RENO - Chris Ault can't remember the last time he was concerned about his Nevada Wolf Pack offensive line.
"Not in a very long time," the Pack head coach said recently. "They haven't played like that in a long, long time."
It has been a while since even a hint of negativity has been associated with the Pack offensive line. This is a group, after all, that paved the way for the Pack to lead the nation in rushing a year ago. The last thing Ault and the Pack coaching staff expects to worry about is the group they call the Union.
But that's exactly what happened at halftime of the Pack's 27-21 loss at Hawaii on Oct. 16.
"We were playing badly," Wolf Pack guard Chris Barker said. "The coaches were upset. They weren't yelling but they told us, 'If you don't think we can win this game then don't come out of this locker room for the second half.'"
The Union got the message.
"But we still didn't play like we expect ourselves to play," guard John Bender said.
The Wolf Pack had a season-low 134 yards rushing against Hawaii and allowed a sack. It was the Pack's worst day running the ball in over a year, since they had just 114 yards against Maryland on Dec. 30, 2008. The 3.1 yards a carry average is also the Pack's worst since they gained 2.5 per attempt against Louisiana Tech on Nov. 29, 2008.
"I'm very disappointed in that group," Ault said.
Disappointment is not a word that has been attached to the Pack offensive line very often in recent years.
"We expect to go out and dominate every game," Bender said. "And when we don't do that, it's kind of a rough awakening for us."
Consider the Pack offensive line awakened.
"I expect them to play much better in our next game," said Ault of Saturday night's (7:30 p.m.) game against Utah State at Mackay Stadium.
Nobody in silver and blue expected what actually happened against Hawaii, especially at halftime when the Pack found itself down 17-0. Ault even went so far as to tell a television audience at halftime how poorly his offensive line was playing.
"You could tell they didn't like what we were doing," Barker said. "We didn't like it either."
The running game wasn't the only thing that suffered because of the offensive line's struggles. Quarterback Colin Kaepernick was under pressure most of the first half and completed just 3-of-11 passes.
"We never allowed our quarterback to get comfortable back there," Pack offensive line coach Cameron Norcross said.
There seemed to be total confusion and frustration on the part of the Pack offensive front.
"I think the biggest thing in that first half was that we really weren't sure what was going on," Bender said. "Every team we play tries to do something different against us and we are usually able to handle it. You know, you can never see everything a team likes to do when you study the film. So you have to be able to go out and improvise. We usually do a pretty good job of that."
Norcross, a former member of the Union himself, knows exactly what went wrong. The Pack offensive line, which usually plays like an impenetrable cement wall together as one unit, started to play like individuals in a street fight.
"It wasn't because of a lack of physicality," Norcross said. "We just got beat technically. It was just a lot of little things, things like we were attacking the inside shoulder when we should have been attacking the outside shoulder."
"It wasn't from a lack of effort," Ault said. "They just lost their focus on technique."
The more frustrated the Pack offensive line became against Hawaii, the more technique went out the window.
"We just became too anxious to go out there and hit them in the mouth," Barker said. "We just came out and tried to be too aggressive. It sounds simple to correct, but it gets frustrating. You want to just come off the ball and hurt everyone."
The Hawaii game was indeed a rude awakening for this Pack offensive front. Hawaii seemed to execute its game plan to perfection.
"The coaches told us Nevada's O-line was the weak point," Hawaii defensive tackle Vaughn Meatoga told the Honolulu Advertiser after the game. "The ends did a great job of squeezing down and that left us (the defensive tackles) one on one. All we had to do was beat our guy."
The Pack offensive line did play better in the second half. The Wolf Pack came out of its halftime locker room determined to run the ball, handing off to Vai Taua on five of the first six plays. Taua, who finished with 91 yards on 24 grueling attempts, picked up 29 yards on those five carries.
"We got them in the locker room at halftime and just settled everyone down," Norcross said. "We just said, 'Here's what we're going to do now go out and do it.'"
"We slowed ourselves down in the second half instead of rushing everything," Barker said.
Most of the improvement was in pass protection. Kaepernick was able to relax in the pocket, completing 11-of-15 passes in the second half. The running game, though, never really got going, picking up just 61 yards on 20 second-half carries.
"We were better but by no means did we correct all of it," Norcross said.
Kaepernick ran for just 30 yards.
"Hawaii did a nice job of pushing him back inside," Norcross said. "They wanted him to go inside all game and our offensive line didn't respond to that."
So there is still work to be done.
"Sometimes you have to learn a lesson but you always hate to learn them like this," said Norcross, whose unit will get starting tackle Steve Haley back this week (he missed a month with a broken arm). "And if we don't learn those lessons, we'll be destined to go down that path again."
Ault still has all the confidence in the world in his Union. One bad game isn't going to dissolve the Union, he said.
"That's our heart and soul of our offense," Ault said. "We don't play badly on the offensive front. That's just not what we do. They'll play better next time."