Stick or Quit: Husker Fans Need to Face Facts About Blackshirts
Only so much Cosgrove can do to rescue a unit deprived of spirit, health
by Samuel McKewon
September 23, 2007
Courtesy of Huskers.com
A rare sight: A turnover for the Blackshirts.
While Nebraska's football team begins its weekly soul search, let's pause for the reality check.
These are your 2007 Blackshirts. Deal with it.
Cheer them, boo them, bless them, curse them. Mix a cocktail. Take a bath. Eat a steak. Start a weekly "predict the yardage" contest at work.
These are your Blackshirts, deprived of health, aggression, speed, talent and spirit. They're bad. They may not get much better. Good offenses have and should continue to do as they please. Run it. Throw it. Catch their own passes. This is a fact. Like shrimp contains iodine, and drinking mercury will kill you.
Defensive Coordinator Kevin Cosgrove is going nowhere. At least not during the season. He and Head Coach Bill Callahan will continue to sound as if they've just completed a brisk jog around Memorial Stadium instead of a 600-yard fleecing. This week, it should get real interesting with a media pool that's ready to call them on the carpet, but I don't expect them to budge one inch from the message, or the tone.
Call them calm. Call them clueless. Call them, as NU quarterback Sam Keller does, "nails." Call them full of your preferred expletive.
Those are your coaches. And these are your Blackshirts.
Like Nebraska linebacker Steve Octavien said: If you don't like it, don't watch it.
And you thought your boos on Saturday earned you an apology.
Wake up, Husker fans. You're paying $50 a game now, so you'd better pay attention. New rules. Where have you been? Didn't you know the Eloi upset the Morlocks all the time these days? Yeah - they work alternate shifts in the mines now.
Parity, baby. It's a...well, you know. Kind of like perspective.
If you can't take it, hand over your Iowa State tickets to poor kids and go watch the Nebraska volleyball team. The best team, the best coach and the best athletes on campus all reside a comfortable 200 yards away from Memorial Stadium in the NU Coliseum. Get ready for basketball season - you know Doc Sadler wouldn't whisper sweet hosannas after a game like this. Schedule some goose-hunting trips you don't normally take. Attend your cousin's wedding. Visit the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Whatever.
But if you're staying on this ride - and trust me, it'll be a wild one - just open your eyes, scream and live with the open, gaping wounds of this defense. You can do it. Trust me - I'm a Chicago Bears fan. I root for Rex Grossman.
Deal with it. And start realizing there is only so much that Cosgrove can do about it right now.
And no, this isn't some "Coz is a good man" tripe. This is, simply, the truth.
What's he supposed to do? Teach the Blackshirts to wax the car and paint the fence? Clone Octavien? Cook up some ancient herbal remedy for all of his injured players? Give them the Any Given Sunday speech?
If NU's defensive line can't break glass on a pass rush, it can't break glass. If the blitzes don't much work either, they don't much work either.
Coordination. What a word for the chaos of defense. Defense just happens, folks. Somebody gets hit, and occasionally somebody gets hurt. You get after it, or you don't. You react in time, or you don't.
You've seen the Blackshirts this year, right?
Nebraska's front seven is officially making an art out of getting pinned, stymied, stood up, blown up, negated, bamboozled, led astray by a crafty man in motion and juked out of its collective white tights.
Meanwhile, the defensive backs watch receivers flash in front of and by them like a bus on the street that they suddenly decide they must catch.
You don't think Cosgrove knows? He knows. You don't think he's desperate? He is.
He burned true freshman cornerback Prince Amukamara's redshirt on special teams Saturday, didn't he? He inserted true freshman cornerback Anthony Blue for the sole purpose of blitzing Ball State quarterback Nate Davis, right?
This is where Nebraska is at:
Rushing 18-year-olds into action so that they might overtake certain upperclassmen by the end of the year.
Cornerback and captain Zack Bowman taking off his Blackshirt in practice, while Cosgrove and the rest of the team act like they didn't know.
Linebacker Corey McKeon, a smart, fun-loving guy, being quiet for two weeks.
Cornerback Andre Jones, trailing two steps behind his receivers.
Nose tackle Nda Suh, getting blasted by double teams while no one else picks up the slack.
Defensive end Barry Turner, getting swallowed by offensive tackles.
Safety Tierre Green, struggling.
Octavien, forced to do everything.
All this while cornerback Cortney Grixby, last year's scapegoat, is playing the best football of his career.
Does this thing sound stable to you?
Didn't think so. Cosgrove has opened himself up for so much scrutiny that he almost negates it. In an effort to figure out where to start rebuilding the confidence and competence of this group, the man earns some small ounce of sympathy. The Blackshirts are a joke; and Cosgrove has to feel like he's been kicked in the belly.
So deal with it.
Or express your displeasure in the American way.
Not by the lust of your boos.By the silence of your wallet.
