Mavric

And another good stat on us running the ball. OWH Opponents have something to do with this but the complaints about our running game struggling are exaggerated. For the year last year we averaged 5.3 ypc.

Here's a stat that shows that - for whatever reason - teams really aren't even trying to run on us. At the very least, they haven't had to try. OWH

Sorry that this is off topic but it's from the same article. I don't get why everyone (and by everyone, I'm mostly talking about Nebraska media guys) is so hung up on the alignment penalties. They're acting like they've never seen it called before. Link This literally gets called a couple times in almost every game you watch and has for years. It was called a few times in the BYU game and "everyone" was asking if the refs were being picky but when you actually look at it, they were totally legit - receivers not even close to being on the line. I admit that the call on Gates was nit-picky but that gets called with enough frequency that people shouldn't be hung up about it. Tackles try to cheat back as much as they can for pass protection and sometimes they cheat a little too much.

I think this is right, or at least pretty close. Again, we have a spot or two that are lacking. But overall I don't think we're nearly as bad off as some are trying to make it out to be. We struggled against McNeese State last year but other than that only Miami's garbage TD in the last seconds kept every other win from being at least three scores. Three of our losses were by a combined 12 points and we had the ball with a chance to win in each of them. We had one "bad" win and on (really) bad loss. But other than that we were dominating in our wins and very competitive in our losses. We haven't dropped off that far in one year.

I think when most people try to say we are short on talent, they point to two spots - DE and LB. We are average at best at DE. We are thin at LB but on "talent" and athletic ability, I would take Bando-MRI-Young against any set of LBs on our schedule and most in the country. They've been slowed by injuries but they've still been playing so they're not that far off. We could always use more talent but it's mainly DE where we are lacking. That hurts but it's also only 2 out of 22 spots so I think it's a little over-blown to try to claim we are that short on talent because of one (two) positions on the field. Here's what I don't get about the argument with Miami supposedly having so much more talent than we do: They lost significantly more high-impact (NFL drafted) guys than we did off last year's team. We lost three impact players but very little else. If they're that much more talented than us this year, they were at least that much and probably more talented than us last year. So how were we able to win that game in dominating fashion while looking all but inept for much of the game this year?

Not sure I believe this: LJS

Apparently I've totally missed this: LJS

LJS

Not gonna lie, what he saw out of Alabama's quarterbacks probably has him thinking he could do things there.

Possibly. That's a little bit of a chicken-or-the-egg argument. Did they not run it because the didn't expect to be able to run it? Or did they run it because they were having so much success passing the ball that they didn't have to? To some extent, I'm sure BYU and USA felt out-manned on the line so that probably had something to do it. Miami was within a play or two of the same run/pass ratio that they had for the season so far. It is somewhat of a small sample size but that's how it goes. We've seen the same thing for three games. And I don't think the schedules are that far off. Most of the Power 5 has played one tougher game and one easy game. There'd be some variance on the third game but we're getting a pretty good idea by now. And like I said, we'd have to be giving up 100 fewer yards per game to get in the Top 100. Put another way, if we wiped one complete game out and said we gave up 0 passing yards that game, we'd barely be in the Top 100. That's not a scheduling issue.

I learned that this is really odd:

Sure, but the way our secondary is positioned on a lot of those passing plays, Joel Stave will have just as much success as Kayaa or Hill often enough. It'd be different if it was like 2012 Georgia where our secondary played really well and just got beat on near undefendable balls, but with things as they currently are, mediocre QB's will be able to have similar success as great ones with the cushion available to receivers. To be fair, Kaaya and Taysom Hill are two of the better QB's we see all season. In the Big Ten schedule, stopping the run is usually the priority. Had we been able to stop the run in conference the last five years, we'd probably have one or two conference titles. Illinois and MSU have QB's capable of passing on us, especially Cook at MSU, but aside from that we don't have any pure throwers on the schedule. Now, theoretically stopping the run is right. It's what we want to do and we are devoting our resources to becoming the team that does just that. Three games into the season it appears the players we have on the roster are not all capable of playing this way, and the ones that are capable do not have a full understanding of the importance of taking the proper angles and positioning themselves. Is that surprising? It shouldn't be. Three games in, I don't expect it all to be there yet. Honestly still, if we could just be a little more effective with our front four, it would work miracles for us. The fact that we lack a presence at DE, and that Maliek Collins has not been the impact player we felt he would be, has made the growing pains only that much tougher. I agree. On top of that, Banker can't scheme a run first defense against a pass first offense and think we're going to shut down mobile/effective passing teams. If someone can teach me the philosophy on our game plan yesterday, please do so, because it doesn't make sense to me.The gameplan was to have the LB's cover slot WR's with no safety help, telegraph blitzes, and ensure that we had no safety to help on the deep bailout throws on those blitzes, and it killed us.Some of the coverages are a bit baffling. I agree that you can't expect a LB'er to cover those receivers all the time, but some of the time, that is how it's drawn up. What you're discounting is that when those LB'ers are in coverage, it's usually not supposed to be for very long. It's usually in pressure situations and the QB isn't supposed to have all day to throw the ball. We are giving opposing QB's way too much time, IMO. Telegraphing blitzes is another thing we are doing. Like I said guys, all the things you Saunders and LOMS are mentioning are mostly execution things, so what I can't understand is why 3 games into the season, people are expecting stellar execution of a new scheme, when we clearly don't have the horses to run some of this stuff. I went for a run this afternoon (it's brutally hot down here) and was listening to the bottom line podcast with Severe and Ganz. The TLDR version is Joe said that our coverages are way too basic, and we don't mix them up. He said QB's know exactly what we're doing pre snap because our pre snap line up gives it away, and they just throw to the guy who will have the best matchup.Coming from a guy like Ganz, whose majority of his experience and knowledge comes in a system like Bo Pelini's, where the coverages were far too complicated, and more focus was placed on the coaches being the wizards, less emphasis on the talents of the players winning one v. one matchups, I'm not surprised at all that would be his take on things. I thought we've turned the page on what we want here? People need to figure it out cause' the conversation is getting old already. Do we want to stop the run and compete for the Big Ten Conference (considering the run game is what this Conference is usually prolific for), or do we want some exotic pass defense schemes that we can add more QB's to the "Pelini QB Graveyard" all while Melvin Gordon makes the Blackshirts his bitch? Which is it? why not both? They aren't mutually exclusive, and yet some people keep acting like they are. And here's the kicker. We aren't stopping the run either... We aren't? We are 21st in the country in run defense. League average Rushing yards per game allowed is 174 yards per game. We are allowing 94 yards per game. So almost half the Big Ten average. You haven't watched Nebraska the last few years if you don't call that stopping the run. We have played teams that have barely tried to run the ball. We have faced the 12th fewest rushing attempts in the country.

Wonder if Herbstreit will have a comment?

We'll restart next week.

Well, this sucks but apparently we're not alone:

NUance - Dolphins, Ravens True2tRA - Bengals, Dolphins JJHusker1 - Panthers, Dolphins husker B-rent - Chiefs, ... 1995 Redux - Dolphins, Lions The Dude - Jets, Saints Mavric - Cowboys, Saints wiuhusker - Eagles Army_Allen - Lions

They did that to troll you. Guess this week is payback.

Mavric - Rutgers, Northwestern, Michigan 1995 Redux - Iowa, Purdue, Northwestern StPaulHusker - Rutgers, Northwestern, Minnesota QMany - Rutgers, Illinois, Minnesota 1Huskermom - Indiana, Purdue, Wisconsin

This is the issue with the "stop the run" argument. In general, I agree. But we've gone completely to the other end of the spectrum. Only one team IN THE COUNTRY is giving up more passing yards per game than we are. And lest you think it's just because we've played teams that pass a lot (which is true), we're #101 in yards allowed PER ATTEMPT. I think we are somewhat better against the run but we've faced the 12th fewest rushing attempts. It may be true that we won't see as good of quarterbacks in conference play but I can pretty much guarantee you we will see much better offensive lines and running backs. So we'll see how that holds. And this is what makes our pass defense look even worse: We would have to be giving up nearly 100 FEWER YARDS PER GAME to even crack the Top 100.

Eh, I'm not so sure about that. We gained four yards on the first play of the game. Then threw two incomplete passes and punted. The next time we got the ball back we went run for 5, pass for 4, run for 5, run for 10, incomplete pass, run for 1, in complete pass. It's not like the run wasn't working. We just kept deciding to pass. If you move the sacks to the passing stats (like the NFL does), we had 30 runs for 176 yards (5.9 yards per play) and we had 47 passing plays for 286 yards (6.1 yards per play). Now, a good chunk of TA's rushing yards came on called passing plays but it's not like we were that much more effective passing the ball than running. When you factor in the interceptions, you could say we were more effective running the ball. We just chose to pass. Starting with the last first down of each possession, our first four possessions went: Run for 4, Incomplete pass, incomplete pass Incomplete pass, run for 1 yard, incomplete pass Run for 3, penalty, pass for 8, run for 1 Penalty, pass for 0, pass for 14, sack on 3rd and 1 That early in the game, we were by no means forced into passing. But twice we passes on two out of three plays and once got sacked on third and 1. We didn't make much of an attempt to commit to the run. That's not what Langsdorf does.