Bulls Offense Bottled up by Nebraska in 28-3 rout

After week one there didn’t seem to be a whole lot for the Bulls to work on, but after going into Lincoln and getting handily beat by Nebraska that won’t be a problem.

Buffalo was beaten by big plays and defense and an inability to string together drives on offense by a Nebraska team that took advantage of every UB mistakes.

On the defense the Bulls were unable to contain Adrian Martinez. Martinez passed for 296 yards and a pair of 68-yard touchdowns to Samori Toure, and he also ran for 112 yards. The big run of the day, a 71 set up Nebraska at the UB 2 yardline and broke a scoreless tie.

For most of the first half UB’s defense managed to keep the Bulls in the game. The long Martinez run and a bomb right at the end of the first being the two big plays they let by.

But given what Nebraska did to the Buffalo defense that would have been enough, even without adding two more scores in the fourth quarter.

In the first half Buffalo’s drive lengths were 33, 3, 26, 19, 5, and 41 yards. The 41 yard drive at the end of the half was capped by a missed 52 yard field goal.

There were signs of life in the third quarter when UB went 49 yards and scored a field goal on their first possession of the second half, cutting the Nebraska lead to 14-3 but the offense was unable to build off of that.

Kyle Vantrease was picked off deep in the Buffalo end a little bit later and Nebraska punched it in to make the score 21-3.

And that was the story of the day. Buffalo made mistakes, gave up huge plays, and Nebraska took advantage of it. This was certainly a growing pains game for Buffalo, a team not used to being so ineffective on offense, even in a loss.

And it doesn’t get any easier for Buffalo with Coastal Carolina coming to town, fresh off drubbing Lance Leipold and Kansas.