One of the long-held maxims of championship football has been run the ball and stop the run.
Right now, Nebraska is light years away from championship football when it comes to having any sort of running game.
The final stat sheet Saturday night showed 79 net yards on 35 attempts, but that doesn't begin to tell the story of Missouri's 52-17 victory that let out 30 years of Memorial Stadium misery for the Tigers.
In the first half, Nebraska rushed for 7 yards on 13 attempts. That's ugly math, indeed.
Nebraska offensive coordinator Shawn Watson, the architect of Colorado's dominating 62-36 running game avalanche of the Huskers in 2001, said he knows that the Huskers have to get better.
"We wanted to come out and run the ball and control the clock," Watson said. "We've got to get better at running the ball, period. We've just got to keep grinding and keep working."
It's fair to say that Nebraska was correct in abandoning the running game against Missouri's offensive onslaught. But when the game was still in doubt in the first half, NU had no answers.
Consider the following:
n Trailing 14-7, Nebraska was in field goal range before a 2-yard loss by Marlon Lucky and consecutive sacks of quarterback Joe Ganz.
n Trailing 17-7, a six-play drive that ended in a punt included one rush for no gain.
n Finally, down 24-7, two runs netted 1 yard before Ganz threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown and seemingly ended the football game.
"Anytime you have minus plays they hurt you," Watson said. "We can't give up those sacks. Again, we hurt ourselves and you can't do that against a good opponent. But, that's the bottom line.
"Missouri is a good football team, they had a nice plan and they executed on both sides of the ball."
Down 31-10 at the half, Nebraska still seemed committed to running the football. The Huskers ran on five of the first six plays on their opening possession after halftime, getting a first down from Quentin Castille before a shanked punt gave Missouri another short-field score.
In the second half, the Huskers ran 22 times for 72 yards, but most of those yards meant little as Nebraska never got untracked.
"We missed some opportunities -- we left 14 points on the field in the first half," Watson said. "We hurt ourselves at times. We had some rhythm and then we'd hurt ourselves and you'd see mistakes.
"It goes back to coaching -- we've got to get them better. We're not going to leave their side."
While Watson put no blame on his players, a solemn Joe Ganz stood before the media and said his team needed to execute when the Huskers are running or not.
"I don't think it should matter (if we are struggling in the running game)," Ganz said. "If we can't run it, we should be able to throw it. We just didn't have enough today, we just didn't do enough offensivlely."
Regardless, the Huskers' running problems didn't start on Saturday -- they have roots back to the 2004 season. Since the beginning of that campaign, the Huskers have totaled 11 200-yard rushing games.
For comparison, in the 1994 national championship season, the Huskers had 10 such games and in the national title game against Miami (Fla.) they ran for 199 yards.
While the game has changed in the past 15 years, even Missouri's so-called "video-game offense" ran for 201 yards on 34 attempts against the Nebraska defense on Saturday night. Running back Derrick Washington scored twice and averaged 10 yards per attempt.
Those rushing figures are numbers that add up to championship football for the fourth-ranked Tigers and the middle of a rebuilding project in Lincoln.
