Husker in WI

I dunno, they've got no one from Georgia and like 5 players from east of the Rockies. Maybe he doesn't care about that, but we've at least convinced a few Georgia guys to come here. Does his family want to watch him playing at 1am EST? EDIT: I exaggerated, they have more like 15. But most are from the northeast or Texas, and still none from Georgia. Only 1 I saw from the Southeast, kid from Florida.

Yeah, I mean some of it is he's trying to make sure the LB doesn't beat him to the wide side in case Martinez kept it. So the first couple steps are either wrong (possible) or attempting to keep leverage for the Martinez/Spielman option backside (more likely). But even once he recognizes the LB going toward Robinson, it is not a pretty sight. Not exactly Will Shields out there. And I know he was a Guard, just can't think of our last athletic tackle. Lydon Murtha tested really well at the combine, but I don't remember how he was on the second level to be honest.

Which is easier to do when the defenders turn their backs in man coverage - if our opponents are in man, seems like they have a spy. But to your point, whether its the coaches putting them in better situations or the player's decisions, it's not good when their 3rd stringer looks better.

That one is tough for Farniok because it looks like his primary job is to block the LB if Martinez keeps it on the backside. With the alignment and the fact that the run went the other way, he's got no chance. Not that Farniok played flawlessly yesterday, but Jaimes actually has a chance on this play and we really only needed one of those guys blocked.

Yeah, hard to compare because I don't know what Martinez would have done in that qb's situation and vice versa. But on the surface level, he did look better.

So can we lock this thread until anyone has a legitimate source? I know message boards are all about rumors, but this one goes pretty far into the personal lives of the athletes, whether people think it makes sense or not.

Has anyone ever described Benning as "professional," as either a football player or media personality?

Fair enough, I get what you're saying. I will say he's not as bad/unwilling a tackler as people claim. He had a TFL Saturday, and in some of Chins weirder alignments corners end up needing to make a lot cleanup tackles after forcing the runner back inside. And this year at least, Jackson has been ok with those. He definitely seems to have the Deion Sanders "business decision" mentality when it comes to chipping in and assisting though, which is a big problem when the first guy doesn't actually make the tackle.

Maybe. But when it's the same people always bringing up Jackson, maybe they just don't like him. And I don't think the fact that poor fundamentals and tackling has "become standard" is a reason to go find something else to blame - it's both. And I'm just not willing to say well we should've expected the missed tackles, so the real problem here is the 3rd guy not hustling enough. It is a problem, mostly team-wide I might add, but it doesn't absolve the bad tackling.

You would rather the offense not score more than the defense gives up? We know what you mean, but how much the defense can give up does depend on the offense. Iowa's D needs to hold teams to 10 points per game, and they can a lot of times because they only defend 50 plays when their offense is clicking.

I'd settle for the bolded part honestly. But yeah, I get what you're saying. The author of the tweet was pretty specifically targeting Jackson though, and yet the announcers were talking about Stille and I can't call Dismuke's tackle attempt a "good effort." I'm just tired of the Jackson hate - he is not perfect, but yesterday he was our best defender and maybe best player. But somehow to some people he will always be everything that is wrong with our defense.

Right, and like I said he does need to hustle there. But if that's the takeaway from this play and not the 2 easy tackles missed, people are just looking for reasons to bash Jackson. It is clearly a bad play on his part, but it's embarrassingly bad for the safeties.

Right - there are a lot of factors and we can all pick the ones we think are the biggest, but they definitely feed into each other. As bad as it is right now, I trust Martinez to improve and the coaches to bring in the players they need to make it work. I thought we had enough of them to do that this year, but I also thought Morgan was going to be a 2nd round draft pick so what do I know.

How the hell do we end up blaming Jackson for not hustling to maybe drag the guy down at the 1 when we have one safety miss the tackle to prevent the first down, and the other completely whiff to save the TD two steps later? Yes, Jackson should be hustling more here. But people are delusional if they think he was any part of the problem on this play. Name me a player other than Mo Barry and I will find you a similar play where they do something similar. Again, I wish he was running to the ball here too, our whole defense needs to do that. But when both of the safeties have a slow TE dead to rights, maybe it's not the CBs fault.

Really only 1 thing pissed me off in this game - I hope I'm wrong, but I think they played Rahmir for one freaking play. I get wanting to use him in games where we have a comfortable lead and they can live with more mistakes, but if that's the case don't play him until we have a lead. There was a lot of disappointing stuff, it's amazing how much we can shoot ourselves in the foot and still almost pull it out. Martinez was off - they mentioned a lot of guys being sick (only Taylor-Britt sick enough to not play though), wonder if the QBs were in that boat. I'm sure some people are saying that's how Martinez has been all year, but this was different IMO. He really does need to work on his touch - he's got a little bit of the Cody Green style of throwing everything on a line, no arc. That just doesn't leave a large margin for error on deep balls like the one to Noa or screens. Tackling was atrocious, and I think that's largely a talent thing. I love guys like Sullivan, but they are just at a big disadvantage there. As I feared, our plan to deal with the TEs on the game winning drive was to have LBs man them up. We do not have the LBs to do that, that was frustrating. On the bright side, Lamar balled out. Oline pass protected ok I guess? And for a chunk of the 3rd quarter, we got a little pass rush with our Dline. Darrion's INT was the best moment of the season so far for me. I'm still optimistic about the future, but this year has been brutal.

#FreeRahmir Maybe a sack by an OLB? I know that would be a borderline miracle, but hey. Multiple turnovers forced by our defense.

So whose to say we don't have the guy who is going to be expensive and proven 5 years from now? Aside from the results so far, of course. But seriously, I think Frost did exactly that when he hired Chinander, went for the guy who isn't proven yet but he believes will be. Early results are not great, but I'm willing to give it a little more time.

The defense that gave up 58 to Arizona, 41 to Washington, and 42 to Michigan State his last year there? They got really good yardage wise, but still gave up points. Arizona and Washington did have good offensives that year, but those point totals aren't consistent with "one of the best in the country." For me it's not so much that we can't do better, as we really don't know how good/bad Chins is. Frost probably has a better idea, although some people argue he's blinded. Who would you have gone after instead? Good head coaches, sure. I'm not convinced on coordinators. EDIT: I realized you're replying to a post mentioning head coaches, my bad. I do stand by my point though - feels like coordinators tend to take over for guys who leave to be a head coach, not as many taking bad jobs first.

Well they have to prove themselves somewhere, but do you think Aranda went to LSU because it was more of a challenge? I don't think many guys want to truly build a defense from the ground up, they want to take great talent and mold it. I'd have to look into it more, but I suspect the more common 'top tier' DC path is position coach on a good defense > Coordinator on a good defense > Coordinator at an elite school as opposed to making the position coach > DC leap at a school with a terrible defense. I don't have anything beyond anecdotal evidence though, so who knows. And I do believe great coaches can get results anywhere, but it's going to take longer.

There is no doubt Leonhard has been very good. I still want to clarify though - you're comparing a situation where a guy took over a team with the 1st/4th ranked defense and the rest of the staff intact, to a guy who is taking over the 33rd/116th ranked defense amidst an entire staff overhaul? Plus factor in recruiting/lack of player turnover. Is Chins running a top ten defense if he's at Wisconsin? Maybe not. But Lenohard wouldn't be running one here (yet).

Are you claiming that Jim Leonhard inherited a similar level of talent to what Chinander got? Wisconsin definitely had a few question marks, but he got a team full of guys recruited for a 3-4 and developed well. He took over a D that was 1st and 4th in points allowed prior to his promotion - to his credit he's kept them there, but that's not even close to a valid comparison.

Eh, more likely because I think we'll still be short on pass rushers. But again, let's see how they do - this year is what it is, but I think even the Chinander supporters will be expecting significant improvement next year. On that note, has anyone heard anything positive about Alston or Graham on the scout team? They are our best bets outside of Tannor/Nelson, but I'm doubting they'll be ready next year if we don't hear anything this year.

Frost said Florida wouldn't let him keep Chinander? And it is possible the loyalty is not blind, but Frost has different measures of progress than we do. Or at least a more complete understanding of the deficiencies Chinander is working with.

Right, I wouldn't be terribly surprised either. Backing up a step I don't believe in the premise of SFWs argument, that points per game is the only thing that matters. Controlling for how good the opposing offenses are is important, and while the advanced stats aren't perfect they don't claim San Diego State has a better defense than Alabama. If points per game is truly the "bottom line, end of story" stat, they are. I was attempting to show that even by that premise there has been improvement, but that may not be the case by the end of the year. We'll see - if we're still giving up 30+ ppg in big ten play next year, I'll concede a lack of improvement. For now, any improvement or lack does depend on your measure.

Why don't you go ahead and calculate the B 10 numbers for 17/18 while you're at it. I could be wrong, but I assume they are similarly higher than the season averages. EDIT: 2017: 37.6 2018: 34.3 2019: 33.6 So it's close, but let's wait and see. And last year we got Michigan State, there are always bad teams to boost the numbers.