Undone

You & @Nebfanatic are making really good arguments here and I think I'm convinced at this point that you're both right. Because Colorado and Troy are probably roughly on the same level. And that level is "decent." I'll bet that Colorado winds up 7-5 and Troy competes hard for another conference title. And against Colorado we pounded them for 377 on the ground. Let's get a healthy Adrian Martinez back out there and things change.

I believe I had seen that we had a good body weight differential against Troy's defensive line (*Edit - @knapplc just posted the stats, thanks!). My comment was directed probably more at that in the 'we should be able to push them around' comment than in terms of just general expectations of Husker Homer. There were some extremely well-executed run plays against Colorado where pretty much all of our primary blockers did just that - executed the play to perfection. Particularly on several of the Martinez runs. Against Troy, kind of as you stated, there seemed to have been several things not happening.

Yep. One thing that would give our team a huge boost one way or the other would be a healthy Martinez that goes out there and allows our offense to open up. The playbook against Troy felt kind of limited with Bunch in the game (even though that's hard to prove) and it's honestly fairly depressing thinking about what Michigan's defense is capable of doing against our vanilla run game. If Troy held us to under 20 points...sheesh. And just to end with at least one positive note, I really think we can beat Wisconsin with a healthy Martinez...so if he's in a spot where playing full speed on Saturday aggravates the injury, don't play him. We could still win the West this season. We really could.

Good post. The main observation I have in the Troy game is that our offensive line was pretty ineffective in the fourth quarter at muscling Troy off the line. Something has to give there, and I'm not sure I care whether it was the heat, our strength being an issue, our conditioning being an issue, or whatever. I expect this offensive line to perform better in the fourth quarter against a Sun Belt team no matter what and it just wasn't good enough. I'd almost go as far as to say it was borderline poor. Going to have to continue to improve that unit for conference play if we want to avoid a losing record.

Without a perfectly healthy Adrian Martinez that is firing on all cylinders I don't see how we score more than roughly 14-17 points, and I'd definitely expect them to average at least seven points per quarter against our defense. We're huge underdogs in this one for several different reasons.

Well, what are all teams' records when going in as an underdog of 10.5 points or more? Probably somewhere along the same percentage of 6.6% (1/15), I'd wager.

Yep. And not criticizing Martinez at all, but if he swings to the sideline it might have even gone further. Great play either way.

Am I crazy for believing that Will Honas should replace Dedrick Young and play alongside Mo 'The Body' Barry on Saturday? Is that crazy?

I can sleep at night now, thank you.

Totally agree. I would never presume to know more about what each player's assignments were on any given play than Frost himself...but that last touchdown drive they had was pathetic defense. I'm told that I was incorrect that Young was to blame on that touchdown run and that Reed was supposed to cover the middle but holy crap...there was nobody home in the middle at all. I really believe that Chinander is going to produce a really great run defense - even as early as this season. But there are a couple guys who just don't read the field well at all still. Need to correct that. Overall though - as the stats show - we've been stout against the run through two games.

I can't help but notice that both the Jeep in your avatar picture and profile background picture are right-hand drive steering wheels. I need to get to the bottom of this...

I would have liked to have seen outside pitches or quick throws to Washington. The big problem was multiple 3rd & shorts that we couldn't convert on. I suppose that I'd have to at least partially disagree with some comments above that "what Troy did [on offense] worked better." One of their touchdowns was on a punt return. So technically, they scored fewer offensive points than we did. And we both rushed for and passed for more yards. *Edit: Not that it makes it any better, really. In my opinion we should always crack at least 450 yards of total offense and put up at least 30 points against a Sun Belt team.

As I look down the active threads on the first page of the Football forum, one thing sticks out to me pretty clearly - I don't think there's a single thread topic about poor defensive play after week 2. Seems pretty safe to say that Chinander is a big upgrade over the past three defensive coordinators we've had. So that's incredibly encouraging to me. That was my primary concern heading into the season.

I get it, MountainMan. You're mad about being 0-2. And you're not here to discuss the topic of any given thread.

Ha, +1.

Enter stage right: Huskerboard.

Consider it done.

I'd probably actually go so far as to say that more than anything it sort of underscores how pointless sports interviews are in general. "Tell us about that loss on Saturday, Tanner." "Tell us how you're feeling right now, Tanner." "Tell us about the work ethic of the team right now, Tanner." Almost painful to digest it all when I really stop and think about it. I like hearing from Frost for the most part; it's usually somewhat indicative of what's going on. But the players? I don't know.

Your reading comprehension needs some work.

Pretty bold stuff.

Heh, totally agree. It's like we've ignored the fact that our unbelievable phenom true freshman quarterback got hurt and didn't play against Troy. We still should have won without him, but with him in the game we probably win by two scores.

Prior to the season started, even factoring in the huge glass of red Kool-Aid I was slurping down, I didn't even think we'd beat Michigan. I didn't think we could beat them while having played Akron and having a perfectly healthy Adrian Martinez. Martinez is most likely still a bit gimpy and has less than four full quarters of college football experience under his belt. I love the confidence but we are huge underdogs in this game. If we win I will speak in tongues and dance to Enya in the middle of 'O' street, though.

Actually it wouldn't have necessarily sealed the win. I think it was 28-27 at that point. So we would have gone up by 8, and then driving back and scoring (along with a hypothetical two point conversion) would have tied it up. But yeah...Morgan's drop hurt pretty bad.

These are good discussion points. The thing is that strength & conditioning is actually pretty objectively measurable. Football strength programs usually now encompass more than just how much a guy can squat, overhead press, bench, clean, etc. But pick any of these things, including things like vertical jump - they're measurable. So if our team has on average greatly improved their numbers from where they were in January, that's a good thing. Is Duvall the best S&C guy in the nation? Probably not. Hopefully nobody was out there just assuming that just because he's associated to Scott Frost and Scott Frost is associated with the Boyd Epley Hercules program. But with all of that said, our team can continue to get stronger and better conditioned as the season goes on. We may not be where we need to be yet and that seems fairly reasonable to me.

Super abbreviated version: -I think we lost to Colorado mainly because of turnovers. -I think we lost to Troy mainly because of terrible special teams.