backfield (Tommie Frazier, Lawrence Phillips, Ahman Green) and on defense (Mike Minter, Jason and Christian Peter, Jared Tomich to name a few) but the the offensive line were a bunch of big, strong, tough bruisers who made the difference in the fourth quarter of games.

Posted by Bob Hamar @ Thursday, August 16, 2007 ||


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