Season Predictions

[Sargon]

Thanks psycho you said things much more clearly than I did.

Iowa certainly outplayed NU.

Turnovers....they slaughtered us. An unrecoverable beating, frankly. 1 pick for a TD. Another gave em the ball on the 31 yard line where they scored in two rushing plays.

Penalties...favored Iowa.

Rushing yards per carry 5.5 to 3.6 and it was worse than that before they put the game away and went prevent.

NU managed only 6.6 yards per pass which is way too low if you're hoping to come from behind and win being pass heavy (NU gained only 137 rushing yards).

One more interesting stat....Iowa got 1 passing TD on 16 attempts, NU got 0 TD's in 45 attempts.

Losing Gerry late in the 2nd quarter surely didn't help things. No one can know how much it hurt.

Mavric..it is nonsensical to remove a team's best plays, scoring plays no less, from their data.

 

[Sargon]

Hmm now this is pretty weird, IMO

Every quarter: Interceptions: Iowa 1, NU 0

Each Half:

Scoring: IA TD, NU TD, IA TD, NU FG.

Total yards: NU leads both halves, yet loses by 4 each half.

 

[Redux]

I just want to point out that people in here thinking myself or anyone really is accepting of a 7 win season are not seeing the bigger picture.

I don't remember what I said to present that ideal originally, but I assume it was something about potentially losing a couple big contributors to injury. I feel that would hurt us and could lose a couple games. That doesn't make it okay but I don't feel our depth is there yet, especially QB. Couple that with some rough damn road games and yeah, we could lose a bunch of games.....again.

It's not "acceptable". It is what it is at that point. But I try to be a big picture guy, I think this team becomes pretty special in 2017 and forward.

 

[Mavric]

Thanks psycho you said things much more clearly than I did.

Iowa certainly outplayed NU.

Turnovers....they slaughtered us. An unrecoverable beating, frankly. 1 pick for a TD. Another gave em the ball on the 31 yard line where they scored in two rushing plays.

Penalties...favored Iowa.

Rushing yards per carry 5.5 to 3.6 and it was worse than that before they put the game away and went prevent.

NU managed only 6.6 yards per pass which is way too low if you're hoping to come from behind and win being pass heavy (NU gained only 137 rushing yards).

One more interesting stat....Iowa got 1 passing TD on 16 attempts, NU got 0 TD's in 45 attempts.

Losing Gerry late in the 2nd quarter surely didn't help things. No one can know how much it hurt.

Mavric..it is nonsensical to remove a team's best plays, scoring plays no less, from their data.

I'm not ignoring their big plays. I've repeatedly cited them as why they won. What I'm saying is that we dominated basically the entire game other than 3-6 plays. Their big plays were scoring plays so they had more points but in every other facet of the game we dominated them.

Other than the three big plays:

We nearly tripled their points.

We nearly tripled their total yards.

We doubled the amount of plays run

We held the ball for 60% of the game including nearly 12 minutes in the third quarter.

They failed to convert a single first down

That is domination. There isn't any other way to look at it.

I realize they dominated us in turnovers. That was part of my original post. It might have been the main thing that helped them win. But turnovers don't have to be great plays by the defense. Often they are terrible plays by the offense. Which is what I've been claiming.

Interesting how you chide me for ignoring some plays then play the "it was worse than that before they went into their prevent" card. Another way to look at it would be to say they only averaged 2.1 yards per carry other than the two long TD runs. Just depends on what story you want to tell.

 

[Mavric]

Also, I'm not buying the line about them going into a prevent. That is just their offense - pretty conservative. For the year they threw 369 passes and had 568 rushing attempts. That's 60.6% rushing. Against us they ran the ball 63.6% of the time. Probably slightly more than usual because they were smart and adjusted to the terrible weather while we didn't.

Also, we scored to make it a four point game in the middle of the third quarter right before their second long TD run to go back ahead by 11. They were still up by 11 when they got the ball back. What plays did they call? Pass-run-pass-pass. Not exactly prevent. They were simply a running offense than ran often. They didn't really change that against us.

 

[84HuskerLaw]

Interesting points on all sides of this discussion. I always look at running back stats by taking out the two longest and two shortest carries and then recomputing the yards per carry, etc. To me, you get a much better indication of how well the back and the running game in general is going if you toss out the longs and shorts and look at what is left. Of course, you need a back or backs that have carried the ball 15 or 20 times to get a more realistic picture. At this point, I kind of prefer the look and running we are getting from Ozigbo over Newby for this reason. Newby may have as good or even better yards per carry overall average but he has a handful of long runs that raise up the average a bunch. Ozigbo gets the extra tough yards and often turns the 2 or 3 yard gain into 4 or 5 while Newby generally does not. I know it is nice to have the home run threat which Newby seems to have much more of than Ozigbo or Cross had. But, if you watch the UCLA game, you see there is a great deal of difference in the typical carry of the backs. Newby seems to be a bit more feast or famine. We need to be able to count on the 4 or 5 yard gain and the wear down the defense with the power game. Now, if Newby adds a few pounds by this year and shows more push, then he might have the edge.

Throwing out the big plays for both Nebraska and Iowa might be revealing as to what is really happening on the lines of scrimmage. But to be fair to Iowa, if they don't have their big plays, presumably they would have had more snaps and a few more first downs which would raise their time of possession and lower our snap count as well. The numbers might have been more balanced, you never know. We have to cut down our opponents big plays but in doing so we need to also force more punts, rather than allowing more plays for similar yards.

 

[Husker Psycho]

Thanks psycho you said things much more clearly than I did.

Iowa certainly outplayed NU.

Turnovers....they slaughtered us. An unrecoverable beating, frankly. 1 pick for a TD. Another gave em the ball on the 31 yard line where they scored in two rushing plays.

Penalties...favored Iowa.

Rushing yards per carry 5.5 to 3.6 and it was worse than that before they put the game away and went prevent.

NU managed only 6.6 yards per pass which is way too low if you're hoping to come from behind and win being pass heavy (NU gained only 137 rushing yards).

One more interesting stat....Iowa got 1 passing TD on 16 attempts, NU got 0 TD's in 45 attempts.

Losing Gerry late in the 2nd quarter surely didn't help things. No one can know how much it hurt.

Mavric..it is nonsensical to remove a team's best plays, scoring plays no less, from their data.

Sargon

You have great football instincts (a natural ability to understand the game).

Much respect.

 

[cm husker]

I just want to point out that people in here thinking myself or anyone really is accepting of a 7 win season are not seeing the bigger picture.

I don't remember what I said to present that ideal originally, but I assume it was something about potentially losing a couple big contributors to injury. I feel that would hurt us and could lose a couple games. That doesn't make it okay but I don't feel our depth is there yet, especially QB. Couple that with some rough damn road games and yeah, we could lose a bunch of games.....again.

It's not "acceptable". It is what it is at that point. But I try to be a big picture guy, I think this team becomes pretty special in 2017 and forward.

2017 we'll have no QB with experience.

If you were a long view guy, we would have given Bo another season. Because 2016 lined brutally.

 

[Husker Psycho]

Thanks psycho you said things much more clearly than I did.

Iowa certainly outplayed NU.

Turnovers....they slaughtered us. An unrecoverable beating, frankly. 1 pick for a TD. Another gave em the ball on the 31 yard line where they scored in two rushing plays.

Penalties...favored Iowa.

Rushing yards per carry 5.5 to 3.6 and it was worse than that before they put the game away and went prevent.

NU managed only 6.6 yards per pass which is way too low if you're hoping to come from behind and win being pass heavy (NU gained only 137 rushing yards).

One more interesting stat....Iowa got 1 passing TD on 16 attempts, NU got 0 TD's in 45 attempts.

Losing Gerry late in the 2nd quarter surely didn't help things. No one can know how much it hurt.

Mavric..it is nonsensical to remove a team's best plays, scoring plays no less, from their data.

I'm not ignoring their big plays. I've repeatedly cited them as why they won. What I'm saying is that we dominated basically the entire game other than 3-6 plays. Their big plays were scoring plays so they had more points but in every other facet of the game we dominated them.

Other than the three big plays:

We nearly tripled their points.

We nearly tripled their total yards.

We doubled the amount of plays run

We held the ball for 60% of the game including nearly 12 minutes in the third quarter.

They failed to convert a single first down

That is domination. There isn't any other way to look at it.

I realize they dominated us in turnovers. That was part of my original post. It might have been the main thing that helped them win. But turnovers don't have to be great plays by the defense. Often they are terrible plays by the offense. Which is what I've been claiming.

Interesting how you chide me for ignoring some plays then play the "it was worse than that before they went into their prevent" card. Another way to look at it would be to say they only averaged 2.1 yards per carry other than the two long TD runs. Just depends on what story you want to tell.

I'm glad you brought up the time of possession in the third quarter. If we had the ball 60% of the time then that should have been a distinct advantage for us... except that it wasn't. Iowa scored 2 touchdowns during the third quarter and we only scored once. What we did do well was take a lot of time off the clock... and Iowa was the beneficiary because they were ahead. Iowa didn't have to run time off the clock... we were doing it for them. Smart coaching and chess playing by Iowa for the whole game.

As for ignoring some plays in the stats. That game can be played both ways. If you eliminate all plays other than the plays where they scored then they have an average of like 45 yards per carry... or whatever. Maybe someone else would like to tell that story but it would not be of any more help in understanding the game than your eliminating scoring plays. You cant cherry pick stats... that takes you away from the truth and away from an accurate understanding of the game.

The truth is our friend. Anything that takes us away from the truth is our enemy.

With that said... it sure is nice to be discussing football again... and doing it in an intelligent and informed way. Sure beats all the name calling and shouting people down and the thread hijacking stuff that happens way to often. Thanks for all your efforts here.

 

[Mavric]

I'm glad you brought up the time of possession in the third quarter. If we had the ball 60% of the time then that should have been a distinct advantage for us... except that it wasn't. Iowa scored 2 touchdowns during the third quarter and we only scored once. What we did do well was take a lot of time off the clock... and Iowa was the beneficiary because they were ahead. Iowa didn't have to run time off the clock... we were doing it for them. Smart coaching and chess playing by Iowa for the whole game.

Yes, it should have been a big advantage for us. It wasn't because they took advantage of the big plays. Which is what I've been saying all along.

I'm not sure why that is so hard to grasp. It is entirely possible for one team to be more dominant but come out on the short end of things. We dominated the vast majority of the plays. But we didn't capitalize on that dominance. They took advantage of a few big plays and it made the difference in the game.

We didn't just take time off the clock. We burned over a third of the quarter driving 75 yards for a touchdown. We marched it down the field and scored. Part of the reason they didn't have the ball much was because they scored quickly. I don't think they would have scored that quickly if Gerry was still in the game - again, part of my original argument. Another reason we didn't score is because we threw an interception on Iowa's 4 - again, part of my original argument. But none of that means we wen't "winning" on many more plays than we were losing. The problem is they only got a few "wins" but they were huge. We got a lot of little "wins" but that wasn't enough.

 

[Redux]

I just want to point out that people in here thinking myself or anyone really is accepting of a 7 win season are not seeing the bigger picture.

I don't remember what I said to present that ideal originally, but I assume it was something about potentially losing a couple big contributors to injury. I feel that would hurt us and could lose a couple games. That doesn't make it okay but I don't feel our depth is there yet, especially QB. Couple that with some rough damn road games and yeah, we could lose a bunch of games.....again.

It's not "acceptable". It is what it is at that point. But I try to be a big picture guy, I think this team becomes pretty special in 2017 and forward.

2017 we'll have no QB with experience. If you were a long view guy, we would have given Bo another season. Because 2016 lined brutally.

We are redshirting POB and will have Gebbia on campus and Lee will be avaiable. With none of them taking snaps as a Husker, we are still deeper than we are this year and potentially better if they fit this system better than TA.
The part about Bo, that honestly makes 0 sense and I think somewhere deep down you realize that.

 

[GBRFAN]

I just want to point out that people in here thinking myself or anyone really is accepting of a 7 win season are not seeing the bigger picture.

I don't remember what I said to present that ideal originally, but I assume it was something about potentially losing a couple big contributors to injury. I feel that would hurt us and could lose a couple games. That doesn't make it okay but I don't feel our depth is there yet, especially QB. Couple that with some rough damn road games and yeah, we could lose a bunch of games.....again.

It's not "acceptable". It is what it is at that point. But I try to be a big picture guy, I think this team becomes pretty special in 2017 and forward.

2017 we'll have no QB with experience.

If you were a long view guy, we would have given Bo another season. Because 2016 lined brutally.

no thanks

 

[84HuskerLaw]

I've mentioned it before but I sure hope we have several games this year, before mid October, where we have a big enough lead that we can play some of the non senior seconds and thirds. We desperately need to build depth with real game speed experience. Not just the QB but the young receivers, the younger linemen, and youth all over the defense. We need to reload not rebuild.

And, with both TA and Fyfe being gone, 2017 QBs need to have at least a dozen or more passes and 40 or 50 snaps running the offense full bore, not just basic hand offs and running out the clock. They need to have some game time BEFORE we have to put a frosh type starter out there in '17 with nothing but nerves and a 'deer in headlights' reaction.

 

[Husker Psycho]

I'm glad you brought up the time of possession in the third quarter. If we had the ball 60% of the time then that should have been a distinct advantage for us... except that it wasn't. Iowa scored 2 touchdowns during the third quarter and we only scored once. What we did do well was take a lot of time off the clock... and Iowa was the beneficiary because they were ahead. Iowa didn't have to run time off the clock... we were doing it for them. Smart coaching and chess playing by Iowa for the whole game.

Yes, it should have been a big advantage for us. It wasn't because they took advantage of the big plays. Which is what I've been saying all along.

I'm not sure why that is so hard to grasp. It is entirely possible for one team to be more dominant but come out on the short end of things. We dominated the vast majority of the plays. But we didn't capitalize on that dominance. They took advantage of a few big plays and it made the difference in the game.

We didn't just take time off the clock. We burned over a third of the quarter driving 75 yards for a touchdown. We marched it down the field and scored. Part of the reason they didn't have the ball much was because they scored quickly. I don't think they would have scored that quickly if Gerry was still in the game - again, part of my original argument. Another reason we didn't score is because we threw an interception on Iowa's 4 - again, part of my original argument. But none of that means we wen't "winning" on many more plays than we were losing. The problem is they only got a few "wins" but they were huge. We got a lot of little "wins" but that wasn't enough.

Mavric, thanks for your reply.

So about Gerry.

Football is a team sport. No play depends on only one player to make them succeed or fail.

Both toucdowns scored by Iowa in the third quarter were running plays. That means that Iowa's runner had to first get by the line of scrimmage (our defensive line)... then he had to get by the second level (our linebackers) and thirdly he had to get by our third level (defensive backs and safeties).

That means that multiple Iowa players had to beat multiple Nebraska players on those plays... not just one player... and that multiple Nebraska players had to make mistakes on those plays... not just one player.

Nebraska loosing one player did not make our entire team helpless... but unfortunately it was our entire team that got beat on those plays.

Why did that happen? We (Nebraska) simply were not well coached last year, which was unfortunate because we had lot's of talent on the field last year. Iowa on the other hand was very well coached. It's just that simple.

With that said, HOPEFULLY that type of thing will get turned around this year and we'll be better coached and we'll be the ones winning those games.

Thanks again for your reply. Always great to discuss football with you.

 

[Mavric]

I'm glad you brought up the time of possession in the third quarter. If we had the ball 60% of the time then that should have been a distinct advantage for us... except that it wasn't. Iowa scored 2 touchdowns during the third quarter and we only scored once. What we did do well was take a lot of time off the clock... and Iowa was the beneficiary because they were ahead. Iowa didn't have to run time off the clock... we were doing it for them. Smart coaching and chess playing by Iowa for the whole game.

Yes, it should have been a big advantage for us. It wasn't because they took advantage of the big plays. Which is what I've been saying all along.

I'm not sure why that is so hard to grasp. It is entirely possible for one team to be more dominant but come out on the short end of things. We dominated the vast majority of the plays. But we didn't capitalize on that dominance. They took advantage of a few big plays and it made the difference in the game.

We didn't just take time off the clock. We burned over a third of the quarter driving 75 yards for a touchdown. We marched it down the field and scored. Part of the reason they didn't have the ball much was because they scored quickly. I don't think they would have scored that quickly if Gerry was still in the game - again, part of my original argument. Another reason we didn't score is because we threw an interception on Iowa's 4 - again, part of my original argument. But none of that means we wen't "winning" on many more plays than we were losing. The problem is they only got a few "wins" but they were huge. We got a lot of little "wins" but that wasn't enough.

Mavric, thanks for your reply.

So about Gerry.

Football is a team sport. No play depends on only one player to succeed or the fail.

Both toucdowns scored by Iowa in the third quarter were running plays. That means that Iowa's runner had to first get by the line of scrimmage (our defensive line)... then he had to get by the second level (our linebackers) and thirdly he had to get by our third level (defensive backs and safeties).

That means that multiple Iowa players had to beat multiple Nebraska players on those plays... not just one player... and that multiple Nebraska players had to make mistakes on those plays... not just one player.

Nebraska loosing one player did not make our entire team helpless... but unfortunately it was our entire team that got beat on those plays.

Why did that happen? We (Nebraska) simply were not well coached last year, which was unfortunate because we had lot's of talent on the field last year. Iowa on the other hand was very well coached. It's just that simple.

With that said, HOPEFULLY that type of thing will get turned around this year and we will be better coached and we will be the ones winning those games.

Thanks again for your reply. Always great to discuss football with you.

All that is true. But I didn't say that losing Gerry made the whole team play worse. There were others who also didn't make those plays. But the final straw was we had a backup safety in the game (because of a questionable call on the most questioned rule in recent memory) who was unblocked but didn't fill his lane correctly. I believe that if we had our all-conference-caliber starter still in the game he would have been able to make those plays and hold them to a much shorter gain. And given how much their offense struggled the rest of the game, it's fairly likely that we could have kept them out of the end zone on those drives (though they may have still gotten a field goal on one of them).