Advertisement
football Edit

Inside Aron Cruickshank's 89-yard touchdown return vs. Nebraska

With Nebraska's needing only 108 seconds on its second drive to score its first touchdown inside Memorial Stadium, Wisconsin faced an early 7-0 deficit with 5:27 remaining in the first quarter.

Aron Cruickshank and the kickoff return unit, however, quickly answered with a score of its own, needing just nine seconds from when the sophomore hauled in the short boot to the time he crossed the end zone.

“It’s been long overdue, I could tell you that," Cruickshank told BadgerBlitz.com on Monday. "The unit overall in general, we’ve been working hard together. They trust me and I trust them so it’s just long overdue, and we just hopefully try to get another one.”

Cruickshank fielded the Barret Pickering kickoff at the 11-yard line and proceeded up field behind redshirt freshman running back Nakia Watson, with fullback John Chenal and outside linebacker C.J. Goetz to their right.

From Cruickshank's perspective, he hoped the ball would fall faster because of the short kick and knowing that the Huskers kickoff coverage unit would close in fast. There is a hint of difficulty in fielding an attempt like this.

“It tests my patience and basically my focus, so being more locked in so I have all the pressure points," Cruickshank said. "I’m looking it in, making sure I don’t drop it. Then once I have the ball in my hands, I just try to make a play.”

On replays you can see Watson motion back quickly to Cruickshank. Essentially, the redshirt freshman acts as the key communicator, or in a direct football analogy, the quarterback of the unit. He tells the lead blockers when to take off running, giving them what he called the "Go, Go, Go!" call.

In a situation like this where the ball is kicked short, however, nothing really changes as far as his responsibility.

"I just know that I have to communicate with the rest of the unit, letting them know that it is a short kick so they can set their landmarks up further up field, so that’s the only thing that really changes with my job," Watson said on Tuesday. "I still block the most dangerous man -- we call it 'MDM' -- so nothing really changes with me.”

According to Watson, the "MDM" is the first opposing player that he sees, for instance, if anybody misses his respective block.

Both Chenal and Goetz put hats on respective Huskers, while Watson took on the apparent MDM in Nebraska redshirt freshman outside linebacker Simon Otte. Cruickshank sprinted up the field with the large hole in front of him.

“On that, we know where we want the ball to hit, so whichever man shows up first where we want the ball to hit, that’s my job to get him out of the way," Watson said.

Pickering attempts to meet him before midfield, but the latter makes it to the outside and eludes the kicker's attempt for a stop.

When taking on a kicker in the open field, Cruickshank acknowledged what the specialist could do to halt what could be a game-changing play. It is not as simple as being confident in getting past him.

“I feel like it’s more of a 'make sure you get past him' because you never know, angles are very good in this game," Cruickshank said. "He could take a good angle, he could get to you, he could catch your foot, and that could be the worst. I think it’s just like more confidence of just running past him, and then saying, ‘I got it.’”

Cruickshank's final task before finding pay-dirt lied with cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt, who came from all the way across the field to nearly meet the sophomore receiver around the Nebraska 35-yard line. Cruickshank took one step towards the inside in a hint of hesitant step, but accelerated back to the outside and used his speed on the way to the end zone.

What was the feeling for Cruickshank crossing the goal line on such a key special teams play?

“Like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders," Cruickshank said. "I’ll say that. That’s the best feeling because I’ve been waiting all year to just get in there. It’s been a year since I’ve been in there so it’s just a great feeling.”

This key special teams unit has appeared to improve over the course of the season. Heading into this week, Cruickshank now ranks 10th in the nation in kickoff return average at 28.4 yards per attempt, and the touchdown was the first from a UW unit since Natrell Jamerson's score against Maryland in 2015.

“At the beginning of the season, we always used to talk about how we wanted to return one," Watson said. "Towards the middle of the season, we would see little glimpses of them almost being returned. Here we would get out to the 35[-yard line], dang near the 50, so we were like, 'Alright, bro, like this time we got to actually do it,' and we needed it. It was at a clutch moment, too.

"We just all told each other, Aron always tells us you got to take a deep breath, and we just going to play, so that’s what we do. Went out there, everything got set up right. They kicked the short kick, and we returned it.”

Advertisement