LAblackshirt

Yeah I guess to be more clear Tommy was a great athlete and leader and I respect him a great deal. He made great plays with his feet, and even some with his arm. He has a cannon for an arm and there is no denying that talent. I currently display a large poster of him in my bedroom and will leave it on my wall for a long time. Unfortunately leadership and athletic ability are only part of being a QB. There is also accuracy, pocket presence, release speed, touch, and decision making. Tommy had poor accuracy which is obvious, no need to argue that point. Poor pocket presence was also an issue of his, not sure if anyone noticed but he almost never stepped up in the pocket. His only real move when under pressure was a roll out of the pocket which yes worked sometimes due to his athleticism but much more often did not work. He had an average release speed. Very poor touch, Tommy had one ball velocity only- very fast. It doesn't matter if hes throwing a 10 yard out route or a 50 yard bomb, he throws it the same velocity. Decision making again I think doesn't call for much explanation we all saw he wasn't good at it. Overall as a QB he was poor this year, the numbers say it, the experts say it. I don't say that to demonize an outstanding young man who lead this team they way Tommy did. He will find plenty of success outside of football, and he has his place in the record books. I say it to make clear where I think this team is in its goal of reaching a championship. We won 9 (hopefully 10?) games with what was a bad quarterback in many areas. I think we are a good QB away from having only lost one game or at-least played close with the big boys.

NUance I don't disagree that he had great legs and was a great athlete. I disagree with the fact the oline caused his poor play. In watching the games even OSU and Iowa Tommy has time most plays. The plays he doesn't have time are in part because he has no concept of pocket presence and his only move is to roll out. Were he to have the presence of mind to step up in the pocket he could have much more success evadin over pursuing defenders. Tommy was rated by PFF as the 2nd to worst Qb in the B1G, and let's be honest the B1G is not a good QB conference this year.

My conclusion after watching and re-watching this year's games is that despite his gutsy moments and athletic breakout plays TA had a truly terrible year. It is definitely due in part to his injuries I understand, but that is part of the game. I have said on this board recently I think we are looking too hard and deep for why we lost the games we did in the fashion we did. We had terrible QB play in each of those games, and it is my opinion that all things the same if we have an above average QB we beat Wisconsin and Iowa and lose by only a touchdown or two to OSU. To elaborate, the common theme in the two blowout losses this year was a completely inept offense. Sure our defense was punished and the score was run up, but re-watching the game and reviewing the team stats of those two games and you will notice something: the other teams offense was always on the field. OSU ended up with a ridiculous 37+ minutes of possession, and Iowa got 14 possessions for their offense. Why? our QB hurt or not failed to keep drives moving time and time again. I actually really thought there were some great routes called with wide open receivers in both of these games but Tommy continuously failed to notice or put the ball on target. This resulted in too many chances for the other team that eventually lead to a blowout. Iowa scored on less than half of their possessions and put up 40 on us. We stopped them 8 times and they scored 40 points on us, crazy. In short I think if the QB position was nullified across the entire B1G, the huskers end up in the top 4. With a bad QB under center we are 6th or maybe even 7th. What do you guys think, is a bad QB capable of making an otherwise good team into an average one?

Pelini I feel like definitely didn't have a championship culture here. Riley on the other hand I think is doing a much better job of providing a championship culture. As far as the luxury facilities goes I'm not sure how that would be a negative thing. All the best programs have luxury facilities. Alabama, OSU, Michigan, Clemson, and all the other big boys have luxury facilities. I also feel like the fact Huskers are always treated like rock-stars is one of the few advantages we have being in such a small population state. The elite talent players desire to be treated like they are elite and players where I live in LA (near UCLA) are just another person in the city of stars. Take them to Neb on the other hand and they are signing autographs and taking pictures. Playing at Neb is as close as you can get to playing pro sports without actually doing so.

I actually think the lines played decently this year when fully healthy, depth is my biggest complaint about them. I really only noticed us getting blown off the line on either side of the ball when we got the injury bug and had to play top 10 teams. I understand that usually a struggling running game is linked to offensive line problems but I'm still a firm believer that our running struggles can mainly be linked to poor QB play. Of course it is partially our oline, but having Tommy back there throwing YOLO bombs with a 10 percent success rate and consistently missing swing and screen passes leaves defenses free to cheat up on the run. We aren't running the option with TD Tommy anymore, if we cant keep a good defense concerned with the pass they will be able to stop our running game. On the D-line we were very young and I still felt like we got good play. I foresee big things for Freedom, Davis Twins, Stoltenberg, and we also have that 5 star DE Daishon waiting in the wings. The tape I have watched puts a lot of those big play runs on the LBs not the D-line. I guess what I am getting at is QB is the position I am most concerned about getting up to speed. I feel if Lee or POB can be elite or even good QBs we will play with the big boys right away. Please note I am not saying we will crush Alabama and OSU. I am saying we will be able to play close games with them.

I'm a long time lurker of this board, finally coming out of the shadows. I have really enjoyed reading all the inside information, and passionate discussions on here. One thing in particular I want to get feedback on. We got blown out on two occasions this year and I want to know, was it bad coaching or talent gap primarily? I have heard many people on both sides I understand the concern many husker fans have about Riley, especially after Iowa. When Riley failed to have a .500 season last year the main argument in his favor was that he didn't get blown out. I gotta say though I think everyone is underestimating the impact an ineffective QB has on a team. Tommy Armstrong was rated as one of the worst QBs in the B1G this season by PFF and just isn't a talented passer when it comes to accuracy and decision making (2/3 of the puzzle). People who say that his running threat makes up for that clearly didn't watch him in the blowouts. He can only win with his legs against lesser competition. This is purely speculative but I would be willing to bet that with TA as a QB even mighty OSU and Michigan lose 2-3 games. His decision making and inability to hit the open receiver cause 3 and outs a majority of the time against good teams, which means the defense is always on the field. Props to Banker this year on the defensive improvement, but when his defense is on the field for 2/3 of the game(Ohio State) or the opposing offense gets 14 possessions (Iowa) any defense is at risk of breaking open. Even the great defenses need their offense to score more than 21 points to win a game which we failed to do in both blowouts. This isn't to imply our defense is fantastic and it was all the QBs fault, they gave up 40 points to Iowa, its just to say our talent level at QB put the defense in a position where even though Iowa scored 40 points they scored on less than half of their possessions. Our defense stopped Iowa 8 times, and gave up 40 points. Let that sink in. With even an average QB i think we come close to beating Iowa (we were already close with Wiscy), and only lose to OSU by a couple touchdowns.

There is obviously a lot of speculation that can be had about our offensive struggles. My opinion is that it may be as simple as it seems: bad QB play = bad offense. To be clear I appreciate Armstrong for his guts and athletic ability, but he is one of the worst passers in the B1G. His QBR doesn't really reflect that, but anyone who has watched him play this year can see that even the most basic of throws to a wide open flat are far from a sure thing for Tommy. When PFF's rankings of QB's in the conference put Tommy in the bottom 2 my eyes were opened, read about the way they rate player vs. what a QBR does to understand further. QBR also doesn't account for the training wheels HCMR and Langs have put on this offense to make sure Tommy doesn't have anymore 4 interception games. When a QB can only run a vanilla offense full of throws and schemes of lower difficulty, and still complete only around 50% that's a problem for an offense. Its not all on the QB, but it mostly is. With Tommy at QB we were really one dimensional. HCMR did a great job of using Tommy's athleticism to win us games, but what we saw is that when a team was athletic enough to stop him from running he was helpless. He couldn't make the throws to keep the ball moving and keep the defense honest. I really feel that if we receive even average QB play for the conference next year we will see a marked improvement in our offense.