Undone

This was the worst coaching in a single game that we've seen in a very long time. And that's really saying something. I'm not sure there's anything else to even discuss at all. Goal to go and you ask your 3rd string QB to throw twice instead of setting up for the game-winning field goal?

Asking the third string QB to throw two times on goal to go from their 7 isn't stupid?

Satterfield is too f****** stupid to win this game.

You cannot let Sims do f****** anything with the football at all. Like, nothing.

We have two of the worst QB's in FBS. Sims' QBR for the season now is a complete joke. Both guys are a joke.

Haarberg is 1/5 for zero yards passing and one interception. Legendarily terrible stats. lol

Adrian Martinez would have this team at least at 6-3 right now, pretty much no doubt in my mind. Our stats this year are a shell of Frost's offensive production so I think your first statement is a bit loaded, right?

These games wind up really skewing your perception of the team. Our defense is doing just fine. "Good," probably. We have an overall good team and good coaching but we don't have a QB at all. This has to be the worst QB play in basically the modern era for our team.

Insane that there isn't a single QB on this team.

Are we sure this isn't Tanya?

I'm responding to this just for fun discussion, not because I'm really disagreeing with anything you're saying. I do agree that "10-15 pass attempts per game is probably low." One thing though about "pass attempts per game" is that we're bleeding the play clock way down almost all the time, and we're first or close to first among Power 5 teams with the highest run/pass ratio (which is obviously a big part of this very discussion). So, we're probably not running that many plays each game, period. I think looking at run/pass ratio is the biggest thing. And we've talked about how coming into the MSU game I think we were highest in Power 5. I think we'd do better to just run more outside screens or quick slants. That might be where we find a happy medium between running more pass plays to pull the secondary back/out and also limiting doing things that aren't our strengths, maybe?

I wonder if Haarberg is not being coached to tuck it & run after making a couple reads like it seems like the two Martinez's were. Seems like there's maybe more yards and some more 1st down conversions out there if he just runs it after making two reads.

Oh, another thing: we've actually seen several plays this year where we went empty backfield with 4-5 guys wide. I remember @brophog saying to watch for that but I was skeptical we'd see it at all. It would be really nice to see some quick hitter passes out of that formation because we just don't pass block all that well and Haarberg tends to not remain calm even when we do. Have to just get the ball out of his hand quick.

Yep. One of the biggest plays of the game. Ugh.

Interesting, I don't think I would have said that. I'd say Haarberg's & Sims' abilities are on the same level in both the running and passing category. So I'd guess that there weren't really any plays that were added or subtracted for Haarberg. Now maybe Rhule & Satterfield sat down and decided on a couple plays to up the percentage on and a couple to lower the percentage on in the actual game calls. Maybe.

First off I do really agree on Ricky getting the easy part of the schedule. It's not even debatable really - good point. To the second part, there hasn't been a complete lack of creativity in my opinion. Not sure if you were talking about the Michigan State game or the season as a whole. In the MSU game we had a reverse that got a decent gain. We've had some jet sweeps from Kemp in the red zone this year that worked the ball closer to the end zone. In the first half against MSU on Saturday we had two drives in the first half where 1st down was a called passing play. I think one might have resulted in a sack and one was an incomplete pass (or maybe both were incomplete passes, I could go back and look). But those got us behind the sticks. I actually think Satterfield might have gone away from the run a bit when it was working in the first half. We wound up with a lower run/pass ratio than what we've averaged for the season.

Yep. There's so much positive happening but a lot of people are missing it or just don't want to focus on it. The thing about the constant dissecting of Haarberg's performances is that the guy was the backup coming into this season. I wish his passing acumen was higher but it just isn't. But nevertheless we just might pull off the best season we've had in 6 years. If we were to get a good-to-great QB in here for next season this program might actually be pretty good again.

Yeah @lo country, I don't know. I felt earlier in the season that Maryland is just better than we are and I still do. Wisconsin might actually be the most winnable game of these last three.

Butler needs to have a hell of a big game getting pressure.

How in the hell does Caleb Williams even put up these numbers? Guy threw for a 77% completion rate and 312 yards. Then USC rushes for another 203 yards...but they have no defense and lose 52-42. Man.

Wisconsin keeps having these games where they actually put up a decent amount of yards but really don't walk away with that many points. They had 344 yards of offense in their 20-14 loss to Indiana today (who racked up 261 on offense). Obviously being -2 in the turnover margin was probably the difference maker. Really surprised they lost to Indiana and Iowa.

I was thinking about this. Our defense holding them to 20 points in a road game is definitely not terrible. Our pass blocking at times was pretty bad and Haarberg was missing throws. For me this one was on the offense; gotta be able to average like 6 points per quarter at least.

Agreed. I'd love it for Chubba if he could come in and contribute to a win or two in these last three. But I'm assuming he's just not looking very good in practice.

Well I don't know about you, but I'd rather see him just scrambling than throwing into coverage like he did multiple times today. Agree here. His brain is clearly rattled if he can't just stand there with a four yard forcefield of a bubble. And even then he'll miss passes he just shouldn't. His 42% completion rate today is just plain awful. I do think though that Satterfield (or "Scatterfield," as the NBS guy said multiple times) was going to the play action call a bit too early in the first half. We'd get Johnson going and then instead of just running those same plays until the defense stopped us we'd call a pass on 1st & 10, it'd be incomplete, and then we were setup for 3rd & long. That really, really bothers me. Yes, the players have to execute whatever is called, blah blah blah. As good as I think Satt is doing with what he has, I think he's a little too into trying to outsmart the opposing DC sometimes. We had a 59% run/pass ratio today so all in all I can't say that the mix we had was bad and I know we can't just run it 80% of our plays.

Fixed that for you. Defense had been extremely good coming into this one in the previous three. I also saw some pretty bad pass blocking today. I know Ricky had the one scramble that setup the late TD, but I wish his instincts were a little better to just tuck it & run when the pass isn't there.