I hear where your coming from Mav, but i cant agree that this is Rileys fault. We have more talent than Purdue, Indiana, Colorado....i get that its more than a talent problem left behind. Riley also left certain positions bare, and some bad development, also some bad player habits.
Yes, Riley is partly to blame for where we are, but we all knew that. I didnt expect us to be a top 15 team. What i did expect was a 8-4 type season with this schedule. We have the players to beat The Indianas and Colorados...and Frost has had almost 2 years to instill his stuff. Frost is to blame for this year, im sorry to say that cause he is a good man.
I don't think much of anyone expected this record this season. Most were right with you. But expectations don't always mesh with reality. And there are any of dozens of plays that could have swung things in a different directions.
Wisconsin has had "less talent" that a lot of teams for a lot of years. But they've also won a lot of games. Talent is the bedrock. But it's not everything.
We lost to Colorado by 3 after dominating the first half. We out-gained them but lost the turnover battle and missed a FG. We didn't need to be any better of a team to beat them. We just needed to make a couple more plays somewhere along the line.
We out-gained Indiana by 60 yards for the game. That's a very good argument that we were the "better team". But we lost the turnover battle and lost the game. Change a couple plays and that game might go the other way. But we didn't make them.
We didn't play well against Purdue and lost by 4. If our Offense was moving the ball against them like they were against Wisconsin we could easily have won that game. Why could we only get 375 yards against the #78 defense in the country and then get 493 yards against the #4 defense in the country two weeks later? Who in the world knows. That's how it works for most teams.
You can make a decent argument that we out-played Wisconsin overall. But they made most of the big plays - KO return TD, long TD after missed tackles, we missed one FG and that cost us a chance at another. We were missing three defensive starters and had at least 2 or 3 others pretty banged up. We just don't have many options behind them.
We do a lot of things well but make enough mistakes that we can't recover from. But we're not that far off from being an 8-win team. Kind of like early last year - right there but can't get it done.
I think people are kind of hung up on their pre-season expectation of how tough our schedule is. Going off last year, it looked to be an easier one. But I don't think it turned out that way.
According to Sagarin, we have the #39 schedule in the country. Alabama's vaunted SEC schedule currently checks in at #51.
No one expected Minnesota to be that tough after we beat them by 25 last year. But since that game they are 13-3 and a Top 10 team.
Indiana has won 7 games. I think we should have beaten them but they're not a push-over. That's more games than we've won in any of the last three years. They're going bowling. We might not.
Illinois has shown to be better than expected. They beat Wisconsin. They're going bowling.
I'm not saying people shouldn't be frustrated. But I think there are a lot more reasons behind it than some are willing to admit.
