Nebhawk

We had a QB on this roster when Rhule arrived. I question our offensive staff on what they were evaluating when watching game film from last years team. Simms has been Simms since his first days at Ga Tech. His good plays did outweigh his bad plays, but he was mistake prone there as well. Enough on that. As I stated. Almost every program in the last 10 years has made coaching hires that have worked out. We are the last program on that list to have failed this bad with 3 different staffs. I will give some slack on Rhule and his staff but not much. He did inherit a mess, but not that big of a mess. We all watched Bill Snyder take the worst program in history and turn things around. Leipold at KU took a very bad program and in year two went to a bowl game. KU beat Texas in year one under Leipold as well. When and who was the last coach to beat a Top 25 team here? Just tired of making excuse for why ALL of our coaching hires have failed. Its simple. They all failed and were not cut out for this climate and fanbase. Pressure cooker that is Husker football is not for the weak hearted.

We run screen passes on 3rd down when we about to kick a field goal in the last 6 minutes of the game to the wrong hash mark that leads to a miss. That's when we run screen passes. Rub plays your talking about take a good accurate QB to make the pass. You are spot on with this assessment, but it all comes down to playing of the QB. We spent weeks with HH who can't throw a ball, and now we turned to Purdy in the two games of the season with no reps and expect him to win a game. This is why I will not throw Purdy under the bus. I will question our coaching staff on this decision.

Its all about hiring the right head coach and staff. Tired of making excuses for every staff that gets hired here. We all see Kansas, Kansas St, Mizzou, Northwestern with an interim, Iowa St, and Wyoming. All of these teams are better than us and have better coaching staffs and head coaches. Recruiting is very important, but KU, KSU and Iowa St have mediocre recruiting numbers and manage to win games and make bowl games. They develop what they recruit. To than I will give Rhule more time, but if we are still sitting here two years from now with this same product, then its all coaching. Will say this again. We played 4 or 5 of the worst offenses in Power 5 football this season and lost those games. Our defense is fine, but against teams who were rated in the Top 60 in offense all beat us. Even teams rated last beat us. This was not a shut down defense, rather a bend but don't break defense that bent more and broke more as the season closed. Again, will give the defense a good rating, but not great. We can say culture and curses, but its all up to the current staff to rectify those areas. Its up to the staff to develop a QB and also pick the right transfer. Its all up to the staff to evaluate talent and bring in the right pieces to improve this roster. They clearly didn't like Casey, and chose Simms. This one decision cost this roster and team at least 3 wins. Yes, that decision to me was the biggest with hindsight. If your watching game film and you think that Simms is the answer over Casey, there was hidden motives behind that because on the field it is not even a question. We kept most of the roster from last season, but we didn't keep a QB who was the brightest spot on last years team..................Figure that one out.

My final after game response for now. This program is in trouble and has been in trouble now for a few years. I did not see anything from this staff that shows me we are heading in the right direction. If this would have been a first time head coach, I would have felt better going forward. A good coach and staff would have managed to win one of the last four games to get bowl invite. When you are sitting at 5-3, with four games left against rather bad and flawed teams, you find ways to win at least one of those games. This did not happen. The teams will not be this bad next season. All the teams we faced this season will improve going forward. Will be improve and even if we do improve, will we win more games next season?

They have been practicing all season long, and frankly have gotten worse as the season as gone along.

I can honestly say that we just lost games to teams that are awful. At least two years ago we lost one score games to good football teams. This season we lost games to terrible teams. We played in the worst conference in college football this season. This was the chance to change some narratives within the conference and the nation. We chose to poo poo down our leg once again. Seriously, the clock management and in game decision making was rather awful down the stretch from this staff and its head coach. Our defense really did play well most of the season, but against very bad offenses and its stats are misleading big time. How many teams from other conference would have had defenses ranked high playing our schedule? Ponder that before you answer honestly.

Purdy is the only QB on this roster I would invite back for next season. I am finding a new QB from the portal and then finding a good fit thru recruiting. Finding a new line and finding a few more weapons. Interestingly enough, but Steve Taylor said he would not come here as a recruit to play in this offense. He says it lacks any kind of definition on what it is and what it wants to do. If a 50 something former player would say this, what are HS players thinking right now?

This program and its staff do not deserve a bowl bid based on academic reasons. The professors and instructors should get that praise. Tired of everyone and everything bending backwards for this "football program" to get rewarded for being awful. Stop. Based on football knowledge and the eye test, why would you invite Nebraska to any kind of bowl game? Other than Nebraska fans, who would spend 3 hours watching this on TV? I would rather take a 5-7 team that can score points and at least have an interesting game. I would not tune in a bowl game to watch this sh!t show.

Learned that Rhule is really a fraud. Satterfield is worse than a fraud. I will not blame Purdy for that throw. With 6 minutes left in the game, we were content with a field goal try into the wind. We did not try to win the game then, so we should not have tried with 40 seconds left in the game. We could have kneeled and settled for an overtime battle. Rhule is not a game manager. He is not a good in game coach. I think he is a good practice coach and maybe decent at developing to a low degree.

Don't know how anyone can answer this other than West division is horrible and we have not gotten any worse, but its a stretch to think we have improved a lot. We have improved some, but its minimal. I think our offense is worse and defense is better, but against the worst football offense in the current game. I think if we would have improved a lot, we would have won 7 or 8 games this season with ease. Since we are at 5, one better than last season, against worst teams, No we have not improved a lot.

I think that we all know now that this place has made mistakes in hiring and firing. Never should have fired Solich and Pelini. CAn't even bring my self to say that Callahan was not our worst hire at this point. His offenses were legit and brought in talent, especially O-line players. None matters now. We are where we are, and frankly, with the change in football, don't see us getting back to any level of eliteness. We might manage to win 7-8 games a season at some point, but we are miles away. Still do not have the size and athletes we need to compete. We can not get a top 10 QB to commit here. We can not get o-line players who want to improve and do better. I think we are two or three position coaches away from improving this roster, but still are challenged in all areas. Transfer portal is a good option, but most players are not looking to come here. NIL to me has not produced any dividends. Roll out the bags and start enticing the talent to come here. The message will spread.

Oh, what did I learn from yesterday's game..............we are what we are right now. Have no offense. Have an over inflated defense who has managed to keep us in games against some of the worst offenses in college football. Again folks, we are what we are at this point. Looking back at our schedule and teams we have played, were lucky to win 5 at this point. What's sad is our chance to win the west for the last go around was here. The whole west div is in shambles, and we just let it go right by us. An Iowa team who has maybe a better offense than us, and better defense is going to play for the title. What I learned is even in year one, Rhule should have won this division, because by default, this was the worst division in all of college football. Some of these teams will never be this bad ever again. Have we improved from last season? Could have Mickey won the 5 games we did at this point? ?????

We have offensive challenges. Is it the QB room or how they are being coached? Chubba to me looked Ok, until the interception. Again, is it the chicken or the egg? Big 10 football, other than Ohio ST is kind of bland non championship winning football. Ohio St is the only team that has an offense to compete against the elite. Michigan was exposed against TCU last season. At this point, I will root for Ohio St to win this mess of a conference.

I know some of these numbers can be skewed based on schedule and which conference. I also know that La Tech since starting conference play is scoring more and has more yardage and are still rated at 69th. NIU is horrible on offense, but are rated ahead of most of the West division at 83. I wonder when its all said and done if Rhule shouldn't have just scrapped the roster and recruited all freshmen and played them this season like he mostly did at Baylor in year one. If we do not make a bowl game, then I will say he should have taken a different approach and recruited and played more underclassmen. His Baylor days were also pre-NIL, so we will see if he can sell ice to eskimos, because that's what it takes in high bidder takes all.

Going to throw some numbers out to put everything in perspective. Our opponents total offensive ranking are an average of 87.5. out of 130 teams. The best offense we played so far was Michigan who is only ranked at 42 in total offense. Northwestern is rated at 126. Average of total offense of those teams we beat 90.6. Michigan St was rated at 111 best offense in the country! So what I m trying to say is our defense has done what it had to do versus some of the worst offenses in college football. We will see going forward. Maryland is 57th best offense in the country. Wisky is 74th and Iowa is last at 130. Just a reminder that our defense may not be any better than last years team considering the horrible teams we have played this far. In other words for those who think this team would hang with Ohio ST or USC or Washington because we have a stout D, think again. We played the bottom feeders for offensive production and have won 5 games against those. I think we are still in full on rebuild mode for the foreseeable future. Adding Oregon and Washington alone should scare almost every Big 10 team, let alone anyone coming from the West division.