LINCOLN — The daily assessment of the Huskers' practice performances has been rather cyclical lately, a trend of inconsistency that the players are starting to despise just as much as their meticulous coach.

Actually, two-thirds of the way through preseason camp, it seemed as if they were finally on board with coach Bo Pelini's philosophy on practice — that on-the-field drills and simulations aren't adequate unless each individual conveys a relentless pursuit of perfection.

But then a practice like Wednesday's occurred.

The players, fresh off a compliment-filled day from their head coach, went through the motions during Wednesday's session, making the kind of careless errors that haunted them last year and have since been mostly corrected. Pelini yelled. They heard his message and promptly responded with two decent days of workouts.

It is commendable that the Huskers were able to avoid two straight days of mediocrity, senior wide receiver Chris Brooks said. But he and his teammates don't want to be forced to regularly bounce back from poor practices.

Championship-caliber teams practice at a high level every day, Brooks said. That's the kind of team they want to become.

“We don't want to be a 9-4 team,” he said. “Sometimes we practice like that, but we try to come back the next day and practice like a 12-0 team. We just want to continue to stay focused and continue with the process and get better every day.”

If anything, though, it's evident that players have upped their standards. Most say that preseason camp has included too many of those “9-4” type of practices.

But last year, they didn't reach that level until the season was nearly over. They first had to figure out how to meet Pelini's expectations of acceptable effort and work ethic. Then, they had to follow the foreign, game-specific instructions of a brand new coaching staff.

It led to the players making too many repeat errors back then, Pelini said.

“They didn't really, I don't think, truly understand a lot of the times what was being asked of them, on both sides of the football,” Pelini said. “I think this year, we're a lot further along in that regard, even though we may be younger. So hopefully, we're going to be more accountable as a football team.”

It sounds like that's the case.

Brooks admitted that the camp was productive, but said he and the NU players were too inconsistent at times. Senior Matt O'Hanlon said the first three weeks have featured “up and down” practices.

“We've had really good days and really poor days,” O'Hanlon said. “There are days where we as a team just feel like we didn't perform up to our best. And we'll get together as a team and we'll straighten it out.”

But they still have those days like last Wednesday. That's the difference between the team that Pelini's working with now and the one he'd like to see take the field next week.

Effort and talent aren't big issues. Pelini needs to see all of the players adopt a daily desire to improve every single aspect of their game, from the noticeably glaring to the particularly minute. They have to flip a mental switch before they practice.

Last year, that didn't happen enough, according to Pelini. He hopes that it'll be a regular occurrence this fall.

“We didn't always come out here with the right attitude, the right framework, the right focus — and it showed at times (last season),” Pelini said. “Hopefully, this year we're a little bit more mature and we have a better understanding of what it takes to have success at this level of college football.”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9585, jon.nyatawa@owh.com

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