Undone

Reread that sentence. It doesn't make any sense. Inflation infers expecting too much. You just described expecting too little.

So in terms of raw talent, are we: -Much less talented than Purdue -Slightly less talented than Purdue -Equally as talented as Purdue -Slightly more talented than Purdue -Much more talented that Purdue ?? I'd go with 'slightly more talented than Purdue.' But will Purdue allow itself to get blown out this season? We'll see. And we'll see how we actually play against them this weekend.

Aaron Williams, but that's probably his assignment. Seems like Young is supposed to protect that gap...but gets himself out of position by basically lurching forward into a space where nobody is before the play really even starts developing.

I think you're focusing too much on the coach speak that Frost gives to the media. It's as if there's a huge portion of the fan base that can't distinguish between a healthy level of confidence mixed with coach speak and taking what a coach says as gospel. It's a weird phenomenon. If you've let what Frost says inflate your expectations, isn't that on you?

I'm not sure that actually makes sense. The teams that consistently finish in the top 10-15 in national recruiting rankings usually are ranked somewhere in that range by seasons' end. I totally agree that we have a definite talent disadvantage against Michigan...but not to the degree that we should be down 39-0 at halftime. They didn't even put up 56 against Western Michigan and SMU...who rank unbelievably lower than we do in national recruiting rankings. Losing 56-10 was honestly pretty surprising. I realize a lot of people are still emotional from that shellacking yesterday and are saying that it wasn't surprising...but the level of talent we have on defense should not have allowed them to put up 39 points in the first half. There are things that are fixable even this season to correct some of the issues we have. I don't believe we have the talent level of Western Michigan or SMU...that's honestly a ridiculous notion.

I'm trying to understand the point you were trying to make with those two sentences. Here are our last five seasons' recruiting rankings according to 247: 2014 --#35 2015 -- #30 2016 -- #26 2017 -- #23 2018 -- #23 This may not be the only way to evaluate "talent," but defining talent is hard. This is a fairly objective way to do it. We shouldn't be as bad as we are against the run. I'm much less worried about the offense because Martinez is a true freshman and he's injured. If Chinander is a good defensive coach - and there's good evidence that suggests that he is - this team should see some significant improvement by the end of the season. I have quite a bit of faith that it can.

Yeah. And I'm not saying that Chinander shouldn't have brought his 3-4 scheme to Lincoln. Not saying that at all. The Patriots have played a lot of 3-4 in the past several years and there are many parallels there; the NFL is pretty much nothing but downhill running, similar to how the B1G is mainly downhill running. Bo would always make it sound like his linebackers and corners had to do a calculus equation prior to the snap in order to know where to play to. Again, when I watch just an average Big 10 team's defense playing that's not what I see happening. It's more "zone" in nature. And this makes sense in a downhill running conference (with the exception of some of Ohio State's zone read offense, etc.). I'm pretty interested in seeing how many rushing yards and points Michigan puts up against Northwestern this weekend.

I rarely create threads but wanted a discussion around this particular topic. Here we are again. Michigan blocked and executed well yesterday; I think they have to get credit there for sure. But here's their first play from scrimmage on offense: Yes, I realize that we edge blitzed and that it was a bit unlucky there because then there's one less guy in the flat for run support. But seriously...there's Dedrick Young again. Biting into a spot where nothing is happening. Looking flat-footed. And then just jogging towards the play (at first) when he thinks the guy is past him and that somebody else will make the tackle. Then he speeds up...but it's too late. This is pretty much the same formation that we were lined up in on Troy's last two plays where not having three linebackers between the hashes is risky. So they found this play that just zips through the B gap. And then they did it over and over and humiliated us with it. I've asked this question of anyone that will listen now for 5+ seasons - Why can't we look at the film of what every other team in the top half of the conference does on defense to stop the run and emulate that? When I watch Purdue, for example, I see a team who coaches their linebackers to stay in position in the center of the field. This is a run-centric conference, after all. And Michigan is a run-first, hit-you-with-play-action team. I don't claim to know more than Chinander and Frost about drawing up a defense. But I can watch the film and see what's happening. If we don't do something different against Wisconsin, they will do the same thing. This is partially a scheme issue and not just an effort issue (but there are some guys on defense where effort is a problem).

Here are a couple of true statements that are hopefully helpful in assessing where our offense is without being accused of "making excuses": 1. Adrian Martinez is a true freshman that technically hasn't played one full game of football while being 100% healthy. 2. Frost's offense relies on a truly dual-threat quarterback. Now, on to some opinions and some guesses: -If he doesn't get hurt against Colorado, the odds of us holding the lead we had were probably extremely high. -If he plays against Troy, we win that game. -If he's 100% against Michigan, we see more variety of plays from him in the first quarter. The thing I'm most worried about right now is some especially bad/not smart play by the defense at times against the run. It's as if at some in the middle of the 4th quarter against Troy the stout run defense we had seen for the past 7.5 quarters just went out the window.

I lol'd, @Landlord. "Landlord's Theses: A Meta-Commentary on Huskerboard Threads."

Looks like Wisconsin wins 28-17. Hopefully there can be some kind of discussion in this thread and not just pissing and moaning. :) Last year I looked up the stats of the last 15 years of head-to-head matchups between Wisconsin & Iowa. Wisconsin never mustered more than 37 against the Hawkeyes. In yet, we've been blown out by Wisconsin multiple times. Chinander has two weeks to inspire a starting lineup of 11 guys to stop Wisconsin's run game. Two weeks to figure out how to prevent out ILBs from biting on the motion man and getting out of position. Wisconsin will look at the film of this Michigan game and give us hell...if we let them. We have the asses up front and the physicality from our linebackers to match up against the Vagers. Just need an inspired group of 11 defenders to play their assignments.

Pretty great. Have to see the lighter side of things right now to keep the sanity!

We have zero vertical threat when there's no protection. We've tried to throw outside, and we've tried to run outside. Didn't work. So normally you'd go vertical at that point, but we just can't do that when there's no protection. Conrad is really struggling. The whole offensive line is.

It was some especially bad line play today. Conrad & Foster are struggling. Badly. If our offensive line play doesn't improve greatly in conference play, getting to five wins could be pretty difficult.

I can't get my head around how bad Wisconsin could exploit this type of run inside the left tackle. Like, beyond brutal.

I'll be disappointed in Frost if Jackson doesn't get benched against Purdue. Sweet f****** hell. Wow.

Dedrick Young does not deserve one. There are some seniors that just aren't good enough to be on this team with the goals we have. Honestly I'd probably bench Conrad and bring in fresh blood for experience right away.

In terms of Gebbia transferring, I think he just wanted to go play on a team with a better offensive line.

Agreed. Hopefully Frost & Co. gleaned a lot of things from watching the tape from Troy. My thought is, if it's 3rd & 2 and Ozigbo's in there, play action, roll out, and throw it to him into the flat, etc., etc. There were so many things that went wrong in the fourth quarter offensively against Troy.

Yeah... I think as Knapp and others alluded to either earlier in this thread or another thread was that the play calling also probably should have been a bit different in these situations. Combining that with how we seemed kind of one-dimensional with Bunch in the game, we just needed something different.

Yep. I thought about this a lot this week. It seems that one limiting factor is that we try to "go fast." I have a feeling Frost isn't going to budge on that and probably isn't going to be very likely to slow it down and get Ozigbo on the field in these situations. Probably only for goal line situations. I had the same exact thought after it happened a couple of times - "Why isn't Ozigbo taking these 3rd & short runs?"

This should play from the correct starting point. Watch the block that Frost throws on a reverse to Newcombe:

LOL. Ryan Reynolds The ESPN Analyst...I'm growing a hypothetical, irrational dislike for him just thinking about it...

It could hypothetically mean that Jim Harbaugh has AIDS, it really could.

I was just going to say that same thing, Hilltop. It's possible that Harbaugh's biggest hurdle is the constant and seemingly unstoppable recruiting boon that Ohio State has and will probably have for the foreseeable future. Ohio State has won the last six head-to-head games, and somehow I just don't see that trend changing any time soon. I'm interested in seeing how Michigan plays against both Penn State and Wisconsin this season.