Undone

Just goes to show that turnovers, penalties, and special teams are really what has made us 0-4 instead of 3-1. One guy rushes for 170 yards and we had 582 yards of offense against Purdue. If you knew those stats ahead of time you'd swear it's a win for the 'skers for sure...but all of the stupid penalties and constantly being negative in the turnover margin is killing us. Devine was a real champ on Saturday.

We could easily put up 24-30 points on offense with Martinez looking as healthy as he did against Purdue but if we don't play a run-fit defense where our backers stay the f*** in their spaces Wisconsin will put up 55+.

But here's the thing though - For the past five seasons we've been somewhere around 22nd - 32nd. But we are definitely not the 22nd - 32nd best team in the country. We're an 0-4 dumpster fire. Part of the lack of correlation there between our recruiting averages and our current team's position in the national conversation may stem from the fact that it seems that Riley's recruiting was offense-heavy. But Bo's last season and Riley's two classes were pretty weak defensively. No offense to our guys but you see that plainly out on the field. Bootle, Barry, and Williams are really the only above average and athletic guys on the starting 11.

Good description there. Ferguson might have made an impact against Purdue, but we weren't really lining up in a formation to use him. Although personally I'd even play him over Young...but that's another story.

Way too early to call Lindsey a bust, IMO.

I really do agree. Purdue has and will continue to scorch other teams this season through the air. Since there aren't really many other competitive teams in the B1G that play this offensive scheme I'm not too worried about it as far as how it impacts us. Bootle played really well and Jackson was much improved. I'm just going to say though that outside of Barry I've been disappointed with our linebacker play in games 2-4.

In the first half there were a lot of play calls where he was being asked to just stand there in the pocket in slow developing pass plays and read downfield routes. The problem with that: our offensive line. I would have liked to have seen more of the high percentage ways to get our receivers involved in the first half, like quick outs and jet sweeps to Spielman, etc. Or RPOs where Martinez rolls quickly to the edge of the field; there are a lot of those in the playbook and you saw it a lot with Milton at UCF.

Maybe need a little positivity this morning. Martinez was so good yesterday. I think he has as much total potential as just about any Husker true freshman quarterback of the last 30 years. He threw for 323 yards and ran for 91. We had 582 yards of total offense - the third time we had more offensive yards than the other team out of four games. This kid is extremely special and it kind of feels like it's getting drowned out by being 0-4, but it shouldn't. I could watch this clip all day: I mean...wow. Talk about having the whole package. As a true freshman. He releases the ball knowing Spielman is going to beat his man and drops it into the only spot that allows Spielman to haul it in. Pretty incredible stuff in my opinion.

The safety is just being where he's supposed to be. They outcoached us on this play, hard. They drew up a play to empty out the middle of the field. I don't know what the answer is.

This could definitely be it, but then it's on Chinander to get the guys lined up in more of a true 3-4 so that there are bodies occupying the middle of the field against a spread offense that you know is trying to just hurl eligible receivers downfield.

Ok, one more here. You guys, this is the kind of mindless play from Young that is just absolutely KILLING our team. It is so mind boggling: He HAS TO be aware of what's going on. He has to pick up that tight end. Watch what he does - he seriously gets sucked down towards A FREAKING LINEMAN. He seriously steps down into that space to try to defend...an offense lineman...who can't touch the ball... Barry does a great job and sees a receiver swinging wide and picks him up. But Young should have stayed in his area to pick up an open man but instead does who the f*** even knows what... If Young is better than anyone else that can take that ILB spot then I just don't even know what to say except to just drink heavily to pass the time and wait for the next two recruiting classes to hopefully be great on defense.

Here's a play from their drive that pretty much put the game out of reach. Really needed to stop them on this one. This play is the epitome of the whole day: Again it's Gifford as a stand-up lineman on the edge. He gets completely muscled by their tackle. We blitzed Young. Great call by Chinander to do that, but they block well and Blough stands there with zero pressure as he scans the field. You can't expect your secondary to just cover everybody perfectly on every play. There was improvement by our secondary in this one IMO. But the lack of a pass rush lets them just methodically toss the ball down the field. One thing I'll say is that there aren't many teams like Purdue in the West. To get into a place where we're winning our division we need to be good against the run. We saw flashes of actually being really, really good against the run against Colorado. To say it just one more time...we didn't have a single guy step up as an individual pass rusher yesterday and it really killed us.

Lining up in a true 3-4 formation doesn't do much against a spread offense if your outside linebackers aren't fast enough to keep up with slot receivers and fast tight ends that you know are going to be sprinting downfield to get open. And ours definitely aren't fast enough. So what Chinander did was good. It was really more of a 4-3 where sometimes it was a guy like Gifford acting as a stand-up lineman. Pelini used Eric Martin like that with good success. It's a good tactic. That way, you've got a guy that's still reasonably fast (Gifford) that can drop back into pass coverage if they line up four guys wide. To your point though, there are still some question marks in my mind surrounding why we looked so different scheme-wise against Purdue than we did against Colorado. It's not like Blough/Moore is any better of a combination than Montez/Shenault.

+1. I didn't expect our offense to struggle this much because I really felt like Frost's system had some high-percentage ways of getting the ball to Morgan, Spielman, and Lindsay in space. On defense I expected to essentially see more or less a repeat of last season. The best part of the things Frost said after the game last night about knowing what it takes to be great is the he does actually know what it takes. It'll happen.

In the Colorado game our front seven looked very physical. In the following three games they didn't. Our offensive line looked pretty physical against Colorado. Against Troy and Michigan they didn't, but against Purdue there were three drives where all five guys actually looked really physical, like they were on a mission to put some guys on their back. Against Purdue, a total failure on offense during the entire second quarter coupled with a lack of individual pass rushing efforts on defense lost the game. I'm past any kind of blame right now and am more interested in trying to analyze what this team needs to do to win games. And my answer is more consistency on offense (both from an execution and play calling standpoint) combined with better individual effort on defense.

Here's their first play on offense. We saw them line up like this all day. It's not as much of a "Mack Brown at Texas Spread" formation but it's in the same ball park and you know what they're going to do on most plays and that is sit there and let Blough scan through reads: One guys motions to the right side of the field and lines up in the slot. You know he's going downfield. Barry sees him and picks him up. Then their running back goes out as a checkdown man. Well, Young has to pick him up and does. So it's three Husker down linemen plus Gifford as a standup lineman versus five Boilermaker linemen. Again, we saw this formation all day. During the game I was upset with Chinander for not blitzing a corner now and then but honestly I think I'm going to go back on that. You can't really do that with a QB that puts the ball on a dime and just pray your safeties help. I mean, you can do it a couple times per game but you can't do it all day or they'd have scored 50+. Translation - we don't have an actual pass rusher and we need one badly. Our secondary was definitely better in this one and that is a serious comment. Our corners played much better. Our offense should have put up 45 points yesterday...but that's for another thread.

What really sucks here is that Purdue will probably just barely make a bowl game.

Martinez is so composed and cycles through his reads quickly. If he just had good pass blocking this offense would actually be good right now!

Rock bottom may or may not be next week. But one thing's for sure...Wisconsin is going to score over 40 points and they will put a punctuation mark on this absolute disaster of a team and season.

The only difference between this defense in this game and the 12 games we watched last year is that we're lined up in a different scheme. Rush the quarterback with your corners, Chinander. Do something differently. Because what you're doing now isn't working.

Scott...throw the f****** ball quickly into the spaces that their blitzers create. Stop calling slow developing pass plays!!!! Our line isn't good enough to execute those plays!

I didn't think our defense could actually be worse than it was last season, but I think it actually is. Pretty much the only hope here is for Martinez to just light it up now.

We're basically playing against Colorado 2.0 in this game. Where is the aggressive blitzing we saw in that game?

You have got to be kidding me with Dedrick Young. How is he still starting? We're basically playing in Nickel. How is Young in there over Gifford in Nickel????

Yeah, I was being a little bit sarcastic.