Alonzo Whaley didn’t know what to think during the drive home.
In the car was Will Compton, his friend and roommate, but also his competition at linebacker. It was after practice Thursday, and Compton had just broken his foot, an injury that Whaley knew would likely vault him into the starting lineup.
“I don’t even know how to feel right now,” Whaley said.
Compton turned to him and said, “Honestly, you don’t have time to have feelings or emotions right now. We need you to step up and be somebody you haven’t been the last couple of years.”
After redshirting in 2008 and watching most of 2009 from the sidelines, Whaley and junior-college transfer Lavonte David were thrust into the starting lineup for Saturday’s 49-10 win over Western Kentucky. David finished with 13 total tackles, while Whaley added five.
The defense gave up 299 yards to a team that has now lost 21 games in a row, and coach Bo Pelini expressed his disappointment after the game.
While David acknowledged a lot of the blame fell on his and Whaley’s shoulders, his counterpart said it’s on them to realize how important their roles are.
“If anything breaks down, it’s on us with communications,” Whaley said. “It goes from the checks to the silent calls to communicating with the (defensive backs) and what coverage we’re running, so pretty much all the communications go through us.”
David added that at times, the duo forgot some of their new responsibilities.
“Sometimes we’d just get stuck, like tunnel vision, just focusing on what our assignment was instead of just making the calls,” he said.
As the two came off the field Saturday, Whaley said they laughed about their first experience, but both know their mistakes won’t be forgivable against more stout competition.
“(The mistakes are) fixable, but it’s something you really have to work on and really have to pay attention to details,” Whaley said. “The defense is still expected to be one of the best defenses in the country, but we’ve got a lot of things to fix.
“I definitely feel a lot better about it going into this week. I have a whole week to prepare. I approach practice a little bit different, focus a lot better.”
Whaley and David know they can always find support from the two players they replaced, Compton and Sean Fisher, who broke his leg during fall camp. Both spent Saturday critiquing their teammates, and Whaley said Compton didn’t pull any punches when the two spoke following the game.
“He came down on his little cart after the game,” Whaley said. “He was saying, ‘You made a lot of mistakes. You gotta get those taken care of. You gotta fix them.’”
Even after it earned him his first career start, Whaley still doesn’t like to think of Compton’s injury. He said he couldn’t even be around his roommate when he was in the training room Thursday because he is “like a brother.”
On Tuesday, Pelini said Compton would probably be out four or five weeks, but said he wasn’t sure about that number. Until he returns, the job belongs to Whaley, and he’s working to make sure Saturday’s breakdowns don’t happen again.
“We gotta make big strides next week,” Whaley said of himself and David. “We finally see how it is, and now we can settle down and know how to prepare.”