Rochelobe

I'm sure we will hear all about how "close" we are to breaking through. After all 12 one-score losses the last three seasons. Maybe, if they can pull that off next week they can tie North Carolina at 13! Woo-Hoo!

Yes

A run up the middle for a TD? Frost will have to analyze that very sophisticated play for at least a year to figure out how to add it do his super genius offense.

Mills gains 7 yards on first carry. Frost "Get him out of the backfield - simple running plays don't make me look like a genius"

Because: "Big.Ten.Must.Adjust.To.Us"

**deleted because right wing talking points are fine to talk about on this thread, but jokes are not**

If I understand correctly, the logic is: ISU would beat Louisiana in a rematch, thus ignore the early loss. However, pay attention to ISU's wins, as without a doubt they have no chance of losing those games in rematch. While I respect that teams do improve/decline during the season, all we go can by is when they played. When they played Louisiana, they lost. Not only that, they lost twice. Would they hammer the other team that beat them this season if they had a rematch? ISU lost _two_ games. In a season with less than the standard 12. To me that is a fatal flaw as far as making the playoff. If instead, you want to make the playoff be 8 teams, with each P5 champion guaranteed a slot, then if they win the Big XII title game, they are in. But putting them in the top 4 in a very chaotic beauty contest? No, I don't think they deserve that. If they only had one loss, I think the argument would be stronger, but still, losing to a Sun Belt team?

hunter49, Like most on here, I've found the Red Zone offense to really suck most of the time. However, yesterday they scored all 6 times in the red zone (20 yard in), 4 of them being TDs. Yeah, you'd like at least one of the FGs to have been a TD, but for a team that has struggled, I'd say a 100% scoring and 67% TD rate is not sucking, but instead is improvement toward competence. Now can they sustain that? Recent history says no, but maybe something started to click. They had a couple of other drives stall right outside the red zone, one where Culp hit the 49 yard FG, the other one on downs when they were trying to close out the game. Is it perfection? Of course not. But, I think it is an improvement over recent history. How long has it been since Nebraska scored 4 red zone TDs in one game? As far as the non-scoring drives - that was not good. They had 3 three-and-outs, not counting the game ending kneel down series. The 3 three-and-outs occurred over a stretch of 4 possessions (which included, ironically, what was probably their best drive of the game at the start of the 3rd Quarter). At least they didn't have the 3 three-an-outs in a row, but they have to get better at having at least productive field flipping drives. On those three drives they gave Purdue a shorter field, and Purdue scored 10 pts. The defense did a good job on the other series, and stopped Purdue on downs. What sucked is right after the defense does this the offense has a terrible series, gets the punt blocked and ends up giving Purdue the ball in FG range. The defense at least stopped the TD, but that was a horrible sequence for the offense. Edit: So it looks like they scored 5 red zone TDs last year against Illinois. Much more recently than I remember, but it certainly hasn't been much the last few years where they get 4+ red zone TDs. Granted if you can score them from 30, 40, 50 yards out that is fine, but something about grinding down a team and just overwhelming them inside the 20 really seems to break an opponent.

I wasn't thinking Frost gave up play calling duties, but it looked like he was maybe making some adjustments - whether that was due to Frost getting more creative, more useful input from Lubick, better execution from the offense (particularly Martinez), or some combination, I'm not sure. Purdue is a bad team. But, it was good that Nebraska managed to get a lead, not completely squander it, and close out the win without it going down to the final play. In the world of crawl-walk-run this was at least a "speedy" crawl, with moments of walking. Coupled with a decent effort against Iowa the week before, there are signs of the team starting to come together. Certainly not something I was expecting to see after the Illinois fiasco. It looked like they were going to find a way to lose after the 90 yard TD, but they did a good job of coming out, maintaining their composure, and finishing off the game. That is something they haven't done on a regular basis for a long time. Of course, over the last several years whenever we think they've started to figure it out, it seems like they go out and are completely embarrassed the next game. Hopefully the Minnesota game will be the start of breaking that up. Minnesota is another pretty mediocre team, so it is certainly doable.

If they lose, the post game where Frost attempts to explain this should be hilarious.

If this initial plan was actually put in place, my understanding is that the G5 and other FBS conferences would come along, thus allowing the SEC to still play teams from places like the Sunbelt conference, which would at least be an increase over most of their current 4th OOC game choices. The initial proposal is to only separate what used to be called Div 1-A (now FBS) from Div 1-AA (now FCS). Thus we would no longer have North Dakota State vs Minnesota type matchups. The Big Ten could still hammer <MAC team of choice> if they wanted to. However, such a separation would very likely lead eventually to a P5 split from the rest of FBS, in which case, Kansas becomes everyone's favorite OOC game. I think to some extent this separation has started with other conferences - doesn't the Big Ten ask that their members avoid scheduling FCS teams if at all possible (like what Nebraska had to do with Bethune-Cookman after the Akron cancellation). Here is how I understand the hierarchy: Note that the recommendation is football only. We will still have the entire population of basketball teams (from ~34 Div I conferences) participating in March Madness. This would be pretty much the same teams as Div I football today, plus conferences like the Big East, which don't play football anymore, just basketball.

Yup - that is why they probably want to let P5 goes its own way and don't care that the rest (G5 plus remaining minor FBS conferences). They offload the expense of doing all the enforcement onto another org. I've heard some congressional rumblings in the past from non-P5 states if the P5 decides to try and strike out on their own - conduct a P5 only championship, no mixing with non-P5, etc., if the money would be bigger. The non-P5s I've heard talk about it were making some kind of restraint of trade type of argument, since they wouldn't be part of it. Sort of the initial things they said that resulted in the agreement that the highest ranked G5 team would get a New Year's Day Bowl game (like UCF did when Frost was there, or Utah when Urban Meyer was there). I think a separation of P5 from the rest is also going to happen eventually, particularly if after we see how bad the pandemic has been on the non-P5 programs around the country.

Not sure if I should have put this on the "Other Sports" board, mods please move it makes more sense there. I put it on the Husker Football part, since this would involve Nebraska football. https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2020/12/03/knight-commission-ncaa-football-bowl-subdivision-split/3811200001/ Many people have talked about this happening for quite awhile (although even more fractured - just the P5 teams going their own way). Probably there is an inevitability of some kind of change with the rules about college players getting marketing money, which will primarily affect football players and basketball players. Interesting that they did not recommend pulling men's basketball, but that is probably due to the fact that March Madness is the NCAA's crown jewel.

Maybe Frost should call it the "matador offense " They could yell "Ole" evertime they miss a block.

"So, Iowa, you don't know how to put away a bad opponent and have to kick field goals instead of scoring TDs? Well, we are Nebraska, we will show you how to properly melt down. That's what we do. Adjust to that!" "Oh, and its all on the players for the mistakes" - Frost