Third-and-5, Taylor Martinez in shotgun.

Third quarter at the Holiday Bowl, Nebraska trailing 17-7.

A bad night is getting worse by the minute. Prepare for the worst play of all.

Martinez takes the snap, drops to pass and sees eight Washington Huskies in coverage. The Huskers have six blockers (five linemen and a running back) to handle three pass rushers.

Piece of cake, right?

Defensive tackle Alameda Ta’amu, who hasn’t had one sack all year, engages center Mike Caputo and quickly tosses him aside. Guards Ricky Henry and Keith Williams sense trouble and converge on Ta’amu, who knifes between them. Then running back Roy Helu whiffs.

All four Huskers — three of whom are playing their last college game — end up on the ground, looking back as Ta’amu slams Martinez to the turf.

It’s one of five Washington sacks on the night, one of 11 Washington tackles for loss.

“We were lousy up front,” said Bo Pelini after the game.

A month later, the shock has worn off, but concerns are still fresh. The Huskers are joining the Big Ten Conference, a league known for its burly blockers. The Huskers are trying to rebuild a stagnant offense. The pressure is on.

The silver bullet could be speedy receivers or shifty runners or a star quarterback. But the surest solution is to start pushing the pile again.

Which is why the most important pieces of the 2011 recruiting class introduced Wednesday may be five highly ranked offensive linemen. Perhaps no school in the country harvested a finer crop.

There’s Ryne Reeves from Crete. And Zach Sterup from Hastings.

There’s Tyler Moore from Clearwater, Fla. There’s Givens Price from Houston. There’s Ryan Klachko from Springfield, Ill.

“We all picked (NU) for our own reasons,” Klachko said. “But truthfully I saw it as an offensive line school. That’s what Nebraska is known for.”

Different schemes

Zach Sterup is a big kid from a small school.

He made a reputation leveling kids on cold Friday nights. He got a call from the home-state Huskers. They needed someone to do their dirty work.

Sterup said yes.

The story is familiar. Guys like Dean Steinkuhler and Zach Wiegert did the same thing a generation ago, paving the way for championship teams.

But the story has changed.

Nebraska hasn’t won a conference title since 1999. From 1978 to 2001, the Huskers ranked in the top 12 nationally in scoring every year. All 24 seasons.

In the nine years since, they haven’t once cracked the top 12.

Those nine years, here’s where Nebraska has finished in conference scoring: 10th, 10th, seventh, eighth, fourth, eighth, sixth, eighth and seventh.

That’s only twice NU finished in the Big 12’s top half. Never in the top three.

During that span, four coordinators have called plays (Solich, Cotton, Callahan, Watson). At least three schemes have been implemented (power option, West Coast offense, spread option).

Nobody has shined consistently. Nothing has flourished.

Most glaring is the breach of tradition on the offensive line.

From 1962 to 2001, 29 Husker offensive linemen earned All-America status. The dry spell has reached nine years, long enough that Sterup doesn’t recognize the name of the last All-American: Toniu Fonoti.

“We’ve had good O-lines,” Sterup said, “but I don’t know if we’ve had a great line since I’ve been watching.”

Why not? Theories abound.

Start with recruiting. Too many classes during the past 15 years produced little or no line help.

Look at 1998: Only Wes Cody from that class started a game. Or 2002, when only one of four recruits — Kurt Mann — earned a single letter. Or 2007, when Bill Callahan signed only three offensive linemen in a class of 28 recruits; only Marcel Jones contributed.

According to former offensive line coach Milt Tenopir, a period of bad recruiting diminished depth and precipitated the program’s lean years.

“If you don’t have kids up front, you’re not going to be able to manhandle people,” Tenopir said. “I’m not being negative at all toward the kids who went through that era, but we just lacked numbers for a while.”

Tom Osborne could always lure a few walk-ons to increase depth. Almost every year, at least one starter had come to Lincoln as a walk-on.

But kids changed. Persuading them to give up scholarships to smaller schools became harder. It didn’t help when Callahan downsized the walk-on program.

A cardinal rule of football, Tenopir said, is don’t run out of linemen.

“If you run out of linemen, you run out of a football team,” Tenopir said. “I think Nebraska experienced that.”

Didn’t help that some impressive local talent got away.

Players like Tony Wragge, Seth Olsen, Kyle Dooley, Dan Hoch, Trevor Robinson and Harland Gunn grew up within two hours of Lincoln. They went elsewhere and had productive careers.

Didn’t help that Nebraska struggled to utilize the talent it did have.

Carl Nicks and Matt Slauson are two of the best young guards in the NFL. Lydon Murtha started four games for the Miami Dolphins this year. All three started on the Huskers’ 2007 offensive line. That team went 5-7.

But one factor above all has affected the offensive line: changes to the coaching staff and scheme.

During Nebraska’s glory years, Tenopir’s offensive linemen knew exactly what skills to master, said Rob Zatechka, a starter on the 1994 national championship team. They practiced the same techniques over and over and over.

Now the offensive emphasis appears to change almost weekly.

“I think it’s really tough as an offensive lineman to have a complete mixed bag of skills you’re trying to put out on the field,” Zatechka said.

Balance and diversity are good. It’s wise to hit the defense where it’s weak. But more traditional offensive coordinators, like Osborne, believed that an offense should impose its will, Zatechka said.

“Right now, I think there’s some pretty decent O-line talent down in Lincoln. I don’t think they’re getting into a rhythm. I don’t think they’re getting repetitions in practice, all of which they need toward building an identity.

“They just don’t have an identity.”

More consistency

So how do we know when the Huskers are back to their old selves in the trenches?

Consistent production, Zatechka said. Not just four games or six or eight. Show up almost every Saturday.

“You don’t take what the other team gives you. You dictate offensively what’s going to happen. If they can do that not all the time, but the majority of the time, that’s when you say the offensive line is back.”

Come September, Nebraska starts battling Ohio State and Wisconsin instead of Texas and Oklahoma. That means a slight change in style.

Of the past six offensive linemen to win the Outland trophy, four played in the Big Ten. Of the five offensive linemen on the NFL all-pro team, three came from the Big Ten.

Is there a Joe Thomas or a Nick Mangold in Nebraska’s 2011 recruiting class? Doesn’t have to be. There only needs to be players worthy of the NU tradition.

Sterup doesn’t know all the history. He probably couldn’t pick Dave Rimington or Aaron Taylor out of a lineup.

But he looks at his four peers — Reeves, Klachko, Price and Moore. He senses the opportunity.

“I think we’ve got a chance to make something special happen,” Sterup said.

Contact the writer:

402-649-1461, dirk.chatelain@owh.com

twitter.com/dirkchatelain

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