irafreak said:
I guess I would ask this question. Which team is playing the best football in the big 10 right now? According to scoreboard it's wisconsin. We can talk about lack of competition all we want but let's face it. You can't do more than what they've done which is handily beat their opponents. I think Nebraska does have an important advantage of being battle tested. We had to gut it out for 4 quarters and we'll see if wisconsin can do the same because even if they jump us early I think we fight all game long.
I can absolutely argue that Nebraska has played better even though it doesn't look like it.
Offensively the difference between Wisconsin and Nebraska is only 1.6 points per game and Nebraska has faced SIGNIFICANTLY tougher defenses.
Defensively Nebraska needs some work but I have a feeling that once Dennard gets in there things will take a good turn. Many issues in the secondary are present right now due to horrible communication. Dennard will shore that up. It also can't be stressed how imactful a DB that shuts down 1/3 of the field can be on not just the rest of the secondary but the pass rush and run stoppage as well.
Strengh of schedule and not having Dennard matters, but is only a part of it though.
You have to take team goals and coach philosophy into consideration as well.
Belima always does his best to run up the score on everyone. He goes for style points more than almost any other coach. I mean this is the guy who was going for 2 point conversions up by multiple touchdowns last year trying to inflate his team's national percepton. It's just what he does. Bo could care less about that stuff, he basically treats the first couple cupcake games as scrimmages to work on things that they aren't comfortable with using multiple combinations of personnel (ie playing guys like Blatchford and Mendoza in meaningful snaps when they likely won't see anything other than special teams time once conference play starts or playing guys out of position on the O-line against guys they'll probably never line up next to again this season) and not caring a lot about yards given up. - though admittedly he doesn't like giving up a lot of extra points but his ultimate goal is to get the team to be as good as they possibly can when they play teams that can match them talent wise not worry about style points against the ones that can't.
Wisconsin also has a significantly more veteran team than Nebraska so they way they approach cupcake games this year are vastly different in that reard as well.
On defense the D-Lines are comparable and both teams return one starting linebacker, but 3 of 4 in the secondary for Wisconsin are Seniors and returning starters while Nebraska has been breaking in multiple new young players and it's best DB has been out all year.
Wisconsin's entire Defense are all playing the same scheme they played last year too. Nebraska's in many cases are not as there are many differences for multiple players when we are running the 3-4 as opposed to running the Peso.
On offense Wisconsin has a veteran O-Line (3 seniors, 2 juniors and a sophmore, 3 of them returning starters) and mostly veteran WR's/TE's and HB's. (White and Ball are both returning backs and Nick Toon and Jake Byrne are seniors). Nebraska has multiple new offensive linemen, 3 new halfbacks, multiple new young WR's and multiple freshman playing all over the place.
Nebraska is breaking in a TON of new players on both sides of the ball and trying to get a lot of pieces acclimated to different roles and finding where they fit. Wisconsin is basically getting 3-4 players on Defense used to being starters (2 of the new starters are seniors and none are freshman) and acclimating their new QB to a veteran laden team on offense. What they are doing isn't that impressive... especially considering they put up big offensive numbers against junk teams last year too (remember the 70-3 score they put up on Austin Peay the week before they lost to Michigan State?) but weren't really all that great and Wilson has a knack for going bad teams at NCState too but then going in the tank every few weeks. (Like last year when he went 21-31 for 306 yards and 4 TD's and a 67.7 completion percentage against Western Carolina and then the next week going 10-30 for 105 yards and 1 TD with a 33.3% completion percentage against UCF.... or when when he went 38-51 for 328 and 3 TD's with a 74.5 completion percentage against Boston College and the next week going 26-52 and throwing 3 picks while losing in overtime to East Carolina.)
In my honest opinion Nebraska looks just as good as Wisconsin in many areas and will get significant help to the areas where Nebraska looks weaker. Wisconsin at it's core is an above average Big Ten team that is a bit of a paper tiger right now. Nebraska is an upper tier team that looks weaker because of non-conference philosiphy differences, personel management and Wisconsin's garbage schedule but has a LOT more potential, is more talented and should be the superior (and massively faster and speed is the one thing you can't teach.) team when the two teams actually play.