gossamorharpy

4 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

That's different than never wanting to see one again.

At this moment, yah I never want to see one again. It was a disaster this year, we don’t have big bodied receivers to consistently block in the open, so y did we continue to call it late in season in critical situations?

we sucked a$$ executing it under frosty as well with 2AMs errant throws to the flats and relatively smaller receivers. 
 

just because it’s a basic play design that teams use for consistent success, doesn’t it mean it’s a for sure thing as evidenced here across 2 coaches 

1 minute ago, BigRedBuster said:

So, you want to totally scratch from the playbook a basic play that many teams have good success running.

Yeah. By like October if a play clearly just isn’t meant to be run by the talent I have on hand, yeah, I def wanna scrap it for something that yields a better result 

2 minutes ago, runningblind said:

And won 9 games, made the conference title game, won a bowl game, beat a couple ranked teams.  You know, all of that the 2023 team never did. 

By far my favorite husker squad that didn’t finish top 5 

4 minutes ago, gobiggergoredder said:

There's more than one way to do a screen.  That one hasn't worked for sure.

You'd think we could get creative and cook up a screen for bonner given his skillset.  

3 minutes ago, gobiggergoredder said:

The one for me is the routes the receivers run.  You can't tell me there is nothing that can be done to get our athletes wide open.  (Picks, Crossing, Screens....etc).

Please, no more screens.  If I have to witness another screen where bullock gets lit up on his block and its a 3 yard loss i might not be able to take it.  Or at least get rid of the wr screen- seems like every other progrum has figured out how to sprinkle that in, EXCEPT us for years now

10 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

I don't think anyone is arguing that our rushing stats weren't sad and unfulfilling, just that Satterfield never abandoned the run. Yeah, there were plenty of QB scrambles, but there was also a higher number of called QB runs, probably the most since Jammal Lord. Those got scaled back a tick during the season and given to the RBs, the most prolific of them, Grant, getting 413 rushing yards for the season. That's one homely mirage. 

 

And yet....that magic combo of 4.4 yards per rush and 6.2 yards per pass attempt might have won all but two games this year if Nebraska didn't lead the world in turnovers. 

How crazy is that lol.  Is it ok to be both very optimistic about our future but pissed off as hell about the opportunity we just “fumbled” away to go 8-4/9-3 in year 1? 
 

13 hours ago, DrunkOffPunch said:

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

We didn't abandon the run but we sure as hell abandoned a RB run first offense.  Our QBs need to cut their rushing attempts by half, imo.  Seemingly every year since 2010 this board b!^@hes about qb health and injuries yet every season we rinse and repeat and have an offense built around qb run as our first option who inevitably doesnt move the same come oct/nov, or play at all, because they get the s#!t beat out of them every week

Ive posted ad nauseum on these threads about how our rushing stats were a mirage this year.  You take away the massive runs Sims, HH and purdy had on broken plays and our numbers look average at best.  You look at RB avg per rush across the big ten and we ranked towards the bottom middle of the conference.

19 hours ago, presidentjlh said:

Even a mediocre QB would be an upgrade. Less than 1 interception a game? I'd take that.

 

In any case, I haven't seen anything suggesting either player is eyeing Nebraska.

There is no way in hell we land either player based off the schools listed already in the mix. 

13 hours ago, admo said:

Well that's your opinion.  I have mine.  You have to go WAAAY back to 2009...... 13 years ago to bring up your bragging points or discredit the 2023 team.

 

Again, yall need to really understand this.  Outside of the top 15 rankings for wins and losses, and the ever changing top 20, nobody cares about "strength of opposing offenses" stats.  In fact, nobody cares about any team's worth outside the top 15.  Nobody cares if you hold down the fort against teams with stats ranked outside of.............. Including 2009.  But, the 2009 defense did their job pretty good, and so did 2023.  And neither won the conference.  

At least 09 was just a single second away from doing so 

14 hours ago, admo said:

Let's go have wings, drinks, shoot pool and discuss it!  

 

Seriously though, tell me what did 2009 and 2010 defenses do better?  You can talk about Peso (6-7 DB's at once!!!! That's fire!!!) and bring up Ndakamato Suh!!!!  

 

But hopefully, you can add more to what you are implying from those 2 old defenses that were clearly better than this year's defense. 

 

I don't mind listening and being proven wrong.  I am probably wrong and that's okay. But not far off though.  Maybe I'm just thinking that this is the best defense in the past 5 years.  Or 7 years.  2010 would be 13 years.  

 

Maybe I need a reminder instead? 

 

Tell me how good the 2009 & 2010 defenses did in comparison? 

 

With points allowed per game, yards per game, and other neat stats that was more impressive. 

 

I'd love to see the comparison, because I want to know if I am clearly wrong to think this was the best defense I have ever seen collectively.  

 

Show me those 2009 AND 2010 stats.  Then let's go shoot pool and grab wings 

09 had an equally inept offense and that defense not only kept the team in games, but won games and wrecked game plans on the other side. Suh def the headliner but also had crick and turner. Will Compton at linebacker and prince at Cb were nfl guys- the guys behind them were no ordinary guys either- many of them would be number 1 on the depth chart the past few years.

stats wise isn’t fair. This defense was a menace in the era when spread really took over in the big 12.

everyone remembers the Texas and Colorado games where Suh was a force, let’s not forget Missouri in the rain and the menace he was. 
 

the biggest thing the defense this year was missing was A DUDE who can single handily ruin the day for the other team. 09 had that plus more experience/talent at every level compared to this year

2010 was pretty similar to above but swap out Suh for lavonte. One of the biggest wishes I have ever had for husker football was to see those 2 on the field in the same year, we just missed it by a season but hot damn that would’ve been fun to watch both Suh and lavonte do their thing. You couple that with the offense we had in 2010 and I honestly think we’d be in the title hunt 

14 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

No, they aren't.  We had 478 rushing attempts.  QBs accounted for 191 of those.  RBs accounted for 270.  And...it would be pretty easy to explain that the reason for that was we went to more of an option game with more QB runs because, most of the year, we had QBs that were better at running than passing.  And, our top QBs got hurt.  Our QBs accounted for 40% of our runs.  LSU (with possibly the best QB in the land) the QBs accounted for 34% of runs.  Not a big difference, and they had a good passing attack.  This is actually evidence that we are willing to mold the offense to your strengths.  And, how many of those QB runs were actually pass plays that ended up in scrambles because the QB couldn't see open receivers and scrambled earlier than he needed to.

 

And, if those top RBs hadn't gotten hurt (and the injuries weren't the scheme's fault), they would have had good years setting themselves up to show they are good enough to have a chance.

 

Yep, the two QBs playing in the NFL from the previous two years were under different staffs.  But, we had WRs running open last year and a good QB would have gotten them the ball.  We had a true freshman WR almost matching 50+ yard catches with the best WR in the country.  And...this is why I said we need to get a good/decent transfer QB committed early.

Hot damn, I'm sold. Can you just join rhules staff in place of weger and help satt on the recruiting trail?

1 hour ago, BigRedBuster said:

Really?

 

QB….hey, we want to win games. We need a QB that can read defenses, make good decisions and is accurate. If you come, we can win a lot of games and you get drafted. We can design the offense around your strengths. 
 

RB….Look, we are committed to running the ball.  If you’re good, you could rack up a lot of yards/TDs and get drafted. 
 

WR…. Look at the great QB we have coming in.  Look at the WRs we had running wide open all year.  This QB is going to get them the ball. Also, look at the WRs Nebraska has gotten drafted recently.  
 

I don’t get why it has to have a label. 

lol, well when you put it that way, it sounds dumb.  But just to play devils advocate- Im a qb, couldn't tell ya exactly what strengths this progrum is looking for.  You wanna be a power run team and protect the ball yet the qb is taking the lion share of the rushing attempts and getting beat the hell up. If I have any aspirations of going to the nfl, this isnt an ideal scenario.

If im a RB- you havent had a rb drafted in close to 10 years now- I look at your neighbors up north in wisconsin and other big ten programs that do that on an annual basis- why am i committing to a place who has devalued the running back across 2 coaching staffs?

WR- Who exactly has gotten drafted? 2 WRs who spent the majority of their careers elsewhere?  What I see on the field this year is question marks at QB, the guy who gets me the ball.  If im on the fence, i sure as hell am not going to a place where theres a question if I can even get the ball delivered to me.

Obviously extremes, but yeah, i think it would help us tremendously if we could sell something based off what is seen on the field to recruits.

55 minutes ago, Undone said:

 

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.

To me, having a label helps tremendously in what Rhule is selling to recruits and transfer portal guys.  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.  If I'm an offensive skill player recruit in 2025, surely I have some questions as to what I'm committing to when I just witnessed a full season of question marks.  

Your short list is spot on.  If I may counter the running the ball point- we're still way too over reliant on qb runs.  If you remove the massive qb runs we had on broken pass plays (there were quite a few) our rushing totals dont look so great.  If you look at our average yards per rush, essentially 9 progrums in the big ten fared better per rush.  I feel like 80% of the past decade we've been boom or bust with the qb play and this reliance has to end.

Screenshot 2023-11-28 at 2.20.39 PM Medium.heic

32 minutes ago, admo said:

Fire Satterfield thread.  Could be a place for discussion.  Or reasoning.  Or venting.  Or moving on.

 

However, with 9 months until next season, I get the feeling the thread will reach 75 pages by then.  Maybe 80.  

 

No worries tho, carry on

 

You think when its all said and done this thread will rival the sock puppet or fizzle out well short of that kind of fame.

8 minutes ago, ChubbaWubba said:

 

Talent level should get us 7-0. Blow Jobs will get us 4 and miss a bowl game again. Get ready for the knife to the Heart season 7.

Isn't it knife to the heart season 8?

And blow jobs? hey, all of a sudden im feeling a bit better about things

3 minutes ago, ChubbaWubba said:

Injuries might have actually helped us minus Washington. Our O line didn’t play any worse. Our QB was better at the end than the beginning or middle of season. Receivers were more athletic but young. We hardly ever tried for the explosive plays until we were desperate. Play calling was a factor in some of the late season turnovers.
 

Every effing team has injuries. Iowa had Deacon “fastballs only” Hill at QB and many other critical injuries (DeJean 1st rounder). It’s time to accept that we are effed next season as well, when Rhule will have no choice or excuses for keeping Satterfield afterwards. The Schedule was the easiest in my 39 years of life this year and will never happen again.

 

No more Big Ten West :(. Elite programs joining the conference next year. Our issue was never Scott Frost, it was his love for his friends as assistants. Just hire the best available and learn to work together and we are back in the Top 25. Enough winning over years and we are in the Playoff. Might never win a championship, but after the Riley, Frost eras, I’d just like to see us with a number next to our name again.

Helped us in the long run for sure (experience for young guys).  

Next year should be fun.  Sincerely hope we're sitting at 6-1 or 7-0 heading into our final 5 game stretch against tOSU, UCLA, USC, Wiscy, Iowa.... 

48 minutes ago, TGHusker said:

Yes the same quote gave me pause as well.   Put it brings me pause because Rhule could have brought in just about anyone with the salary that was being offered but knowing the above results still brought in Satt based on relationship - he had coached with him before.  Loyalty and relationship is great if everyone is successful.  But this is also why Frost brought his whole staff with him from UCF - and look where that got us. 

Youre 100% right on frosty, that was always my biggest gripe about his tenure.  He did himself a disservice by having a whole staff that was void of big time P5 experience. 

I had hope rhule's staff would be slightly different given most have experience to hang their hat on (beside mcguire and weger).  I never know what rumors to believe or not but how this season played out gives some credibility to the rumor that satt was never rhules first choice and ideally he would've had Jake Peetz in the fold. 

2 hours ago, Undone said:

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.

 

 

I think Satt can own 2 elements of blame:

1. The Sims transfer was obviously a disaster of a pick up. They hitched their wagon to a turnover machine and basically relied on a guy who couldnt help himself but give the ball to the other team.

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?  

Perhaps the injuries and qb situation really took away a lot of what I listed in number 2 but it feels like we didnt even try some of the concepts that would play to whatever strength we could claim on offense. 

I am obviously beating a dead horse with the comments above but for being the highest paid assistant in progrum history, I sure as hell didn't expect to witness the worst offense in progrum history.  Pretty appalling when this offense is compared to the production of the team in 1968, when lower scoring games were common place and teams werent chucking it around the yard like they do today.  Taking eras into consideration, I'd be shocked if this offense didnt rank dead last in progrum history.

2 hours ago, JJ Husker said:

Can’t believe this thread still has contributors. Thought everyone would’ve sobered up by now and realized there was basically nothing Satt could do with this QB room and decimated receiver corp. Just run the ball doesn’t work when the opponent knows that is all you can attempt. Unless you think Satt is coaching them to throw horribly and without any field awareness and to inexplicably drop balls while running then it might be best to hide your lack of understanding from the rest of the board.

 

Maybe I’m slow on the uptake but I find it very hard to crucify the guy when he had absolutely nothing to work with. Yes there were many questionable play calls but I’d like to see somebody here complaining figure out something/anything that could’ve possibly worked.

 

Having said that…I wouldn’t miss him if he were to be let go.

I'm in a similar camp as you- ill chalk it up to insane injuries plus first year struggles.  That article tho posted above also included this stat that gave me pause:

"The best predictor of future success is past results. That's a big reason I'm so skeptical that Satterfield will ultimately work out. In six seasons as an offensive coordinator, his offenses have ranked 88th, 97th, 60th, 104th, 40th and 121st in scoring, and 74th, 117th, 96th, 110th, 72nd and 116th in total offense. Three different teams. Three different conferences. Same inept results."

Hard to argue with stats- similar to the Jeff Sims story.  Sims was a turnover machines, comes here and guess what, morphs into a turnover nightmare.  I'll remain optimistic a full offseason and influx of talent can help Satt but hot damn, the stat I pasted above gives me a disdain towards this hiring decision I haven't felt before.

11 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

I actually think bowl prep would have been huge for Chubba.  He would have been QB1 and getting a ton of reps and coaching.  He didn't get before.

 

But...he won't be getting it now either.

I don't disagree- there is no replacement for actual game prep and subsequent practices.  Perhaps I'm just so beatdown and broken over our qb play all year that im deliberately ignoring the qb room and looking at other players/position groups I wanted to see some game action from if we were to have reached bowl status lol

On 11/26/2023 at 3:02 PM, Packerhuskerfan said:

Our biggest problems are with turnovers.  I'm not sure 15 practices in December really fixes that.  None of the QBs apparently know how to run with the ball properly without fumbling and probably at least 2 of the 3 won't be here next year.   Learn how to protect the ball and hold it properly.  It shouldn't take the month of December to figure that out.  Any QB coach worth a lick should be able to fix that.

The benefit of the bowl game practices is way more beneficial for the younger guys on the team to get continued snaps and game experience in the bowl game.  Theres a bunch of young dudes on defense and a few on offense that would surely get game playing reps in a bowl setting that could be very beneficial heading into the offseason and next year.

You're spot on for the qbs- it'll do very little for the QBs.  Perhaps chubba could've benefited given he was relegated to 3rd string/scout team qb given his groin injury.  

I just saw your 2nd post regarding QBs.  I'm sure Sims is gone next year- but i imagine both HH and purdy will remain.  We surely will bring on another QB from the portal.  Staying status quo at this position is simply a non starter heading into next year unless Rhule wants to deliberately turn up the heat on himself

17 hours ago, MyBloodIsRed16 said:

I think the key here is not to get into one score games.  That's would solve a lot of this mess

I feel like over analyzing results in one score games is just a nice way to call out inferior talent. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our ineptitude in one score games and OT games aligns with our general downward trend in talent in the program.

elite players step up and make plays when it matters. Particularly in the red zone or OT setting, we haven’t had a dude on offense really since ameer.  We’ve also been pitiful in 1 score games and OT since around Ameers departure 

5 minutes ago, Enhance said:

Turnovers are typically the result of inexperience and poor fundamentals. Talent naturally plays a role, too, but I don't necessarily think that's the bigger issue. I think the turnovers are just a microcosm of overall problems that have been plaguing the program for awhile. It's going to take fixing a lot of little things before we start to see improvements in areas like turnovers.

True.  I think it'll also help when our QB isn't everything in this offense.  Outside of trey palmer last year, I think you'd have to go back to ameer's last season when 95% of the offense and its success wasn't on the shoulders of the QB.  No matter who the QB was for us this year, it seemed like they had to do way more than what they were capable of for us to win.

2 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

The table was set for a feel good ending here. Sims turns out to be a total bust, Haarberg's three game winning streak turns into a mirage, but the guy we all wrote off, Chubba Purdy, is handed the job for 2.25 games, and looks to be the better combined runner and passer we'd been looking for. He needs to win one of the last three games to give the season a different narrative, and by God all three games turn out to be totally winnable in the fourth quarter.

 

Is it possible that all three Nebraska QBs find their own way to make back-breaking turnovers? Yes. 

 

This just supports my Angry God theory. 

lol- my guess is we see a slight change in the coaching staff.  Wouldnt shock me at all if rhule brings in a guy to focus on QBs & TEs.  Something tells me he can work out a way for raiola to work with TEs on blocking drills and have mcguire lean in on WR/TE for route running.  

I'm sure there's a better way to structure this but I have hope that Weger's spot from last year could be repurposed in a way that adds another coach to help develop the QBs without deteriorating the coaching focus to other groups.  

8 minutes ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

 

Probably all true. And while I can think of excuses for this down year (despite one game improvement) it's still weird to think how much better it would feel to be a Northwestern fan right now. They are in a transitional year after 1-11 season and program wide scandal, and they lost to Nebraska. But they end the season 7-5 and are going to a bowl. Hard to say they're more talented if they lost to Nebraska. Still.....

 

One clue. Northwestern lead the NCAA with 30 turnovers last year. This year they got it down to 9. Maybe ball security is a talent, maybe it's something that can be coached, but I'm betting it wins games all by itself. 

If we can pull a Northwestern in the TO department and reduce ours by 10-15 next year, this is a completely different team and feeling around the progrum.

Typically I would say it can be coached but at some point it falls on the player.  Witnessing this past year makes me question that belief when I constantly see Sims drop snaps, fumble with horrendous ball security mechanics, and throwing blatant picks to other team- coaching can only change so much when its the player on the field.