Minnesota: What Did We Learn?

[lo country]

Oh absolutely! Nebraska had a golden opportunity last night to make a statement and flat-out got embarrassed.

I don't have a problem with Nebraska playing the occasional Thursday or Friday night games.

I do have a problem with a conference that gives some of its members a hall-pass from never having to play these games on a short week.

What I hate with this is it's the "traditional" B1G programs, but the winners as well. We have become a bottom feeder in the B1G since Bo left. Granted he took some hits, but at least we beat teams we should. And always beat Iowa.....People point to the collapse against Wisky, but IIR we had a lot of shuffling on DL with injuries and comments after that guys were all free lancing and doing their own thing. I digress with the Bo comments, but my point is we are bottom feeders and treated like it. I hate it. Fan for decades and kills me that we can't get get back. Like Bruce said, one step up and two steps backs....Sick of it. Get back to old school NU. Physical, relentless, disciplined...

 

[El Straino]

I feel the biggest source of our unease is the alarming manner in which we were decisively outcoached, specifically offense and defense (Special teams has been a welcome success).
PJ McPunchFace Fleck took our boys behind the boathouse and paddled our a$$es so hard with one of those stupid oars that Uncle Don is calling him Daddy. Our coaches are crawling on the ground, lookin for their teeth while Fleck does his stupid PJ Power-squats.

But yeah, lookin forward to the next podcast so we can talk about philly cheesesteaks or whatever tf.

What a stupid, stupid night of football

 

[chamrocck]

4. The O-line may be the worst at Nebraska in modern history. As of last night they were tied for the most sacks allowed in the nation. That is simply unacceptable. In this era of NIL and the transfer portal, there is no reason a Nebraska offensive line should be near the bottom of college football.

This is what I can’t accept. This used to be a strength and source of pride. Our OL has been so bad for so many years. We continue to think we can get the skill players to win but you will not win college football games if you don’t win the LOS. Winning college games is closer to high school football. I see it all the time where line play decides the winner, it’s like ridiculous in HS football that the better lines win 80-90% of the time. In college its not that different. In the NFL there is parity and skill players are often the difference with narrower final scores.

The irony that is not lost here is no way we get DR without his uncle being on staff. But his uncle has been the common dominator in all these years of bad OL play. The best solution is to pull a Satterfield. We made such a splash hire upgrading to Holgerson that nobody even realizes Satterfield is still on staff. So Rhule needs to go out and get the best OL coach there is. Leave no doubt we are here to recruit and build a dominant OL. We have to be an OL destination and outwork Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minny. No excuses for not dominating that region for OL players.we have to dominate our own region first. Then compete with the OSU’s, Michigan’s, USC’s, Oregon’s for OL blue chippers. We can’t do the same thing and expect to win anything. We’ll flail away around .500. We are losing ground, fix it now or become irrelevant.

 

[Display name required]

That if we want to be relavent we have to have more money we have been out bid on all our top offensive line recruits and defensive line recruits

 

[VedderHusker]

Where is/was the quick passing dink and dunk game. Ant run plays to punish that aggressive D. 2 back sets to give an extra blocker....

So much this.

Yes tackling was bad but the D did enough to win. Yes there were questionable penalties but none decided the game. Holgerson did not adjust and take what the D was giving and lost this game.

 

[DefenderAO]

So many good points raised so far! As I have had a night to sleep on it, here are my takeaways.

1. Matt Rhule is much closer to Mike Riley than many people realize. He simply has better oratory/preacher skills. While I do believe he has made the players believe in themselves more, his executive decision making is average at best, including his decision to retain Donovan Raiola. He also seems to struggle with X's and O's and what is needed to win in this day and age.

To point 1

- Jeff Sims. "Jeff Sims is elite. He is Sunday talent [per Rhule]." How'd that turn out?
- Satterfield. 800K as an OC. How'd that go? We now have an 800K Tight End coach.
- Hiring the 23 year old to coach 21 year old wide receivers. Turn out well?
- Keeping Donnie to attract Dylan. Both have proven underwhelming and under-performant.

The decision making is bad. Ekeler might be the best decision Rhule has made. He's had some big misses.

 

[commando]

when our 2 NIL bought linemen went out of the game and we had to rely on linemen trained by Raiola......we stopped scoring

 

[Undone]

We kept getting into 2nd & manageable on offense and then we'd call a deep drop back pass where we wouldn't pass block and Raiola would get sacked. Like seriously that happened all night long in that exact scenario.

Where was the efficient quick-hitter play on second down to keep the series/drive alive?

Super lame. That was Holgorsen’s worst showing thus far by a mile.

For me that game was on Dana. I can't be mad at Dylan for much that happened in that game, really. We refused to run the ball.

 

[gobiggergoredder]

To point 1

- Jeff Sims. "Jeff Sims is elite. He is Sunday talent [per Rhule]." How'd that turn out?
- Satterfield. 800K as an OC. How'd that go? We now have an 800K Tight End coach.
- Hiring the 23 year old to coach 21 year old wide receivers. Turn out well?
- Keeping Donnie to attract Dylan. Both have proven underwhelming and under-performant.

The decision making is bad. Ekeler might be the best decision Rhule has made. He's had some big misses.

It’s important to note Will Compton recruited Ekeler

 

[presidentjlh]

It’s important to note Will Compton recruited Ekeler

Hey maybe something to consider in five years or so after we run through the next coach

 

[presidentjlh]

It really just is another proof of what we’ve known all along:

Bad line, good skills players: bad team
Good line, bad skills players: good team
Good line, good skills players: great team

It’s a simple as that. The game is fundamentally decided in the trenches. That should be the priority of every team. You will not succeed with bad line play. It has to be the utmost priority in college football. The pros is a little different, qb is the lynchpin there. But in CFB, it’s the line.

This is what Nebraska was always built on. Skills players would vary in talent, the line was always great. You don’t get 8 Outland trophies by not caring about the line. This is what we used to understand.

 

[lo country]

We kept getting into 2nd & manageable on offense and then we'd call a deep drop back pass where we wouldn't pass block and Raiola would get sacked. Like seriously that happened all night long in that exact scenario.

Where was the efficient quick-hitter play on second down to keep the series/drive alive?

Super lame. That was Holgorsen’s worst showing thus far by a mile.

For me that game was on Dana. I can't be mad at Dylan for much that happened in that game, really. We refused to run the ball.

Can't expect long developing plays to work when they are beating us with 3 DL men....No idea why Dan a)didn't really try to run or b) go with quit hitting short passes.....Jacory targeted 1 time....And then no 2 back sets to try and help protect Dylan. No adjustments by Dana other than ones that made things worse.

Dylan didn't help with slow progressions and release and internal clock a tick behind reality, but agree again, Dana did him no favors. Worst game calling since he's been here. With his resume, I really thought we'd finally gotten an OC who had enough experience to counter the D when the OL was overmatched.

Any word on Rocco's hand? I just heard broken, but went to hospital. Still unsure what the Pritchett ejection was for.

 

[gobiggergoredder]

Dylan didn't help with slow progressions and release and internal clock a tick behind reality, but agree again, Dana did him no favors. Worst game calling since he's been here. With his resume, I really thought we'd finally gotten an OC who had enough experience to counter the D when the OL was overmatched.

This 100%.

Dylan is a good QB at best. He’s definitely not great.

But he got no help from the OC yesterday.

 

[FremontFred]

That if we want to be relavent we have to have more money we have been out bid on all our top offensive line recruits and defensive line recruits

If I was a top OL transfer target, why would I come to Nebraska when it’s obvious that Donnie can’t develop talent? We can bid all we want but you still need to be able to help guys get to the next level and we can’t.

 

[RedDenver]

Same thing I learn every game, especially when we lose, Husker fans are wildly unrealistic and overreact to everything.

I'm excited to see if we can bounce back from this loss and beat NW, or if we'll impode like PSU did. We're 5-2 with a chance to do better than we've done in a decade.