A Failure To Communicate
After Ganz's big day, Callahan chooses to sell his offensive system
by Samuel McKewon
November 12, 2007
It was fourth and goal, and Bill Callahan stood very still, except for his right pointer finger, which was motioning for his quarterback, Beau Davis.
Nebraska led 66-24 over Kansas State, and its coach was in the midst of giving Davis the call, a stretch play to the left that required the Cornhuskers to reinsert their starting running back, Marlon Lucky.
Lucky found a hole in KSU's whipped defensive front, ran through an arm tackle, and scored. Callahan watched No. 5 breach the goal line, looked down, then walked away. A few minutes later, he quickly shook the giant hand of Wildcats coach Ron Prince, and hustled off the field. Alone. There was no joy in Billville.
In this case, the Klingons got it right: Revenge is a dish best served cold.
"I thought about a lot of things," he said of that lonely postgame march. "I'll keep that private."
Here's what I thought about: Maximus, in "Gladiator," shouting to that appalled, bloodthirsty crowd after he'd just decapitated a couple slaves, "Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained?"
Well, were you? Did that bit of mercenary justice satisfy your fix?
Some called it Callahan's audition for other coaching jobs. Others said was payback for Prince wooing Josh Freeman away from Nebraska. Maybe. What it really looked like was 73 points tacked to the door of the coach's critics. The Wildcats just happened to be the poor souls suffering the indulgence.
"Everybody's very critical of myself about how our offense is too complicated and it's too pro-like and it's this and it's that," Callahan said during Monday's Big 12 Teleconference, "but the fact remains that the numbers don't lie. The production of the players don't lie. It's there. It's all there...there's coaching, there's development, there's system, there's some real positive things that I think aren't being brought out."
The man on his way out of the arena wants you to know: It's the system.
Take Joe Ganz, for example.
Prince called Ganz's record-breaking performance the best college quarterbacking he's witnessed since Philip Rivers. Offensive Coordinator Shawn Watson said it was the best he'd ever seen, period. Watson meant it, too - he looked at the stat sheet that had been handed to him in disbelief.
"Wow," he said to 510 yards. "Double wow," to seven touchdowns.
Callahan's take?
"(Joe's) a product of the system," he said. "You could see his development just ooze all over the field on Saturday."
So what color is "development" sweat? How fast and hard does a "developed" heart beat?
Because what I saw was oozing was fire and athleticism. That's the critic in me, though. Maybe I should have been marveling at Ganz's footwork and release. All that coaching that's too technical for me anyhow.
What I saw was Ganz throwing two touchdowns on the run. I saw Ganz scrambling for 23 yards on a fourth-and-20 in which he very well could have been clocked by some ticked off K-State defender. I saw a survivor. A guy who - unlike all those other developmental successes, like Harrison Beck and Joe Dailey - fought for this moment, is loved by his teammates and, most crucially, trusts his receivers, who trust him right back.
If this season is one big, ominous shelf cloud, Ganz is one of the silver linings. A true feel-good story. For any coach, this is a softball. You run with it and get behind the kid; heck, you even make a joke about a late Heisman campaign. A little levity. Like Tom Osborne's "nice catch, Matt."
So what does Callahan do? On Monday, he turned a question about Ganz into a defense of why Sam Keller was better.
"There's no way to say with any certainty that Joe would have had the same success earlier in the year," he said. "Because Sam had some dropped balls and inexact protection at times. Those are tough things."
That's a lesson in how to take a silver lining and call it gray.
Right after that, he compared his offense to that of Mike Leach at Texas Tech. Just what you wanted to hear, right? Especially considering that the self-deprecating Leach never refers to his own quarterbacks as products of his system.
This is one of key failures of Callahan's tenure: He can talk, but he fails to communicate. It's only half his fault; sometimes Nebraskans read so far into the guy, they suffer analysis paralysis.
But Callahan, at least as it relates to this job, fails to grasp the moment.
After Steve Pederson was fired, fans and media looked for any signs of change in Callahan, and they latched on to a stupid one: The color of his shirt. He abruptly stopped wearing red. Was it dumb to fixate on it? Of course. Frank Solich often sported a "dapper" look for press conferences. Then again, the timing looked blatant.
Should Nebraska fans get a life, as Callahan's agent suggests? Sure. But a lot of them won't.
That's the smallest example, anyway. It's happened again and again.
Pretending the USC game was just another Saturday when, clearly, that loss devastated the team. Reciting seemingly prepared statements while athletic department personnel sat in the front row. Evasively answering certain questions because the answers would be "too technical." Not disclosing Sam Keller had a broken collarbone, because he didn't want to misrepresent the quarterback, which just led to reporters calling Keller's dad to confirm it. Referring to Osborne as "the higher ups" in recent weeks. Refusing to explain why captain Zack Bowman hardly played on Senior Day so true freshman Anthony Blue could start.
"I only talk about the starters and the players who did well," Callahan said.
Huh?
Then there's Callahan's agent, Gary O'Hagan. Why is a smart, accomplished man - who has the eminent John Wooden as a client - comparing Nebraska's football program to a flesh-eating bacteria? Why wouldn't Callahan take the time to address those ludicrous comments?
Now that Callahan's has imposed a media blackout for himself, his coaches, and his players during this bye week, don't expect any answers. Truth be told, a "no comment" from the Huskers is certainly the best thing for them, and just as well for fans.
This whole state needs a breather.
Email Samuel McKewon at sam@ne.statepaper.com
A Failure To Communicate
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