The Spirit of Bob Devaney

Bruins - 49

Huskers - 28

Rushing - 170

Passing - 250

Our young inexperienced defense is exposed as the coaching woes continue...

I honestly need some help from you guys on why we lose to michigan. After Denard went out they were ours, i expect the same this year reguardless where its played.

Because:

A. it will be a meaningful game and our track record in those kinds of games is terrible.

&

B. Because it's a meaningful road game (see above)

KJ,

I would argue that this really is not a difficult prediction to make as substantial precedent now exists.

First and foremost among this is the fact that you can pretty much bank on us losing any meaningful games; with that in mind, a quick look at our schedule reveals 7-5 with losses against:

- UCLA

- Northwestern

- Michigan

- Michigan State

- Penn State

If some twist of fate occurs and we end up in the Big 10 Championship game, then we will get slaughtered out by Ohio State and will be told by Pelini that we did not execute and by many on this board and others that Pelini "needs more time".

Rinse and Repeat for the next however many years Pelini is here.

Yes; I am jaded, 10+ years of being irrelevant coupled with blowout losses year in and year out can be rather toxic to a fan...

aaaaand the trend continues...another big game another loss.

I wonder how much longer this garbage is going to continue, 1 year? 5 years, 10 years? Heck if the TC get's their way then BO should be given 20 more years ala TO.

 

Nebraska, yall had me scared, you had me kicking my dogs and slapping my wife. Our defensive line was getting overwhelmed, that big corn cob white running back of yall's kept busting it wide open, doing what he damn well pleased.

 

I'm thinking this dude's an Iowa troll...but either way, pretty low brow stuff. Pretty much how I envision the typical southerner acting/speaking.

+1

I've never understood why some fans of opposing teams feel the need to go on others board and say "great game guys!!"

Gee whiz, thanks a bunch, it means a lot, really appreciate your affirmation now go away.

Bo Pelini is a bad coach, you should all be praying he leaves. Anyone could coach Nebraska to 4 loss seasons. Your program is capable of being MUCH better and he's had plenty of time to prove he can't win big in Lincoln.

Goldy:

I would say it is a fairly accurate statement that there are many of us who are holding our breaths at the moment hoping that this “rumor” does in fact have some legs to it. In my opinion; where there is smoke, there’s typically fire and when you look at the circumstances one could see how this just might be legit (fractured fan base, new AD, etc.).

I guess we’ll find out soon enough; however, in the meantime, I will say this…

If in fact Pelini does leave, I hope the Mod’s here don’t implode

In the late 1970s they wanted to fire Tom Osborne. In the late 80s all of Nebraska was calling for Charlie McBride's head.

 

I get that the OWH needs to sell newspapers. And that's a great three sentences by Dirk. But to pronounce that Bo cannot get it done is silly.

 

Let's not get carried away because someone came up with a great line. Bo is still the shark. Dirk is still the remora eating the crumbs from Bo's gills.

Ah yes; case in point, thank you knapplc for towing the company line.

Say what you want about Dirk's articles but he's the only one who gets into Bo's ass and has the balls to ask serious questions. He gets to the point and sometimes he might be "out of line" but i'd rather have that then a bunch of timid reporters.

But he'll never have the guts to do outside a presser, bo would beat his twirpy snotty ass. Dirk is f'ing brat. plain and simple.

 

Now that that's off my chest, this sentence may very well be true. The part about not being good enough is pure speculation, but is an eery thought, becuase at this point it is true.

Ok but this isnt a boxing match. Bo gets paid millions of dollars to coach a football team. You give up 70 points to a mediocre team, you should be asked some hard pressed questions. It's unacceptable. He's a stubborn man who needs a dose of his own medicine. If he doesn't change, then the hard pressed questions shouldn't either.

 

On the other side of the coin, Dirk gets paid to do a job as well and he is drastically sh**ty at it. If he can more or less call for Bo's head and grand stand like the media has which is why TO even got angry with them, then why can't anyone call for Dirk's job? I use Dirk's articles line my couch in my garage.

 

Sam McQweon (spelling?) in my personal opinion is a good journalist.

I understand but calling for a reporters job compared to a millionaire's job is different. I'm not saying Dirk is great at what he does but without him twisting the knife a little bit, we would get nothing out of Bo. NOTHING. Dirk is the only one that makes Bo feel the pressure and the fan's voice. The rest of the guys are too soft. I'm sure the media is incredibly annoying and pressure mounts as a football coach. Still, at the end of the day, Bo goes home with 3 million dollars and incentives on the way. You lose in the fashion that Nebraska has, Bo deserves to be hassled and bothered. If sitting through crummy articles and "out of line" statements is what it takes to get a hard pressed question here and there, then I'm all for it.

+1 Vince, could not agree with you more.

In my opinion, one of the most frustrating things about the Pelini era is that you get the sense that Bo is really not held accountable in almost any capacity from anyone. It's as if he has this inherent "pass" with regard to the product he puts on the field because..well..it's the "Nebraska way", it took TO 20 years, Bo should get the same, etc. and the minute anyone really questions his tenure, they are immediately ridiculed and met with incredulous reactions; at some point that culture needs to be broken or this program risks slipping further down the rabbit hole until 1 day be it 5, 10, 15 or 20 years from now people stop look around and ask themselves "jesus, what the hell happened".

There have been a couple of over confident proclamations during the past decade:

 

GWB: "Mission Accomplished". We know how that turned out

 

Bo after beating Arizona 33-0 in the Holiday Bowl 4 years ago: "Nebraska is Back"

 

Well after 4 years of being back, what do we have to show for it:

 

1.No Championships (Bo said he came here to win championships)

 

2. Defense not fixed - Bo was hired to fix the D. Thank God for Suh and L. David, Prince and Dennard -

 

3. Undisciplined: Turnovers, penalties, missed assignments, have been trademarks of Bo's teams the last 3 years. Bo was thought to be a disciplinarian but fair coach when he was hired.

 

4.No big game prizes: It was expected that we would win our share of big games. We have now lost every big game but one during the past 4 years: 3 conf championship games, our first Big 10 game, the last time we played texas at home, every big national TV game - the only exceptions I can think of is the comeback last year against OSU, our win over OU at NU. Typically, the bigger the exposure the worse the performance. We hired Bo to be a motivator - our team appears to be unprepared for the national stage.

 

5. Win games: Since the KSU road win we are 8-9 on the road or something similar. We appear to be on our way to another 4 loss season.

 

6.Restore the Order: We are no closer being in the national championship conversation then what we were when BC was fired. This is Nebraska, when schools like Northern Ill are ranked ahead of NU, there is something wrong, seriously wrong - after 5 years of the Bo reign NU fans deserve a greater return on their financial and emotional investment.

 

7. Stop embarrassing NU: BC had too many embarrassing loses during his year 4 at NU. Bo said that would not happen. In the past few years we've been embarrassed 2x by Wisky, 1x by OSU, 1x by Michigan, 1x by S. Carolina, 1x by S Dak State ( a win but an embarrassing win), Washington in the Holiday Bowl (the score not so much just the loss to a team we blew out earlier). Bo's sideline demeanor while better this year has been an embarrassment (think Texas A&M esp) The media loves to focus on Bo yelling at someone - it has become the face of NU football

 

8. Competence: We got on BC because his loyalty to an incompetent DC in Cosgrove. It appears Bo has the same blinded loyalty. Cotton and others come to mind. Ron Brown is the only assistant with long term experience. As one journalist said, Bo wasn't hired to teach a graduate course in coaching - shown by his hire of relatively inexperience and lower skilled coaches. Is Bo personally threatened by guys with greater experience? NU deserves better. Perhaps we made a critical mistake: We hired a head coach with NO head coaching experience. NU deserved better 5 years ago - we put ourselves in the position to have a very long learning curve because of it.

 

,

 

Frank Solich was fired for going 9-3 because he lost to KSU 31-10 ( I believe that was the score) and not bringing us closer to the NC game. Does NU need to apologize for firing Frank? We fired Frank for lesser issues than what I note above.

 

I do not want Frank back as I don't believe he was going to get us into the NC game - NU was above his 'paid grade'. Now I'm wondering if Bo is over his head and is also above his paid grade.

 

I began to drink some kool-aid turning the 6 game win streak. Yet, in looking back, I can see that just below those comeback wins were the cracks in the foundation that have never been addressed - turnovers, lack of discipline, emotional instability (hot and cold play - reflective of the coach?), lack of team speed on the D. Saturday night proved that while comeback wins are great, they are not a guaranty that the foundation was fixed.

#8 is by far the most puzzling aspect of the Pelini experiment, the fact that a school like Nebraska...Nerbaska... unarguably one of the statistical and tradition rich standard bearers of the game has become what amounts to a proving ground of untested assistant coaches is absolutely mind boggling to me. For the love of god Bo, this is NEBRASKA for gods sake..we deserve better, we DEMAND better. Go out and get proven Coordinators on both sides of the ball who will challenge your thought process and open you up to possibilities you'll never find with "yes" men.

Stand up and make difficult decisions, start being the kind of Head Coach everyone so desperately believes you can be...make a radical change...do something, anything uncharacteristic...SHOW us that you KNOW something is wrong and that you have the stones to fix it. Stop paying us lip service, stop telling us that you point the thumb not the finger and that we didn't "execute" and that you don't know what's wrong and that nothing is wrong with the foundation of the program.

Bo, there is something terribly wrong with this picture and I can only hope for the sake of this program and all that support it, that you are able to see as much and more importantly have the courage do something about it...

"Bo isn’t good enough to get over the hump. He isn't bad enough to fire. Nebraska is stuck in purgatory."

As awful as it to say this, these three sentences sum up our current situation perfectly.

The rest of the article here.

He needs to be fired.

When one looks at our "10 win" season a little more closely, it does not pass muster as the mirage becomes apparent. Warning bells should be going off from Beatrice to Alliance and while I don't expect Eichorst to have the stones to jettison Pelini in year one, it is my sincere hope that we crash and burn in year 2 so that he has the political ammo he needs to pull the trigger.

Best case scenario...Pelini is hired away at the conclusion of this season...

So I was visiting a friend within the football staff and snapped the attached picture while we were on the field chatting, look in the red box I drew.

Someone knows something we don't... =)

Coverage map says I should be getting it in Georgia on ESPN 2 but it's showing Texas Tech.

wtf??

No, he does not.

The veneer has worn off of his rosy coach speak in the spring followed by the buzzwords/phrases that he trots out during the year ("We've got to execute!").

Here we go again with the Tom Osborne logic and comparison.

How on earth someone can rationally compare the tenure of arguably one of the greatest coaches in the history of the game who built his legacy in a bygone era of the game nearly 40 years ago to Bo Pelini and the circumstances he finds himself in now is mind boggling.

I understand why..it's a convenient retort....problem is, it's full of holes.

Fans like the one who started this thread will continue to be the reason we drift further and further away from our legacy and tradition until one day we will be like the Service Academy's reflecting on how great they once were in the days of Doc Blanchard and Co. 50 years ago.

There is a reason that a sentiment of restlessness is beginning to permeate...we the fans can sense that something is amiss in Lincoln and many are beginning to suspect that Bo P. is not the man for the job.

If you remember, there were really only three names that it sounded like TO interviewed. Pelini, Gill and Grobe. For the freaking NEBRASKA JOB. Two guys who never had been had coaches, and the guy from Wake Forest.

I know; pretty incredulous when you take a step back and consider the context.

I like Dr. Tom just as much as the next unfortunately I believe the business side of the machine that now powers College Football passed him by quite some time ago.

Chris Petersen is the obvious choice but as one of the other posters pointed out, UCLA offered him the world and he turned it down. If we could get him though, I have a strong feeling it would pay huge dividends almost immediately..the similarities with the natural hurdles he faces working to keep Boise a perennial power are similar to what he would encounter in Lincoln.

He would win here plain and simple and I would be willing to bet Dollars to Cents that he would begin to do so almost immediately.

Gruden would be a disaster...why take an other Calhan type risk on a coach with no substantial college pedigree? We've been down that path before and to do so again would be idiotic.

Carrol would not work..the inherent home grown talent he had access to is what made him so successful at SC...he would be another disaster.

There are some similarities and that should be setting off warning bells, these types of blowout losses should not be happening in year 5 of Pelini's tenure and in my opinion is indicative of systemic issues with the program beginning with the man who likes to "point the thumb".

This is not the 1960's or 70's and the logic that we should wait around and give Pelini time ala Osborne does not work, it is a different era of football and back then and NU was not the same "Brand" that it became of TO's run of success..giving Pelini more time at this point is only going to erode our legacy further until we eventually become completely completely irrelevant.

Critical decisions that will profoundly affect the future of this program are looming within the next 1-2 years...I hope the powers that be get it right.

Case in point.

Too sick of being disappointed by dropping these kinds of games year in and year out.

If i tape it then I won't have to suffer through watching us lose another game with any semblance of importance; if we win then I'll go back and watch.

I don't think we have a chance in hell but hope with equal vigor that I'm made to eat some serious crow.

Signing off...

When you stop and think about the comment, it is actually pretty smart of Willisms to say that.

These guys have a secondary with more holes than a piece of Swiss cheese. With a pass defense ranked 94th in the country, the last thing these guys want to see is us go to the air.

Until I saw Bo and Paps field a completely different D in the 2nd half against Wisky, I would have to agree with the above. That change and intensity really shocked me. Something I haven't seen in quite some time. The fact that Bo made the comment to the press about him still knowing something about defense shows me Bo has forgotten more than I will ever know.

 

The DL made up of 4 DE's was a thing of brilliance on 3rd and long.

 

Evans requesting to cover Abberderis, Randle wanting to get back in, Stein finally playing with intensity shows me something is going on with the D. Leadership is emerging.

 

I really think that Bo has done some studying and realizes that to win the B1G and possibly the MNC, we will need to stop the mobile QB. There is no way that he can realistically think our standard D will work. It didn't last year when we had less overall talent IMO. Not to take away from David at all, but no Crick, Fonzie basically hurt all year etc.... I think we actually have the DB's in place to stay with Miller. Maybe we even spy this year. Put SJB on him or Evans or Cooper. I really expect Bo to show us something new, if nothing more to throw it in the face of the fans. Hey if disliking us (not saying he does) motivates him to do the old, "I'll show you", then so be it.

 

Again, the D staff really impressed me last night and I think that the staff, team and fans learned a little bit last night that will pay dividends going forward.

Lo,

Glad you brought up the piece about the Dline with 4 DE's, I almost forgot about that part of the game and I would agree that was awesome. I was actually watching the game with my dad and we were literally begging the staff to do something ANYTHING to bring some heat against Stave and the few times we did (Zone Blitz and the speedy Dline) it caused all sorts of problems. Miller is not a QB equipped to burn us with his arm (at least not yet), I would go after him early and often to try and rattle him, if we give up a few big plays as a trade off here and there, then so be it.

I really want to buy into your opinion and would be lying if I said that I wasn't tempted to do so, it's just difficult to argue with history and when I sit down and look at this game I keep coming back to a few key points:

- We are on the road after an emotional win (ala last year when MSU visited us after knocking off Wisconsin)

- The struggles we've historically had against Mobile QB's

- The fact that Pelini has struggled with winning games in the month of October

A quick check of stats reveals a very salty Buckeye run D, they're currently ranked #19 in the country against the run. Against the pass...well, that's a different story, they fall off the map at #94. If I was a betting man, I say we drop this game by 7 - 14.

Their D seemed to have our number last year up tot he point Miller went out and historically we have faired horribly against mobile quarterbacks. I've not seen anything to indicate that trend has changed, the Wisconsin win was nice but their QB had lead feet. We saw what Miller did to us last year and unfortunately, I expect a repeat performance.

I hope I'm wrong.

1. There is no way in hell we are going to beat Ohio State with a healthy Braxton Miller. For us, trying to stop him is futile (see last years game before he got injured).

2. There is no way in hell we beat Michigan; because again, we cannot stop scrambling QB's and Shoelace will kill us on the ground.

My favorite part is at the 2:54 mark...