Kernal

We're close. Just a little better preparation and execution here and there and we win. It sucks to lose, but it was a fun game to watch and I'm proud of the guys' efforts. I'm very happy with the progress made in these two seasons. Can't wait to watch next week's game

Husker culture shift taking hold after jolting year of transition under Mike Riley Pretty good article by Dirk Chatelain that has a lot of player (and current staff) interview comments where they talk about the differences in leadership style between Bo and Riley.

Winning is more fun than losing... just admit it.

Of course no one would be happy if we lost. But don't you think people would be much more frustrated with a blowout loss than a tight game that we end up losing by a couple of points? Did you feel the same after the 70-31 blowout loss to Wisconsin in the 2012 CCG as compared to last year when we got edged 23-21? Both of those losses sucked. My reaction at the B1G blowout loss was more of "you gotta be kidding me" and I stopped watching it and joined my wife and friends for a Christmas party on our block that night. My reaction last year was "man, another crappy loss by this poorly coached team (and NU was very poorly coached last year) to a very average Wisconsin team". My feelings don't waver too much either way whether it's a blowout or a close loss. I just want to see wins. I guess I have a different take. Sure, I hate to lose as much as anyone. (Well, not as much as you, I guess, for the close ones anyway.) But a blowout loss bums me out more than a close loss. When I go over a close loss afterwards I think of the things we need to change or improve on to win. By contrast it's hard to even think about a blowout loss. Just too many things to fix to be able to figure out how we could have possibly won. Being humiliated 70-31 or allowing 405 yards from one back are an entirely different planet from losing. You can lose a game without being absolutely embarrassed.

I want Nebraska to kick their asses and win. But I'll be satisfied if we prepare well this week and play hard Saturday. I'd really like to see our O-line have a great game giving TA time and TN/DO lanes.

Better to be the worst 7-0 team this year than the best 3-6 team that we were last year.

TOP 25 TEAMS, WEEK 9 RANK TEAM RECORD POINTS 1st Place Votes Prev CHANGE Hi/Low 1 Alabama 8-0 1599 63 1 0 1/1 2 Michigan 7-0 1486 0 4 2 2/8 3 Clemson 7-0 1485 1 3 0 2/3 4 Washington 7-0 1434 0 5 1 4/18 5 Louisville 6-1 1321 0 7 2 4/23 6 Nebraska 7-0 1194 0 9 3 6/NR 6 Baylor 6-0 1194 0 8 2 6/21 8 Ohio State 6-1 1137 0 2 -6 2/8 9 West Virginia 6-0 1007 0 13 4 9/NR 10 Texas A&M 6-1 979 0 6 -4 6/NR 11 Wisconsin 5-2 963 0 10 -1 8/NR 12 Florida 5-1 821 0 12 0 12/25 13 Boise State 7-0 776 0 14 1 13/NR 14 Florida State 5-2 767 0 15 1 2/21 15 Oklahoma 5-2 692 0 16 1 3/NR 16 Utah 7-1 664 0 18 2 16/NR 17 Auburn 5-2 552 0 24 7 17/NR 18 Tennessee 5-2 523 0 19 1 9/19 19 Louisiana State 5-2 424 0 23 4 6/NR 20 North Carolina 6-2 388 0 21 1 16/NR 21 Western Michigan 8-0 352 0 20 -1 20/NR 22 Navy 5-1 243 0 25 3 22/NR 23 Colorado 6-2 242 0 26 3 23/NR 24 Houston 6-2 144 0 11 -13 5/24 25 Virginia Tech 5-2 116 0 31 6 19/NR

How did Wisconsin drop a spot for beating Iowa? I think OSU was punished a bit too much for losing essentially on a fluky play- the blocked kick return TD- in a tough road environment. Are we a top-6 team? Let the hand-wringing begin (continue).

I watched this game and was wondering if OSU has a bunch of O-line injuries like we do, because Penn State was living in their backfield. It is absolutely true that we can beat OSU. But we also suffer from an injured and inefficient O-line, so OSU (and Wisconsin) will be doing the same thing to us that PSU did to them. The key to both games for the Huskers is A) get healthy, B) balance on offense, and C) tune-out the home crowd. I'd like to see us spread them out more so they can't load up the box. We need to be able to take advantage of that more than we did against Purdue.

Tommy specializes in the fadeaway YOLObomb.

I don't think it probably affects players much. It probably helps those opposing coaches gameplan a little bit better because they are more familiar with our personnel. Also: Shawn Watson is a QC assistant at Indiana, but he would have been gone from NU before any of these current players arrived.

Exactly!

Our offensive line is aptly named.

The good news on our injury-front is that our defense is healthy across the board. They're going to take a pounding against UW, OSU, Minny and Iowa.

This thread belongs in the "Rumors/What-ifs" sub-forum. Nebraska football is finally enjoyable again after a pretty mediocre 2015, and we have yet another re-hash the Pelini saga. Who cares? He's not the coach here anymore, thank God. Time for his former players, assistants and family members to move on to the Youngstown (or Purdue?) forum.

I said going into the Nebraska game, so we are excluded. Yes, I think they are beating Wiscy in Iowa and Penn State, and losing to Michigan. Iowa is going to beat Wiscy? Have you SEEN any Hawkeye games this year? I..I can't stop laughing. Iowa will be lucky to get to 7 wins this year. As far as honesty, NU should be favored in every game left on the schedule except UW/OSU. There's no way Iowa is favored, even with it being at home. Yes. Yes Hope you're right. Okay. We'll know in 6 days...I think Iowa wins on Saturday. If I'm reading between the lines in your very subtle post, you think Wisconsin draws and quarters them. One of us will be wrong. Certainly might be me. I'm curious. What have you seen from iowa this year to think they will be capable of beating Wiscy? Or Penn State, or Illinois for that matter? That offense is a dumpster fire that has only been able to produce against PURDUE? I don't understand it. Ive watched most of thier games this year and that team is playing like a high school team from Alaska. As in the words of Charles Barkley - Turrible. Iowa has been laughable in moments this year, but I think Wisconsin is due for a letdown game, and Iowa could easily beat them. I would put it as a 50-50 game right now. The table is clearly set for Wisconsin. Win the next two games, Iowa and Nebraska, and they control their destiny going forward and will probably get another shot at Michigan or OSU in the CCG. They're legitimately strong. It took an act of will by JT Barrett to pull that game close enough to outlast them in OT. As has been mentioned, the Iowa offense is a pile of dog crap. Both Minnesota and Purdue played possibly the two worst games I've seen in College Football in the last several years to hand them their last two victories. Leidner was a zombie and they still almost won. Purdue couldn't stop slow, hobbled CJ Beathard from long repeated desperation runs of 10 yards+. I am confident this will not happen to Wisconsin. That Wisconsin -3 line that was out this week is for the gamblers, IMO. Wisconsin will beat Iowa by a comfortable 12 points or so and it won't, in reality, be that close. Michigan will beat them by more. Wisconsin, if they were to beat Nebraska, would still need another team to beat Nebraska as UW has two conference losses. So they don't control their own destiny, they still need help.

I'd put Nebraska, NW and Indiana ahead of Iowa. I guess we'll see who's right at the end of the season.

The program has changed under Riley. These guys are showing up every week, fixing things that need fixing, and adjusting during games. They haven't shown any signs of collapse really since 2014 when the team always seemed so fragile. There are no guarantees as we could lose to anyone, but I think we'll at most lose one of the two games to Wisconsin or Ohio State. I think if we lose to Wisconsin we'll beat OSU the next week (unless we have a ton of injuries). Iowa and Minny could beat us, as could Maryland, but I don't think they will. So I think 11-1 and a CCG appearance, hopefully against Michigan, is on the menu.

Alabama is the SEC team that is actually good. I'd think AtM is going to get blown out just like Tennessee did.

I thought this was a stupid, click-bait article. For one thing, we're only six games into the season, which for us will include two top-10 teams in a couple weeks. For another, I didn't watch nor do I care about Iowa last year- except that we beat ourselves in the game we played them. Good for Iowa going 12-0. As a result, they've locked in Kirk Ferentz (5-2 this year with a loss to FCS NSDU) until he dies of old age.

thinking our backup may be as effective as our clearly hurt quarterback, and wanting to get our starter to 100% before we play the best defense in our division isn't complacency or over confidence. Armstrong looked terrible, I think Fyfe could play just as well as Armstrong did yesterday and without risk of Armstrong aggravating his injury. Why should this be shut down? Do we think bum ankle Tommy is leaps and bounds ahead of our backup and if we put Ryker in our offense will diminish into a unit that couldn't put up points against a defense made up entirely of marshmallow men? I think Armstrong mostly looked terrible because our O-line played terrible. Lots of plays were blown up at the LOS before they even got going. If we could rest anybody, I'd like to rest our four o-line starters with sprained ankles. I trust coaches to play the best available QB for the game. If that's Ryker Fyfe, that's fine with me. But I wouldn't just assume we can afford to rest our best player because we think Purdue isn't any good.

Looks like it's the receivers coach who will take over as interim. As a side, Ross Els (formerly NU's LB coach under Pelini) is Purdue's defensive coordinator this year.

I hope the interim coach is a "team in disarray" variety of coach and not a "rally around the guy we all like and win him the permanent job" variety.

We are not good enough to "rest" our starting QB or give anything less than 100% against anybody, including Purdue- a team we lost to last year. This kind of thinking, when it bleeds over into players' and coaches' preparation, is how games that should be won are lost.

I'm rooting for Wisconsin to win. I hate OSU. And if Wisky wins both teams will still be in the top-10.