Undone

36 minutes ago, GSG said:

 

Kinda wish Huskerboard worked like that

Bring back the eye roll! Haha.

12 minutes ago, JJ Husker said:

Fact is it isn’t a “job” and there are scarcely any rules other than the team they’re “working” for has to be completely hands off on the compensation side. So I don’t think comparing this situation to a normal job is applicable.

Oh I agree with that. Just pointing out that it doesn't typically work like that in our free market job society we live in. Now, giving bonuses for doing well? Hell yeah. I could see that maybe, and that could be some good incentive. Probably not even within the "rules" (and we all know there aren't even any rules really anyway).

Coaching contracts should work like that but they don't.

12 hours ago, UniversalMartin said:

Focus NIL $ on negative plays...you fumble/throw a pick..that is a cut in $. Missed tackle, cut in $..drop a pass, miss a block, etc..focus it on plays that prevent you from winning...not sure how you do that, but it would be nice.

Is that how it works at your job?

8 minutes ago, Wistrom Disciple said:

Money is not our problem, development has been...

Agreed there.

But nevertheless it's kind of in conflict with Rhule's statement of basically saying "Well, shucks...a good QB costs a lot of money these days!" Because if money isn't the problem, you buy the best players you can get and you develop them. It's an arms race.

Don't f*** up with another Jeff Sims, coach. And if Purdy is the guy, make him significantly better than he is right now by week 1 next season.

18 minutes ago, Waldo said:

Nebraska currently doesn’t have the deep pockets other universities have and our recent success doesn’t help.

I can't say there's any direct correlation with this stat and NIL funding, but I saw data prior to this season starting that we are top 5 in football net revenue. That's net revenue. We ranked ahead of Alabama.

Again - maybe doesn't correlate to NIL funding. But just throwing that out there.

1 hour ago, Red Five said:

 

Oh, so this is how this works? Because I'm pretty sure somebody will write a check.

5 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

Passing on first down and running on third down are slightly less expected, so that can work when everyone executes well. But we just weren't that good.

The question I asked myself and others when this would happen though is, how many times does Satterfield have to see it to say to himself "you know, maybe we should just take the 3 yards on 1st down and go from there."

If things like this happen again next year and we're losing games 14-13, it's going to be a new level of suck.

14 hours ago, brophog said:

This offense lacks routes that work off one another, lacks break timing, and has too much waiting for someone to hopefully get open.

The bold is what I noticed all season long. And Satterfield was pretty fond of going to these types of pass plays after converting a first down. That was hard to watch.

12 hours ago, DrunkOffPunch said:

128th in passing attempts per game. We did not abandon the run.

I hear you. Couple things though.

I imagine "total plays per game" ranks towards the bottom of FBS either way with how we run the play clock down on every damn play and then also had so many drives get killed with turnovers. So you combine that with not having a QB who can even remotely reliably throw the ball until game 11, and yeah, not surprising that's where we ranked.

Sometimes we asked our QB to run the ball on third down when 1st down was a pathetically executed "stand in the pocket and scan the field on slow-developing routes" plays that resulted in incompletions or sacks. I noticed this happening a lot. I guess we'd file this under 'play calling.' So it's not abandoning the run, but it's situationally bad.

15 hours ago, brophog said:

We didn't have a scheme this year. You know that because if you have a scheme then half of opposing defense isn't waiting on the QB on every option play because they have to account for the other plays/components that make it an actual scheme. A big reason so many plays ended up as QB runs was the scheme as such didn't exist to force defenders to account for someone else. About the only symmetry this offense had was to hope they over-commited to the QB runs enough that eventually you could drop one over the top for a big play.

I think this largely happened because it turned out that we didn't have a QB that could reliably find open receivers and/or hit them in the passing game. Sims couldn't do it and Haarberg couldn't do it.

I thought the best conference game on offense was against Wisconsin from a play mix & execution standpoint. I'm not going to count the Purdue game because they're just a horrible team.

We got a dynamic QB in there in game 11 against a decent opponent (obviously Wisconsin is way down from where they've been), and then things looked different when Purdy was finding guys as they were breaking open and actually hitting them.

I mean, hey...the criticism over "no good QB is going to want to come here out of the portal" maybe has legs. Maybe. Iowa is currently in this doom loop with offensive skill player recruiting.

1 hour ago, gossamorharpy said:

He had the luxury last offseason of selling the dream and he did a damn good job getting some high quality talent to come to Lincoln.

He did?

1 hour ago, gossamorharpy said:

To me, having a label helps tremendously in what Rhule is selling to recruits and transfer portal guys.

Ok: we're a zone read & RPO offense. Think "Philadelphia Eagles" but with just a bit more 12 man personnel mixed in there.

23 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Gee....Rhule said he wants an offense that runs the ball well.  We ran the ball well.  We didn't pass well and we need that too.  OR.....if we get so we can pass well too, does that mean we really don't have an identity because we do multiple things.

Yeah.

I don't know if there are stats for what percentage of 3rd downs were yardages of less than 5. So somebody can disagree with this if just the eye ball test I'm going off of is inaccurate. But one thing I maybe should have added to my list of negatives was being in 3rd & long what seemed like a lot.

The QB scrambles tend to increase the yards per carry stat. There's nothing wrong with this.

But you also have to run the ball well on 1st & 2nd down. Sometimes Satterfield would go away from the run after picking up the first - I definitely have an issue with that. I think it played some kind of role in setting up 3rd & longs because Haarberg couldn't handle a lot of those types of called passing plays. I think this is a legitimate gripe.

49 minutes ago, gossamorharpy said:

2. We're done with the first season and if someone were to ask me what our offense is I couldnt tell ya.  The biggest success we had all year was a suggestion from osborne to send a guy deep on the fake option play.  We relentlessly called wr screens with WRs who couldn't block for s#!t.  We were sold a power run type offense yet for whatever reason defaulted to qb read option plays more-often than not  in short to down situations.  I entered this season feeling great about the TE room yet I leave it feeling like it too has problems- I get fidone is still coming back from injuries but man do I feel like we under utilized him by not using him more across the field or in formations where he's running routes underneath coverage; where was boerkircher?  

I don't know why it matters so much to be able to put some kind of concise sounding label on "what kind of offense do you have?" What we need out of our offense is literally anything that can put up at least 24 points in any given conference game, at this point.

It's probably more beneficial and more accurate to talk about what we did well and what we didn't do well. I think it's a short list:

-At least in terms of yards per game, we ran the ball pretty well.

-We were really bad throwing the ball.

-We were completely atrocious with turnovers.

Ok. So does a change in scheme change those two things we were bad at? I say "no," but lots of people on here seem to think it does.

I normally start the blame with the staff and then work down to the players. I think you could maybe lay quite a bit of blame on Satterfield for Sims' problems, but then again he only played two games. We were probably one false start by an offensive lineman and an Anthony Grant fumble away from winning that one regardless.

But yeah, since the staff pretty clearly saw Sims as the starter from even before the spring game, I can lay some blame on Satterfield for Sims not being ready. But also Sims is just not a very good player.

It's harder for me personally to lay much more blame on Satterfield for the stuff Haarberg struggled with because he was actually the 3rd string QB but played as the 2nd string guy because of Purdy's injury.

11 minutes ago, ZRod said:

I have a feeling no one is open most of the time, and Purdy isn't confident enough to throw guys open, so he's panicking and trying to buy more time.

Which honestly to me looked like it was actually elevating his play above Haarberg's instead of hurting things. Just talking about him doing this in general against Wisconsin & Iowa.

I think the tackles started doing a better job specifically at working guys to the outside instead of letting them get inside leverage in the back half of the season.

We had times Haarberg would get a little flushed out of the pocket but was totally fine on the roll out. And he'd have a guy open...and we saw some Jammal Lord-esque moments at times where the ball just didn't go even remotely where it was supposed to go.

But like, sure - if the pass protection is a thing where your QB can stand there perfectly still for 6 seconds, things are better. In the back half of the season pass protection didn't seem to be a huge issue.

25 minutes ago, DefenderAO said:

Frankly, I think we make a real jump when we stop having Frost kids as Captains. Those “leaders” are the ones who never made a bowl and were likely too content with their biggest accomplishment to-date…an undefeated 2023 October. 
 

Sad. 

On defense I don't know who officially was a captain, but Butler seemed to be a really fiery, vocal leader - both on and off the field. You love to see it and I think he backed it up with his play.

On offense, Purdy probably gets the nod after Sims got the ankle injury if he hadn't had an injury of his own. And I can't prove it but I'm better we get one more win than we wound up with if he had started in games 3 - 10.

I don't think "lack of leadership" caused us to turn the ball over like we did, but I'm sure I could be wrong on that.

I would love it if Marcus Washington got an injury waiver and came back but it seems unlikely.

There could be an extra sort of jump that Purdy makes in the offseason if he believes he has a decent chance of being QB1 next year.

Everybody and their brother has guesses on which QB we pull out of the portal and there's just no way to know what happens with that right at the moment.

26 minutes ago, Mavric said:

 

I guess it could mean he gets the team over the hump from losing close games to winning more of them.  Which would be handy.

That's a good point.

9 hours ago, Mavric said:

 

I'm not sure whether this is anything more than just interesting trivia.

If you have a good team, you're winning quite a few games by more than one score. 2023 Nebraska was not a good team.

3 minutes ago, Mavric said:

Purdy throws a good ball and is more mobile than I expected.  He obviously made two crappy throws at the end of games but I think he could be serviceable.  And maybe better than that if he can get more reps.  Definitely good enough to push for the job with whoever comes in via the portal.

That's what I'm thinking.

Back to turnovers: I remember getting kind of s*** on for making comments here after the spring game about all of the fumbles there. I was told it wouldn't translate at all to the season. I can even look up those posts just for fun.   

Anyway...it was indicative of what was to come. The turnovers existed way before Rhule got here. And yes, then they got even worse. This staff consists of adults who I'm positive are capable of thinking & strategizing; if they don't fix it by the first game of next year, Rhule has to look at firing Satterfield.

But let's first get a QB in there who can read a defense and threaten a team with his arm. That guy might be Purdy. That's the starting point for me.

1 hour ago, lo country said:

I think that the best for NU in the B1G would be to modify what Michigan is doing.  Use the deep attacking pass and shorter stuff as an extension of the run, BUT use the QB more in the run game than they do with JJ.  And we don't have to do either as well as Michigan. They are a very physical down hill runing team, but use a "pro-style O".   Limit TO's, play sound football and lean on the D.    As much as I love a QB first run game, we haven't made it a season without the QB knocked out for a few games or more since joing the B1G.  Run enough to be a threat (designed runs and scrambles), but no be the leading rusher.  I like what Clemson has done with their QB's.  If we continue to use the QB as our primary runner, we will need multiple guys in the portal.  We were down to an injured Chubba for the last few games....

If Chubba hadn't been hurt, he probably gets the start against Northern Illinois. If he does, being that I believe his ceiling is higher than Haarberg's & Sims', I think that by the time we hit the Michigan State game he has us scoring a few more points per game than what we had with Haarberg.

I can't prove any of that and I'm not expecting anybody to go off of it as it it's entirely true.

The problem this season was turnovers (and earlier in the year dumb penalties were still showing up also). If coaching or scheme is the root cause of those problems, then I'm praying we make a change in either of those areas in the offseason. Like, I really am.

I just don't think coaching or scheme is the root cause.

58 minutes ago, lo country said:

One think I have learned about NU over the years and media.  We are the most loyal fans in the country.  We will click on any link with even the most remote chance of Husker news.  I know I clicked on it.  And as much as I bag on Satt, I also thought it could be commentary on the OL, RB's, receivers etc....not just Satt.

Regarding the Twitter link, I'm sure it really is a thing where if the narrative is that Satterfield can't get any production and everyone believes that, it could be hard to land a good passer. So I'm definitely going to give you that.

We could probably have our pick of the better run-first guys. But that's not what we need to get out of this purgatory.

So it could be hard to convince the kid that's a good passer in the portal to come to Lincoln. Maybe.

If I was Rhule and I'm talking to a recruit that's in Purdy's basic zip code (read: good passer and can also run), I'm going to show him film of the Wisconsin game and say "this is what we want to do, and you're going to have this 6'4" burner to throw fades & posts to."

4 minutes ago, Decked said:

Yeah the guy is great coach. 

I haven't seen anybody saying he's a "great" coach.

5 minutes ago, Decked said:

Believe he also led back to back season of a team having one of the highest turnover rates in the country. 

Would have to fact check that I guess. If I really thought he was personally the root cause of all of the turnovers, I would actually agree that firing him right now would be a smart move. I'm just pretty skeptical that's the case though.

• The offensive line got measurably better over last season, in my opinion.
• Defense was obviously hugely improved.
• Special teams was either flat as compared to last year or maybe went down a ways. Hard to rag on the coaches for missed field goals, but the punt returning was pretty bad for a good swath of the year.
• Turnovers were obviously so bad that if you weren't already hitting the bourbon out of the bottle, you are now.
• The culture of the team seems improved.

So given all of that, I feel like we're basically the same team that we were in Frost's year 2 (2019). It's just that you'd swap the poor offensive performance with the defense from that year, probably.

We weren't "close to being a good team" this season because of the turnovers. But it does seem like we started turning the culture around and that's the #1 thing on the list.