Courtney Baumann
With only three more days until college football figuratively — and literally — kicks off, the 14 Big Ten head coaches joined for the first teleconference of the season.
A few highlights from the nearly hour-and-a-half-long teleconference include Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh’s true freshmen, Nebraska head coach Mike Riley’s offensive attack, and Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer’s plan for his young team heading into the first game of the season.
Michigan
At first, Harbaugh said the number of true freshmen getting playing time would be small. Five, eight, maybe. Now, that number has doubled and then some.
“If we’re predicting how many we’re going to play this season, I think the number is growing,” Harbaugh said. “I think as I relooked at it yesterday; it could be as high as 15 or more.”
Harbaugh credits it to the freshmen picking up on the playbook quickly and doing the work to get playing time.
“The true freshmen are really getting caught up on the playbook, and the scheme, and their assignments,” Harbaugh said. “They’re really asserting themselves more and their confidence has grown. It’s all been through preparation and on the field work.”
Nebraska
The Cornhuskers head into the 2016 season coming off of a 5,810-yard 2015 season, which ranked second in the Big Ten. Senior quarterback Tommy Armstrong, Jr. passed for 3,030 yards and rushed for 400 more.
Nebraska ended last season on a high note, defeating UCLA, 37-29, in the Foster Farms Bowl. Armstrong was named the Offensive MVP of the game.
While his passing average per game ranked No. 2 in the Big Ten, his pass efficiency was near the bottom. Armstrong threw 22 touchdowns, but he also threw 16 interceptions.
“We explored some stuff, tweaked some stuff, isolated some things,” Riley said. “There were some things that we wanted to do and needed to basically improve on or find a way to be more consistently successful.”
As for the running game, he hopes to steadily improve to get to where he wants the team to be.
“We certainly found a good identity [in the bowl game],” Riley said. “We would like to be consistent rushing the football. All our teams in the past have been at their best when they’re running the ball well.”
Ohio State
After losing 12 players to the NFL Draft earlier this year and a boatload of other seniors, Meyer has a young team. In fact, he only has six scholarship seniors on the roster.
The Buckeyes will face Bowling Green in the first game of the season, and Meyer wants to see how his young — and very inexperienced — team will react to the game-day pressure.
“My No. 1 concern going into this is the quick screens and how our secondary and linebackers how they’re going to react to just getting those guys on the ground,” Meyer said. “It will be a real quick, fast game, and our job is to win that first game.
“That’s just kind of our focus this week. We want to identify this game and where we’re at.”
