Undone

Interesting, I don't think I would have said that. I'd say Haarberg's & Sims' abilities are on the same level in both the running and passing category. So I'd guess that there weren't really any plays that were added or subtracted for Haarberg. Now maybe Rhule & Satterfield sat down and decided on a couple plays to up the percentage on and a couple to lower the percentage on in the actual game calls. Maybe.

First off I do really agree on Ricky getting the easy part of the schedule. It's not even debatable really - good point. To the second part, there hasn't been a complete lack of creativity in my opinion. Not sure if you were talking about the Michigan State game or the season as a whole. In the MSU game we had a reverse that got a decent gain. We've had some jet sweeps from Kemp in the red zone this year that worked the ball closer to the end zone. In the first half against MSU on Saturday we had two drives in the first half where 1st down was a called passing play. I think one might have resulted in a sack and one was an incomplete pass (or maybe both were incomplete passes, I could go back and look). But those got us behind the sticks. I actually think Satterfield might have gone away from the run a bit when it was working in the first half. We wound up with a lower run/pass ratio than what we've averaged for the season.

Yep. There's so much positive happening but a lot of people are missing it or just don't want to focus on it. The thing about the constant dissecting of Haarberg's performances is that the guy was the backup coming into this season. I wish his passing acumen was higher but it just isn't. But nevertheless we just might pull off the best season we've had in 6 years. If we were to get a good-to-great QB in here for next season this program might actually be pretty good again.

Yeah @lo country, I don't know. I felt earlier in the season that Maryland is just better than we are and I still do. Wisconsin might actually be the most winnable game of these last three.

Butler needs to have a hell of a big game getting pressure.

How in the hell does Caleb Williams even put up these numbers? Guy threw for a 77% completion rate and 312 yards. Then USC rushes for another 203 yards...but they have no defense and lose 52-42. Man.

Wisconsin keeps having these games where they actually put up a decent amount of yards but really don't walk away with that many points. They had 344 yards of offense in their 20-14 loss to Indiana today (who racked up 261 on offense). Obviously being -2 in the turnover margin was probably the difference maker. Really surprised they lost to Indiana and Iowa.

I was thinking about this. Our defense holding them to 20 points in a road game is definitely not terrible. Our pass blocking at times was pretty bad and Haarberg was missing throws. For me this one was on the offense; gotta be able to average like 6 points per quarter at least.

Agreed. I'd love it for Chubba if he could come in and contribute to a win or two in these last three. But I'm assuming he's just not looking very good in practice.

Well I don't know about you, but I'd rather see him just scrambling than throwing into coverage like he did multiple times today. Agree here. His brain is clearly rattled if he can't just stand there with a four yard forcefield of a bubble. And even then he'll miss passes he just shouldn't. His 42% completion rate today is just plain awful. I do think though that Satterfield (or "Scatterfield," as the NBS guy said multiple times) was going to the play action call a bit too early in the first half. We'd get Johnson going and then instead of just running those same plays until the defense stopped us we'd call a pass on 1st & 10, it'd be incomplete, and then we were setup for 3rd & long. That really, really bothers me. Yes, the players have to execute whatever is called, blah blah blah. As good as I think Satt is doing with what he has, I think he's a little too into trying to outsmart the opposing DC sometimes. We had a 59% run/pass ratio today so all in all I can't say that the mix we had was bad and I know we can't just run it 80% of our plays.

Fixed that for you. Defense had been extremely good coming into this one in the previous three. I also saw some pretty bad pass blocking today. I know Ricky had the one scramble that setup the late TD, but I wish his instincts were a little better to just tuck it & run when the pass isn't there.

Yeah it's a seriously pathetic game.

The Iowa vs. Northwestern game is seriously so bad. So. Bad.

This is total loser talk and also just incorrect. But, we're not going to win the division so it doesn't matter.

Haarberg with some seriously terrible numbers passing the ball. 42% completion and 2 INT's. Alante Brown's pass was one of the key plays of the game. Satterfield went away from the run a bit in the first half when it was working, that was frustrating. But ultimately Haarberg just threw the ball into coverage, overthrew guys, and just played bad for pretty much four straight quarters. Now also our defense didn't have the kind of game they'd had in the past three. Michigan State probably came into that game as the best 2-6 team in the country. Not that that's saying very much, but at least their QB had some skill.

Ricky has to stop throwing it to guy's that are covered. And Satterfield should probably let up on the called passes on 1st downs. We're getting into so many 3rd & longs and that's not where you want Haarberg. Coaching needs to make some small tweaks here at halftime.

I have a theory that the lower & middle tier B1G teams focus more resources on defense than on offense compared to a couple of the other Power 5 conferences. I can't prove that in any way but that's just my eyeball test take. So, if you play teams who consistently have better offenses or have proportionally better defenses, does it matter? I don't think it does, it's the same. You kind of have to wait until bowl season to get more clarity as teams from different conferences play each other (but even that's a small sample size of data). But I do think Minnesota, Illinois, & Purdue are worse than last year. By how much? Eh, not by that much, outside of Purdue. Northwestern is actually better.

Allow me to translate Hamad's statement: Without that, and at the rate the "war" is going currently, Palestine itself might completely cease to exist by New Year's if Israel really wanted to. Analysts that were in-the-know knew this. Hamas' goals could not possibly succeed unless this thing matastasizes into at minimum a major regional war. Hamas = f***** up wackos with even more insane priorities

So, what then? It's just luck that we're about to have the best season in six years? So I hear you defending Scott Frost with this comment then, right? Scott didn't have any problems with culture and that's why he had that great... *checks notes* ...34% winning percentage? Mentioning Riley's temperament compared to Bo like you did is a huge fail, because Bo was actually a good coach. So you can see why it has nothing to do with the Rhule/Frost comparisons, because Frost was hammered dog s***.

Great stuff. I think you're exactly right with the bold. Scott took for granted what "Step 1" should have really looked like.

One of the more knowledgeable football people I know IRL is a co-worker. Enjoy talking 'skers ball with him. It was probably either heading into year 2 or year 3 of Frost's tenure that he said, referring to what the local beat writers were talking about heading into that season, "I'm sick of talking about culture; just play the damn games." Fair statement. But holy cow. When I listen to Butler and I see what the coaches are doing and specifically Rhule, it's like the team's psychology & culture has really done a 180° turnaround. Culture was a big problem. It seems like this team just cares more about winning and more specifically, not losing. They just really don't want to lose. Yes, several coaches are big upgrades over Frost & his guys so obviously they're just being coached better from a football perspective. But the culture is really heading in the right direction now.

I think this speaks to his athletic gifting. He's huge and he's got some speed, and you put those things together with the decent offensive coaching staff that we seem to have and you get decent stats like this. But on the other hand - and I know he didn't play at all in the first game and then not much in the second game - where do those total yards of roughly 1,300 really rank him against other QB's? Not very high. Just an observation. I think this is the pitfall of these run-first guys; he has left so many passing yards on the table just in the 6 games he's played.

Totally agree, dude. And before anybody thinks it's just some kind of automatic thing that a portal QB comes in and does better than anybody on the roster now...I present to you Jeff Sims. Different train of thought: I think despite the stats, Hudson Card is a pretty good QB. Guy was zipping passes in to people all day long and the receivers were dropping them. I expect Kaelin to be similar to him - a "throw-first" guy who can run a little zone read to mix it up when you really want to.

Agreed. I feel like in that first offensive series against Northern Illinois, Haarberg planted his feet and decisively bolted up field with intensity. In the last two games I haven't seen very much of that. He's looked a bit hesitant to pick a lane and dart through it to me, but maybe I'm wrong there. I'm a huge fan of outside tosses. They're a play that can open up lanes and they generally make it fairly easy for your run blockers to see who they need to chip and where they need to be to make a block. I'd rather see Emmett Johnson or Fleeks taking an outside toss and seeing what happens over Haarberg curling out pretty slowly to run the option.

I legitimately love this.