Undone

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.

Dude, I laughed pretty hard. Haha!

Out of the Big 10 as a whole, Michigan State is not a program that I could find very hateable. On paper there's very little between our two programs in the big picutre. But two years ago we rolled in there in primetime with a QB that the majority of our fan base didn't like. We were up by 7 late in the 4th quarter and then punted the ball to the wrong side of the field and squandered yet another win in the Frost era. Maybe this game doesn't mean much for most people but I hope we embarrass these f******. I don't care if they have much to play for or what else is going on. It's a road game and if we win by 2 scores I'll be pounding beers.

Link?

I almost can't believe anybody's mad about anything in this thread. We're on the cusp of having the best season in 6 years.

Nice.

What's extra funny honestly is that's a description of Iowa's program for so many seasons now. It was high time we started playing good defense. We put up 24 points of offense which was the most we've had in a conference game this year. So I'm not sure that this is the game to come down really hard on Satterfield. We were 1 point underdogs according to Vegas, so put up 31 points total and win by 17? Pretty great. The decision to put Sims in was probably Rhule's (but I haven't listened to his post game presser yet).

When we called two straight pass plays instead of hand-off's to Johnson there in the 4th, that was a bad coaching decision. And when Rhule put Sims in the game, that wound up being a pretty bad decision, too. But we still put up 24 points on offense. We just keep finding ways to win, and Rhule gets the credit there in my opinion.

Michigan State might be just slightly better than Purdue (who might be the worst team in the B1G), but they're still a pretty terrible team. Like Purdue they're now 2-6 after today. They played one great non-conference team (Washington) and lost that one, obviously. But then their only two wins were against Central Michigan & Richmond. They're terrible, and they don't have a conference win yet.

Yep. He's just out there with a "deer in the headlights" thing going on.

The body language of our players seems to say that they're more invested in what's happening than we've seen in several seasons. I know we saw some good cohesion at times with Frost's guys, but Rhule seems to have the team in a place where they just have a lot of pride in not losing. 24 points on offense in a conference game is some decent improvement. And the heads up special teams TD and the 55 yard FG were kind of icing on the cake on the whole thing. Rhule has to start getting a little more humble and honest with himself about what his offensive players can & can't do. When Sims came in for just a few plays it was a train wreck. Man.

Yep. I'd probably take some kind of double reverse trick play over seeing this much more on 1st down.