For all of the people saying that Pelini's got to keep his team from playing down to competition or whatever, what is he supposed to do? Honestly do you have any idea?
From the second the MSU game ended, he was talking about Northwestern, and how it was going to be a tough game. He talked up Northwestern all week. He and his players said that they were focused and practiced well all week, but then came out flat on gameday. What does a head coach do about that?
I'm just wondering if any of you critics actually have a solution. From my point of view, this game had more to do with our players' lack of maturity, and there's not a whole lot that I know of that can fix that other than experiences like today.
No offense, but I am not the one making 2.5mil a year. This isnt my job, this is his job. It is a head coaches job to get his players up for EVERY game.
Yes, but how many head coaches get their players to perform
every game? None that I know of. Every head coach loses games, whether to good ranked opponents or bad unranked opponents.
There are two things I'd like to point out here. First, there's something everybody needs to keep in mind - any given team is different any given week. It is not the same team week to week. If it were, then the better team should win a football game every single week. Instead, you have games like last weeks Iowa/Minnesota game. Minnesota beat Iowa, Iowa beat Michigan today and Michigan DESTROYED Minnesota 58-0 earlier in the season.
A team is different every week.
Second, and this can't be stated enough, Nebraska set itself back with Watson. Rewind and revisit the last two years. Pelini is fixing the defense and making them an elite, dominating force. The offense was for the most part losing us football games. The year after Watson leaves, we replace and rework a couple of coaches on the offense. Because we didn't get rid of Watson sooner, our offense is behind what it should be from a depth and experience stand point. Plain and simple he wasn't a good long term offensive coordinator. Now, we're suffering because of it offensively.
With more experience and depth, perhaps we do better in the first half, score more points, Northwestern puts itself in bad positions, the game goes in our favor. I realize this works both ways, but I think I still have some valid reasoning here.
Furthermore, we lost cohesion on the defensive side of the ball and it takes time to rework that. Losing a couple of coaches on the defensive side of the ball is tough, and losing a couple of people to the NFL doesn't make things any easier, ESPECIALLY when we have nowhere near the talent of the south eastern schools. We don't have that luxury and probably never will, which means we pure and simply need to revert to what got us winning in the first place at Nebraska, which is what I believe we're heading towards.
Again, however, the failed Watson project and the defensive coach reworking set us back this year. If in a few years nothing changes from a coaching stand point and we're still having massive struggles,
then I'll have a coaching discussion talk. But I'm not as disappointed in this loss today as many of you are.