drfish

I think the Huskers have a punchers chance v. Wisconsin. That Ohio team looks like it is on another level from where the rest of the league is.

1. Penalties are improving. Still really hurt the one drive. 2. S&C coach is earning his pay. We look like the strongest team in the 4th quarter. 3. Runthedangball guy ought to be happy today. Way to play "Keep away, Huskers." 4. Despite still having some warts, this is not a bad team. 5. Still waiting for 4 quarters of dominating performance.

Bo won at a 71% clip with no championships of any kind. Miles won at a 76.5% rate with a national championship. Two conf championships.

Nebraska gives up a fair amount of yards, but is better than average preventing scoring. (50th in total defense, 25th in scoring defense) Nebraska has a better than average offense. Both units will have to show significant improvement to have a chance vs. tOSU and possibly the Weasels Badgers. Nebraska's toughest opponent remains Nebraska. TA looks like a conf OPY candidate. I am still hoping to learn that the Huskers can put an opponent away in the the first half.

He does have a point. It is a little early to start crowing. (And he is probably getting a lot of social media noise from Husker fans convinced that "We're back, baby"). Huskers have 4 wins, but have not beaten anyone who currently is over .500. Beat Wisconsin (and don't lose one they shouldn't) and either beat or lose respectably to tOSU and win a bowl game, finish in the top 10 and then may its time to start making some noise. Do I like the trend? Absolutely, Am I starting to get a bit more faith and hope in this staff? Of course, But, there is still a lot to prove and certainly it is not time to start talking smack about 4 measly wins.

They sit for the rest of the half and the entire next half. Which means anywhere from 31 minutes to 59 minutes depending on when the foul occured. I believe I just said that. Nice avatar BTW.

And he said 18 months, IIRC. Also, the volleyball team had more elite athletes (perhaps only by percentage, I don't recall that) by his testing than the football team.

I noticed the next "stretch the ball over the goal line play was done with 2 hands firmly on the ball. That was a great effort.

Yeah, they have to sit for two halves. So if it is in the 2nd half of one game, they sit the 1st half of the next.

Wouldn't he have been a part of four bowl games now, or doesn't the FF bowl count?

Anyone see the Penn State secondary player that got called for targeting that was clearly going for the ball. His shoulder made contact with the receiver's facemask, but he was clearly trying to pick off the ball. Horrible call and worse it was "confirmed" by the replay booth.

I saw that. Really loved the Banker interview. And the answer to the "stopping the big play" question.

Echo above. I see some real positive things, but it still has to be proved on the field. One feel good game is not sufficient to judge things, but it is encouraging. The next steps to take IMO are not getting down early and having to come back (in game consistency) and throttling the teams you are clearly better than from the start. Getting down by two scores to good teams is not, ultimately, a recipe for success. The fact that the Huskers have been able to rally is good, but eventually it will bite them. I am really looking forward to see what happens this week. I expect a much better NW team than was seen the first two weeks.

Just off the top of my head, that backwards pass was his worst decision of the day. He should have thrown it out of bounds because the running back wasn't going anywhere on that play with three defenders there. Other than that, Tommy had a really good day imo. That was a bad play design. Why the RB is running sideways so it has to be a backwards pass I have no clue. Yes, Tommy didn't make a good throw, but it was a bad play design and bad play call at that point in the game. Tommy said after the game he didn't take his drop as far back as he has been taught because he wanted to get the ball out there fast because "they weren't covering him". If he would have, it would have been a forward pass. It wasn't a bad play design, it was bad execution. However, he admitted it and played like a champion. All players make mistakes, not all players carry a team like he did today. After re-watching the game, it looked like there was a little penetration on the edge that also made Wilbon take a little deeper path than he would have otherwise. I don't think the play design is for the throw to go backard.

I learned that some people are impossible to please. Punting was substantially better. Punt return bought us a chance for TD. No long returns by their dynamite return guy and most stopped the double extrapoints. If the Huskers didn't win the kicking game, the certainly did not lose it either.

Tommy willed this team to victory. I thought the Huskers were hosed when he went down with the leg camps. What a tough competitor. Now 42 of 77 for 685 yds and 7 TD's vs 1 INT (though you should almost count the backwards pass) NCAA rating 156.7 (drops from 174) NFL equation 109.5 comp % still only 54.5%. But, I think no Tommy, no win.

I also thought he looked a little tentative at the start. In fact the whole team seemed just a little tight. BUT, I agree, I think that after that punt return he really got a boost of confidence.

Clearly encouraging results. It appears the staff has taught this team how to handle adversity being down by 2 scores as they were. Now we will see if they can teach this team how to handle success as well. Really happy for MR. I would really like to see him succeed here. However, as I am sure he will tell the team, this is only one game. It won't matter unless you keep improving.

Average margin of loss is about 13 points, but there was one 4 point loss, one 1 point loss and one 10 point loss in there. Those don't qualify for being "beaten like a drum" in my book. The average final AP ranking for those Oregon teams was 6th. Five of the Oregon St teams were unranked and there was one ranked 18th and one ranked 20th in that time frame. I am not totally sure what that means, but don't pencil in an automatic loss.

This is not hard to determine, We can simply use the voter calculus: The chances of being ranked in the top 25 are: (W/(1+L) + R + H + (25 - PR)/3)/ G = BRPI (Being Ranked Probability index) where W= wins, L= losses, R = wins over ranked teams, H = wins over highly ranked teams, PR = previous ranking (PR of unranked teams is 0), and G = games played If the BRPI is >= 1 you will be ranked. This equation is guaranteed to be 100% accurate 75% of the time. Please note that the equation used to be (W/(1+L) + R + H + SB+ (25 - PR)/3)/ G = BRPI where SB was 1 for any SEC team, and 0 for anyone else. The SB adjustment has been removed for this season. What could be easier. We see that Nebraska's numbers are: current: ((2/(1+0)) + 0 + 0 + (25-26)/3)/2 = 0.83 Win over the Ducks : (3/(1+0) +1 + 0 +(25-26)/3)/3 = 1.2 Last year's final rankings: (6/(1+7) +1 + 1 + 0 + (25-26)/3)/13 = 0.18 (note: last year's equation had the SB cofactor that is gone from this year's equation, though there is a move by ESPN to have it reinstated) Note: edited for misplaced ")"

Some offense numbers. 17th(t) in scoring offense. Ducks QB is 11th in passing efficiency. But (holy smokes) TA is 19th

Nebraska tied for 1st nationally in TO margin (tied with tOSU) and in total interceptions. 21st in pass efficiency defense, 21st in scoring defense. Consider the opposition, but consider also that there has been clear improvement in the defensive performance. Hopefully, next week will show that it is not all an illusison

I believe that Nebraska was 1, Penn State was 2, and Michigan was 4 going into the week of the NU v. Mizzou week. Penn State was unbeaten and MI beat them handily. Mich and FSU both jumped Nebraska, but once the AP voters put Michigan at the top, they couldn't pull the trigger on having them jumped in the poll. Michigan benefited from giving multiple ranked teams their 1st or 2nd loss. The Wolverines played 7 teams that were ranked at the time they played. 4 of those teams finished with 5 or more losses. Only three of those teams were ranked at the end of the season. Nebraska played 4 teams that were ranked at game time. All remained ranked and one team (Mizzou) that was not ranked at the time the Huskers played them, finished in the final rankings. Michigan beat 3 teams that were ranked at the end of the season and Nebraska beat 5 teams that were ranked at the end of the season. While you cannot argue that Michigan did not deserve to be ranked number 1, you can argue that nebraska was even more deserving.

Middle screens kind of tend to be boom or bust anyway.

I'm curious to see what your findings are. Off the top of my head, he was 5/10 passing so not impressive there. On at least three of his completions he could throw to a wide open first read. Two of his incompletions weren't bad throws - down the right side to Moore and down the left side to Westy - but theyweren't necessarily open and he was going for the home run when there may have been other options. He missed a wide open Newby because his footwork was horrible. And despite all the work we've put in we're completely incapable of running a decent screen (not necessarily TA's fault). So he may have been slightly better than the 50% would indicate. But now that even Langs is scared to throw the ball because of him, I'm thinking that's a pretty bad sign. Would agree with that. The long sideline pass to Moore hit him in the hands, but probably had better options. The screen hit Ozigbo in the hands as well and again the defense was right there. Of course, in that case TA didn't have much choice since you can't really come off to another option without getting an ineligible downfield flag. Note also, that he did have a completion to Carter called back because they couldn't line up right.