Mavric

Apparently decommitted a couple weeks ago:

Sr. laying it down .... I like it.

Louisville -26 Florida State -6 Stanford -3

Holy cow! I'm heading home before it snows. Hope he didn't jinx us. Can't really jinx us now. Since the league is so tough, we'll all just be beating up each other and wearing each other down. Some teams might not have anything left come bowl season.

Moore did not practice again today. No word if it is the same injury or something new.

If we're going down this route, I feel obligated to say "something something we need to stop only running the ball up the middle" Baby steps....

Ummmmm....no. We are headed into Big 10 play that is going to have bigger and better defensive lines. It's a good sign no matter what you are doing when your yards per carry go up as the game goes on. Some of that is because we are wearing them down. Some of it is because they realize they have to adjust to account for our awesome WRs and an improved TA. All of it goes together. When we get into BIG 10 play, we are going to have to make sure we have a good enough offense that they can't just stack the box along with these bigger and better D lines. Not sure where you care coming up with what you posted. At the risk of facing another semantics argument, you could look in this thread. And posts #5 & 6 above.

Wait, so now everyone's on the "run the ball" bandwagon? What happened to "We could only run the ball because UCLA was small and terrible at run defense. We can't expect to have that type of game plan going forward."

Yep, the sea of red will invade Evanston, but blend in well with other red Cardinal fans at the Wrigley Cub game, and Kirkwood, before the night game at Ryan Field. Will be a tough one for NU to beat UNL who is on a roll after Oregon, maybe for the Western B10 title. But the Purple did beat the Red at year at Lincoln. We'll see. There is only one NU and they wear RED Calling Nebraska "NU" is a giant misnomer, because the university isn't known as "Nebraska University". Whereas, Northwestern's title is "Northwestern University". "Dear old Nebraska U" Nice work. Though that might be some poetic licence as it's a lot easier to find something to rhyme with "U" than "Nebraska".

Holy cow! I'm heading home before it snows.

I mean I don't know what else Williams is doing at this point besides twiddling his thumbs. Might as well be 'crootin. Not what I meant. I meant it seems like we're not so sure on our top targets. Not sure why you would take that as we are not so sure on our top targets. Until they sign no one is guaranteed. The process is to keep building relationships until the spot are all full. It does look like we have decided that it is a TOP priority to get a tall guy. However, continuing to look for top guys is not an indicator that we have missed with others. Man we have a staff that are showing signs that NU is a good destination for kids - now we want them to stop the process and wait for signing day? - have some faith!! Again with the strawman. It's you go-to move. Man you are funny. Where do you come up with the strawman? You might want to figure out it's definition before you come with some go to move idea. Thanks for the humor thou. No problem. Simply show me where I - or anyone - said we should "stop the process and wait for signing day." I'll hang up and wait for your answer. you were talking about how it seems we aren't so sure on our top WR targets and he said to have sone faith and wait it out, our coaches are just following the process. Seemed like a normal response to me. No straw men in sight So you're ignoring the part that I specifically quoted? nope I'll address it. He never said that anyone said we should stop the process. It was a hyperbole to how you were reacting to our strategy in WR recruiting right now. He never said that you said that, it was exaggerated take on what you were saying. Just because someone drops a sentence that no one actually said or was really inferring doesn't mean he is arguing with straw men, I just think you need to ease up a little If you think there is a distinction between an eaggerated take on what I was saying and a straw man argument, you must be who GBRFAN was laughing at earlier when he said people didn't know what a straw man argument was. in fact there is. He never set up the strawman by fabricating an argument from what you said and he didn't knock said strawman down because after he made the statement you are referring to, he didn't vehemently argue against it. GBR responded to what you said, gave his take and then gave a hyperbolic statement to cement his point it shouldn't be weird the coaches are still offering WRS. I know what strawmanning is and that wasn't it and I think it's a little annoying when you go around accusing everyone of doing it when they disagree with you Yeah, good try with the semantics. You're missing the forest for the trees (intentionally I think).

Here's Tom Shatel's take on it. I wasn't at all of these games but I'd agree about the ones I was at. The explosion when Crouch scored on Black 41 Flash Reverse was huge and TA's TD Saturday was in that ballpark. I'd give Miami 2014 the edge for overall and sustained noise throughout the game.

MR press conference said something like that .... "tallest grass I've ever seen" http://thebiglead.com/2013/10/05/northwestern-stadium-grass-is-ankle-deep-and-wet/ I get it but...here me out... If the tall grass makes a guy that runs a 4.6 start running a 4.9 doesn't it also make a guy that runs a 4.9 run a 5.2? So, if the OSU players were slower than they usually are on turf...aren't the NW players also slower? I have always thought this as well. It only makes sense to me. All players are slowed down, so why does it make a difference? I never have understood the concept of taller grass to slow down the faster team. Because it is not a real thing. People like to pretend like it is but it clearly would impact both teams the same exact way. I don't really think it makes that much of a difference. But the theory is that it will slow the "speed" team down while the "power" team won't be affected. Since they're moving slower but with more power, they aren't affected as much. It's probably true to some extent. It would be harder to run in long grass. But I think that extent is basically negligible.

The run defense is skewed by Oregon's huge rushing stats on Saturday, which were boosted by a few big plays. I thought the D played well overall on Saturday. Two of the long TD's on Saturday had bad alignment by the LB's, and then Banderas missed a tackle on the 4th and 2 run that the RB went 40 yards for a TD. The pass defense is a lot better than it was last year, and the secondary is playing confidently. The run D should improve over the next few weeks against weaker Big Ten opponents. Agree. I think Oregon will negatively effect any teams run D stats. They were quick off the edge. As Banker and the players said, you miss and its 6 points. I do not think we will see speed like that for the rest of the year. I also think that it goes back to last years stats. Our run D was much "better" as our pass D was a joke. Why run when you can pass. I'd settle for us being better than average against both run and pass. This way teams will have to work to move the ball. No easy yards through the air or on the ground. If you watch, our D end on the three man line kept biting inside on fakes giving up the edge to Oregon. Doesn't the Oregon offense read the defensive end? So isn't that pretty usual? Yes, the defensive end is usually unblocked and read in Oregon's schemes. There is a good chance that Parella instructed the DE's to crash down on the RB to force the QB to keep and have the remaining defenders flow to the QB. There is nothing the DE can do. He has to choose either the RB or the QB. Sometimes he can guess, but that can screw up the remaining assignments of the D. Our DEs were playing it completely passively. They were "squeezing" the hole - sliding toward the tackle that was blocking away so as not to let the running go inside them. That had the effect of taking themselves completely out of the play and making it easy to run around the edge. They weren't going to make the tackle on either the QB or RB unless they ran straight ahead.

Sure looks like him to me. Nice find!

Did we run any 3 man Dime fronts against Oregon? Seems like I remember a couple times - just because I seem to remember seeing a NT lined up out there - but I'd have to watch it again to know for sure.