Undone

No arguments on our schedule being the easiest it's been in many seasons. I just didn't feel like there was any indication heading into this year that we were any different than the lame teams we're playing. I felt confident there'd be good improvement on defense, and I'd say my expectations have actually been surpassed there.

Fair enough. I guess I understand believing it could possible, as in "10-2 would be our ceiling in a best-case scenario." But I can't honestly see expecting to have gone 10-2 this year coming off a 3-9 year in 2021 and a 4-8 season last year. Our defense is playing well enough to maybe get us there, but I predicted the offense would be worse than last year.

Yeah I don't really see how any sober person asks "how did we not go 10-2." The schedule was weak, but I'm not sure who would have thought we could do that even if we didn't have huge injuries.

When Iowa got their starting RB back, they definitely got a big boost (relatively speaking). They're not going to be easy to beat. We just have to keep working on becoming the more physical team. If we do that week by week we'll be ready to win that one.

This is a good thread. I remember on this board after the Georgia Southern loss last season that people were saying we had no talent whatsoever on the D line and the linebackers weren't athletic enough and we needed to completely clean out the current roster on defense to be good. Those people got proved wrong this year. Honestly, even just Bill Busch's influence made it significantly better than where Chinander had things heading into that Northwestern game in 2022. Our roster heading into fall camp this season (especially before Betts announced he was leaving for the second time) was better than it is right now. I think having Rahmir out is a pretty underrated loss, and so is not having Ervin. And now Washington is hurt. I think we had a couple coaching errors in the Minnesota game that played a part in that loss. But I don't think it's like we would have beaten even Colorado with some all star cast of offensive coaches. So, it's mainly players.

I think if the offense builds off of what we did in the Illinois game we could have enough of a product to get at least 3 out of these last 6 games. We were pretty close to actually blowing them out, but we missed a field goal (which is a problem) and then fumbled in the 4th quarter. But the tactics & play calling and overall execution played out well with Rhule's high level goal of wearing the opponent down by the 4th quarter, we just made some mistakes that didn't capitalize on what got us up to that point. I liked what Satterfield did in that game. I'm with Husker in WI in still having some doubts about him, but if we build on that game and tighten up the false starts & turnovers this offense is probably doing pretty well for who we have to work with.

We want to win it because winning things is good.

@Gage County: Did you really invent the Sharkwater at Cliff's though?

Yeah but that's kind of dumb. It was basically them just downing the ball in practice.

Yep. We somehow found a way even against Illinois to go -1 in the turnover margin. Frustrating. It was cool to actually make a couple field goals, though.

Iowa's offensive stats in their 20-14 win over Purdon't: Iowa Passing C/ATT YDS AVG TD INT QBR Deacon Hill 6/21 110 5.2 1 1 2 TEAM TOTAL 6/21 110 5.2 1 1 -- Iowa Rushing CAR YDS AVG TD LONG Kaleb Johnson 17 134 7.9 1 67 Leshon Williams 13 74 5.7 0 17 Seth Anderson 1 4 4 0 4 Team 2 -6 -3 0 0 Deacon Hill 2 -25 -12.5 0 0 TEAM TOTAL 35 181 5.2 1 67 That 28% completion and QBR of "2," tho...

Irrespective of the conversation about our chances of winning the West, if we beat Northwestern (which we should be favored to do) I think the team's confidence is higher than it's been since the 2016 season. Maybe that helps calm down some of the stuff that's possibly happening because guys are just so scared to make mistakes out there (some of the earlier false starts come to mind).

And Northern Illinois with that curb stomping of Akron!

Yes but the conversation was originally about completion percentage. So it does matter in that context quite a bit; if your team throws a ton of those passes each game, completion % is higher. As an aside, people would use this against Adrian quite a bit when others would defend his passing ability.

Yeah, I've been saying this for a couple weeks also. It kind of seems like Satterfield or Rhule like the tunnel screens on third down occasionally, but they don't seem to like them all that much on 1st & 2nd down. Which is fine; I get that Matt wants to be the more physical team, and running downhill gets you to that place where you're wearing your opponent out by the beginning of the 4th quarter a bit better. But I think the point is, those easier throws pump up the completion % (like @ColoradoHusk was mentioning).

I think Mavric might have been talking about designed quick passes though, not check-down outlets.

Yep. I think he went to Brady's QB coach's camp in the offseason before that year and he said he had a completion % goal of 70%. He didn't get there, but he threw for 37% more yards than in his sophomore season, had the most rushing yards of any of his years, and had 3,890 total yards.

The handwringing over things that went wrong in the Illinois game have really subsided for me at this point. I think we were what, 3.5 point underdogs heading into that (road) game? And we won by 13. Should have been a 16 win if not for the missed field goal. We smashed the spread and made their offense look stupid all night. That's worth a lot. I think the frustration is that we all know if a couple mistakes made by players not named Ricky Haarberg hadn't happened in the Minnesota game, we're 4-2 right now, looking at absolutely the best season we've had in 6 years. Thing is...we're still probably looking at the best season in 6 years either way. I'm currently enjoying the ride and I like what Rhule has been doing in terms of actually coaching the team. Yeah, I wish we had gotten some magical Quinn Ewers or somebody like that out of the portal, but we didn't.

So it's natural to pick a final record and say that "8-4" or "9-3" or "7-5" or <_fill_in_the_blank> is what constitutes year one success. Everybody's going to have different opinions on what record defines year one success. I think that I'd want to look at success also as fixing the stuff the guy before him did/didn't do, at least somewhat independent of the final record. So for me that's: Not honing in on defense Basically neglecting special teams Not practicing in such a way that we become more physical and game-ready That third one is huge, but Frost also screwed the pooch on the first two. There are 6 more games to play and I don't really know how to predict how many of the back half we'll win. But for me Rhule has already shown that he actually knows how to fix those 3 things above. And that's huge.

I really love having one Friday night game each season. It's fun.

Maryland is currently the best team on the remaining schedule, and you're alluding to that in your post. Minnesota probably won't be in the running. And I think we'll beat Iowa if we stay healthy. But the problem is that even if we beat Wisconsin they still might be on top of the West leaderboard because of their easy cross-divisional schedule this year.

Haven't really seen anybody saying that, either on this board or anywhere else. I think this is accurate.

Say it again with me now: Most likely, in Rhule's mind Haarberg is the backup QB. So, he's really not "THE guy."

I'm not saying you're wrong that there's at minimum some kind of subconscious bias towards Ricky because he's from Nebraska. But just a couple thoughts. When your team wins, the post game commentary from fans will generally trend more positive than negative, right? And when you lose, it's the opposite. Well, Sims is 0-2. Yes, he maybe played 2 better teams than Ricky has. But still, Heinrich is 3-1 as a starter so it tends to change the bias. That said, we probably wouldn't be winning any division titles with Haarberg having been the starter from week 1 anyway, he'd have a long ways to go to be a "good" or "great" QB.

Having lost to Minnesota doesn't change anything in relation to us still controlling our destiny in the West. Just makes it way harder to win it. The Gophers play Michigan tonight and then Ohio State towards the end of the year. So they'll start racking up the losses there. But Wisconsin gets the easy route by drawing Rutgers & Indiana for their cross divisional game. The other one is Ohio State, but they're so lucky on Rutgers & Indiana.