Husker in WI

Ah ok, maybe I had it backwards then and Raiola is the one emphasizing maintaining the double and they're just not doing it well. Either way, appreciate the insight!

Is it possible he's accepting a baseball scholly? I understand he would also count against football once he played, I'm just trying to figure out how we're going to add ~27 new players (+ transfers) without quite a bit more attrition than I'd expect in year 2. Quite possible some of the current commits don't end up here, and "more attrition" is just the norm now - but I kinda thought we were done other than high profile targets like Baker, Brix, and/or Benning.

Wasn't one of the rumored big changes from Austin to Raiola an emphasis on climbing more quickly to the second level on double teams? Not trying to claim one is right or wrong, and maybe it was more lateral movement versus vertical movement. But I feel like I heard/read somewhere Austin really focused on keeping that double team to the point where Frost felt the blocks on the second level were suffering, and Raiola emphasizes getting to that second level quickly. Could be misremembering though, and I do not know enough about OL play to discuss the pros and cons other than being able to see when it doesn't work out well.

It's more than foot speed, it's throwing ability as well. Haarberg has a cannon that he's still learning to control - Sims is not exactly surgical, but he's better at the moment. You can argue Haarberg has made better decisions, but we were able to really limit what he was asked to decide against NIU and Sims didn't have that luxury.

I agree with pretty much everything here, I'd just say Sims has the higher ceiling currently. Haarberg's physical tools are not light-years behind Sims, he just needs some more time. I am glad Haarberg got to show he can do some things now though, it does make it easier to switch it up if Sims does continue to struggle.

I would argue that we have seen the basement for Sims, but haven't yet for Haarberg. It was a promising start, but let's not get carried away and assume he would have played exactly the same against Minnesota and Colorado. Haarbeg was 2/6 against Colorado, and the non-TD catch was a pretty terrible throw but Fidone bailed him out. He looked better against NIU (as you would hope), but I'm holding my breath when we drop back to pass regardless of who the QB is. Sims made some nice throws against Colorado, and one really bad one.

To really pull an Iowa we also need Buschini to be better than he has been - although I don't really have complaints about his performance last week.

The hit itself was similar, if that's all you're going for. The context of the play was not and that's what people are mad about. Again I think this was more borderline as opposed to flagrant, but Bell's was actually clean under the rules at the time. Just violent enough that they felt obligated to do something about it.

The one that happened during the play, and helped spring the ball carrier to a touchdown? That's a little different. The hit on Hunter wasn't as bad as some people made it sound, but there was no purpose to it other than to hurt him. I'm sure Bell wanted his guy to feel it, but the purpose was preventing him from making the tackle.

I can almost guarantee we will. FIU, North Texas, and Northwestern State are really bad defense, and against SMU they had 269 yards and 14 points. That SMU defense actually looks really good, they held Oklahoma to 365 yards. But in any case, I think goals of under 300 yards and under 17 points are achievable - it's a good offense, but those numbers are middle of the pack so far because of the early season schedules. 17 teams are averaging 500+ yards per game, and 24 are averaging 40+ points per game.

I think he probably just had a pretty severe separation. Recovery can be on the order of weeks for minor ones, but up to 5-6 months. https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/helping-athletes-with-dislocated-shoulder Also loved this tidbit in there - gonna guess you'd notice the symptoms in the second sentence first.

I have not seen that yet. Sims INTs were bad decisions more than inaccurate throws (outside of his first one against Minnesota), and neither of them have looked good on deep shots. This is fairly subjective, but the actual ball placement from Haarberg has been pretty bad IMO. A few examples - Fidone's catch against Colorado should have been a pick, it needed to be inside and it was thrown high and outside. Washington had to make a really good play on his 3rd down conversion late against NIU, he had the DB boxed out and the throw was far enough behind him that it took a good adjustment and almost cost him the momentum needed to get the first down. Both have made good sideline throws.

It was with a few minutes left in the Minnesota game, along with Rhule mentioning fumbles being a problem leading up to the game. But yeah, the always trying to bounce things and coaches commenting on him needing to understand where to go have been issues for a longer period of time. In a limited sample so far, I feel like he's done a better job staying north and south than he did late last year. And just the way he runs is pretty special. This is a bad example of getting north/south, but no other RB we have makes this cut, or finishes quite like that. And his TD run (17:14 in the video) had some great patience. I'm not super concerned about the fumbling moving forward - it's just the depth that is now totally gone.

I thought he was turning a corner against Michigan last year until he got hurt, although 6/12 for 56 yards and 5 carries for 39 isn't lighting up the stat sheet. He looked lost the week before though for sure. Just pointing out that they said the backups with experience transferred, and apparently they just mean Smothers. Who I don't think would be better than Haarberg at this point.

A high number of pitches is still correlated to increased injury risk. Hard to prove, but most people believe the increased injuries in pitchers is due to throwing max effort more, and just pushing the limits of what the human arm can do. Startes never used to throw max effort, becuase their goal was to complete the game. Now they do, almost every pitch. Anecdotally, I would say that while the past had more of the cheap shots and ultra violent hits from some pretty lax rules, the average tackle collision was much less violent than the average tackle today. There's nothing you can really do to decrease the violence of a normal tackle at this point outside of sliding or getting out of bounds (unlike baseball, where theoretically the pitcher can throw with ~90% effort instead of 100%), but in both cases you can limit the overall number of stressers. Pitch counts in baseball, not calling excessive numbers of QB runs in football.

Purdy is still here! Wondering how much of him being the #3 is health, and how much is just knowing we'll need the QB run game that Haarberg is better equipped to handle.

Definitely not expecting anything different, but the RB injuries could spur some interesting things. I'd guess the La Tech game will be a lot of Grant with Emmett and Ives getting some looks, and the same offense we've seen. No reason to play that any differently. But against someone like Michigan, I think you bring out the weird stuff - Kemp in the backfield, maybe some Tommi Hill, use Bonner like they used Jaheim Bell at South Carolina. Sims at QB and Haarberg at H-Back again, but maybe something different than the one RPO they ran twice against Minnesota. This isn't a game we would have won playing them straight up, and now with no RB depth maybe there's an extra push for creativity. Still almost certainly not enough, but I get the sense Satterfield wants to exploit favorable matchups and looks from within his existing offense and not get too gimmicky. But I'd rather try to get weird, and now we might actually need to.

Right? This is why you have walk-ons, give them a handful of carries that mean a lot to them and protect the guys we need healthy. I think Grant proved he's the most natural runner and appears to be going North/South consistently, but we are thin now. Wondering if they start looking at guys like Hill for some plays, the fact that both staffs have felt like they need to give him opportunities with the ball in his hands is interesting. But it's a dead giveaway that it will be a run, no way he's up for pass protection from either the technique or size perspective. And that's the most concerning part about this for me - Ervin was the #2 3rd down back because of pass pro. That is not Grant's strength, and maybe Emmett is more advanced but he's small. This makes us weaker in the passing game, while also limiting our options in the running game. Using Bonner probably is a good move because I'd guess he can pass block, but we are going to be even more predictable unless Satterfield finds a insane new level of creativity.

Got it - well he was the backup (true freshman to boot) that got put in when the starter couldn't stop turning the ball over. He is the Haarberg in this scenario. Flip flopping back and forth probably isn't the move during his bad games freshman year. Then his sophomore year, 16/5 is exactly what you want and from then on he was pretty well established despite the numbers trending back down.

I'm more on Sims' side than most it seems, but that's not a great comparison. First of all it's the NFL. Second Manning and Favre contributed a bunch of great plays as well - Sims has had some nice runs, but is not particularly close to breaking even in the great play/terrible play count. Late in his career Favre definitely crossed into more bad than good, but at that point he was a hall of famer and it just wasn't going to happen. Plus their replacements would have been backups, guys who are specifically not expected to play a large role. Haarberg or Purdy will likely start here in the future, so there's an argument to get reps now. There was no benefit to the Colts seeing what Doug Nussmeier could do in 1998 when Peyton was throwing picks.

You can argue it however you want though, we just don't know. Even the late read, he's late because he was scrambling when there wasn't pressure. Why did he scramble? Maybe because he felt like he needed to make something happen outside of the play design, or maybe because he's not great at reads and is great at running fast so decided to try that. We know what caused the individual turnovers - not catching the snap, bad read, late throw, bad handoff, etc. It's just a theory as to why these are happening now when they supposedly aren't in practice. I can buy it for several of the turnovers, but some are just bad plays by Sims too.

It can be if the reason he drops the snap is he's looking downfield too early. It's still an inexcusable mistake to make twice, not trying to make it out to be better than it is. But I think trying to do too much can still be a factor on things like that. Definitely a factor in why he tried to pick both up instead of just trying to fall on them. The handoff wasn't trying too hard, but I think both Sims and Ervin were thrown off by where Bonner ended up needing to make his block. It's right where Ervin is supposed to go, and almost stepping on Sims foot. You still have to do the absolute bare minimum of executing the handoff though, that's just flat-out not doing what you need to do.

Colorado had the ball for 11:57 and 32 plays in the first half. 18:22 and 45 plays in the second half. Not coincidentally, the first half went a lot better. And even taking the game as a whole Colorado isn't going to win the TOP battle often, nor are they trying to. 50/50 with them is way different than 50/50 with Minnesota.

I will say his football speed has not appeared to match his track speed - even against Michigan a few years ago, he didn't look slow but he wasn't just running by guys other than their MLB who was flat footed and ran a 4.79 at the combine. Seeing it a little more than this year, and maybe my eye-test expectations for speed are too heavily influenced by freakishly fast guys like Trey Palmer and Tyreek Hill. But I think there are RBs out (Lacy) there with worse track times that could still be more of a home run threat. That being said, the coaches mention Ervin's GPS readings a lot and he has been close to outrunning everybody a couple times already. I think he'll break a few this season.