Undone

That was a really good post, @Dr. Strangelove. The only thing I'd maybe change is the assessment of Frost's ability to recognize talent and put it in the right place to succeed. What we had with Martinez, Maurice Washington, and Wan'Dale Robinson when those guys came in as freshmen had amazing potential. I think Frost was actually much worse at actually getting the team into form in fall camp & practice.

Maybe you meant it this way, but it's a bit of a generalization. There are Rashod Bateman's out there that were 4 star players that really helped their team rise above their expected performance. But also, why'd you put "develop" in quotations? Genuinely asking. That's a good thing right? Again looking at Minnesota, you have a guy like Mo Ibrahim who was a 3* player that turned into something pretty special. Damn. I kind of regret giving Minnesota props two times in one post.

Big part of it is just how prepared your team is for game speed from practice time, and whether everybody knows where their blocking assignment is when they line up. Yeah, it still works. Can it get us at least 3 wins out of the stretch of Illinois/Northwestern/Purdue/Michigan State? That's the question for me.

Hudson Card has put up some good passing numbers in a couple games they've played, but they're 1-3 with their only win coming against a Virginia Tech team that is also 1-3. Hopefully our nickel-ish defense matches up against these guys really well. Beating them is something we have to do this year.

I just want to make it clear that I personally don't think Sims was benched for the LA Tech game. Assuming Sims doesn't clearly get injured again in the Michigan game, I think we'll learn all we need to know about what this staff thinks of the situation with who takes the first snap against Illinois. So naturally, that makes pretty much all of this handwringing over how bad Haarberg is kind of pointless for me; he's the backup. I don't have too much interest in furthering this part of the discussion, Husker03, but I'm pretty sure that these two things are incompatible: and: "Not a Division I QB" to me would mean he couldn't play at even the worst Sun Belt team. Really it sounds like you're actually arguing that he's not good enough to be the starter for a Big 10 team. Which is fine, and maybe you're actually right. But they're two different things.

You'd think this is accurate, yeah. It maybe doesn't even have much to do with what we're doing now in strength training versus what we were doing before. It's probably just more practice time being spent on simulating game play. So weird to me that Frost was weak in that area, of all people as our head coach. Pretty dumb.

Man. We should have done so much better against Colorado. Ugh.

When I hit 'Submit' on my post, I knew somebody would be chiming in with that. Took all of like three minutes. Both guys have had some pretty bad moments in the passing game. And it's fine to say we've seen enough of both of them to say neither of them makes the grade in the passing game. I honestly don't have strong opinions about who should be the starter against Illinois (the Michigan game basically doesn't exist to me because it's an automatic "L"). My prediction is that it'll be Sims because I think Rhule's ego will have him going with his big offseason transfer portal guy. Either way, I think against Illinois you come out the first drive of the game with either guy and use him like a battering ram with QB Power's and zone read keepers and you see if it moves the chains. But after a couple of drives if it doesn't, you can't just ask either one of them to drop back and throw a bunch as the only alternative. Our entire offense - including the QB's - just don't execute it well.

When he's in a designed drop back, "stand in the pocket and scan the field" kind of play, no. I don't. But he's been better with play action. Same basic answer applies to Sims, even though I feel like I haven't even really seen all that much of Sims' passing game. He of course has been bad on a few plays of throwing to guys that are covered, which is basically the worst thing a QB can do in the passing game. What I'm talking about though is quick hitting pass plays and not slow developing ones where either QB has to read coverages and scan multiple routes. This is where good coaching comes in. It's finding a middle ground between what they can't do that's in the playbook now and just running handoffs out of 22 man personnel all game long.

When we get into the stretch of Illinois/Northwester/Purdue/Michigan State, as long as we have no major injuries on either side of the ball we'll be in each of those games. I think one really big thing on offense in those games is lining up in the 12 man personnel sets but finding some creativity that we haven't shown on film up to that point, or just line up with single tight end & 3 guys wide and try to work the ball out quickly in the passing game. I'm not entirely convinced that we're running the play mix we're running because the coaches have zero faith in our passing game, I think they just really want this kind of "grind it out" offense. Bring something to the table in that stretch of the season that teams haven't seen & prepared for.

I wonder whether or not Oregon's coach really knew he was being filmed in his pregame speech to his team before the game, or whether he thought through whether it would go viral one way or another. But either way, LOL...top tier trash talk. Like, insulting towards Deion on a level that was so satisfying. Amazing stuff. Haha.

+1, just came here to say this. If Anthony Grant gets hurt in this game I'm going to lose it!

I'll just say this, 'Husk: I don't think Rhule really cares what fans think of his decisions 5/12 of the way through his first season on an 8 year contract with $66M in guaranteed money. So again, I think we know a lot more with who starts against Illinois.

Yeah, because the Michigan game is basically an automatic loss, you can't decipher too much about Rhule's preference for QB1 with who starts that game. But you will be able to in week 6 against Illinois.

Is he the starter though, or is Sims still not 100%? I tend to think that in Rhule's mind, Haarberg is the backup.