Husker in WI

And more importantly, not valid for SEC academic qualifications. Which is funny because the phrase "SEC academic qualifications" is almost an oxymoron.

Can we convince him to take his math class online or something?

He's currently off the team. Not technically kicked out of school or anything, but in Frost's words not a part of our plans at the moment.

I doubt it - I think he will give it at least 3 and probably 4 years before making coaching changes. He's extremely loyal, and he brought the staff with him for a reason. I think the expectation ext ear goes up whether we fall short this year or not though - winning 5 this year doesn't mean we only expect 6-7 next year.

I don't agree that one person's eye test is objective, sorry. Not exactly measurable, is it? And I'm not necessarily disagreeing the D line has played better, I said there's at least an argument. It's just difficult to compare because they are doing different jobs. And I get that it's a 3-4, if we had an edge rusher it would be a different story. But they need some push inside, and it hasn't been there a lot recently. I totally recognize I can be an obnoxious person to talk to, and I probably get a little too riled up on Jackson because some fans seem to want him to fail. Also, I'm kind of proud to be accused of being "that person" by a person called 'that guy.'

There are 10 other players on the field, arguably all of whom played worse than the QB.

True, I just haven't seen those things as much as people are claiming. I would love to see him block, but it definitely seems like he's been told to protect himself and it could be that. We don't know his reads, and I'm still waiting for people to come up with more than one recent example of him missing open guys. I think a lot of our 'read options' are not actually read options but called plays with the fake keep/pass option to keep defenses honest. I get it, and in the first couple games (including Colorado) I absolutely agree with you. But outside of OSU I have a hard time putting many of the problems on him since then. Is that cherry picking games for my argument? Probably. But in my opinion he could've played out of his mind and we still lose to OSU by 20+, and I think there was a clear switch flipped in the NIU game and since then he's been good. I think people were counting on huge improvement this year, and are comparing him to what they expected instead of what he was last year.

They are home unis though, so not really an option unless you convince them to wear their away jerseys at home.

Right, I do. I think Frost's answer was more accurate than the reporters calling it a quip realize. It's Indiana, Wisconsin, or Iowa and we have committed to wearing these this year. Which would you pick? Frankly should've been NIU, but I think they want to wear them against actual opponents.

I mean we all want the information, but it really does no one any good. Opposing teams know who they don't have to prepare for, or at least who might be limited. I don't think many teams will specifically target injuries to make them worse, but if you know where a guy is hurting it's not difficult to get extra hits in. In a lot of cases (Martinez, Robinson), they'll know that anyway but there is no benefit in telling everyone whether they could play or not at this point. And I'm sure there are cases where guys get dinged up in practice, why tell people when a guy is nursing a shoulder injury ahead of time?

Technically not the bottom?

We could be pleasantly surprised when they played well then! As mad as fans would get at the lack of information, a generic "it was a good practice, we got better today" would manage expectations better.

I'd throw in NW - he was 13-20 for 145 and had 4 or 5 drops, depending on who you ask. At least a couple of them were decent length, and one was a TD. We catch the easy ones - JD on an early third down, Allen on a check down when our shot play was covered, and Wan'Dale on a screen and it's something like 16-20 for 200 and a TD against a very good defense. And that's not giving him any credit for how the game would have changed with those or the chunk of the game Vedral played. Statistically not great, but given the defense and the drops saying it was not good is just not accurate. Still definitely bad games against USA and OSU. And he hasn't been "playing scared" since Frost yelled at him to run, against Illinois or NIU I believe. He still has lapses where he doesn't run for the first on 3rd down when he can, but even that is the exception more than the rule anymore. Crack back blocks are illegal now, in case you missed that.

I'm not so sure this won't be addition by subtraction here. When he's playing well, Washington was absolutely a game changer. But in these past few games he hasn't been, and I feel like Mills has been playing alright. Now he's going to have to be the bell cow back, and instead of guessing whether or not Washington will show up we can feed Mills the ball. We should be able to cobble together some change of pace between Wan'Dale (when healthy), Rahmir (ideally in 2 games, but if not let's get him 8-10 touches a game), Belt/Mazour, and Miles Jones. But the past 3 games it's felt like we've been forcing it to Washington waiting for him to do something. Our already low big play potential goes down without him, but it should improve our consistency at least.

This time it was from a player, which as far as I can remember is new. But yeah, hopefully the staff realizes even if it was the best practice of the year there is no point in saying that in a pre-game presser. I don't necessarily disbelieve them, but when we go out and lay an egg it definitely casts some doubt on those statements.

Same, but maybe he came out on fire the past 2 weeks and earned it back. And maybe they just want Indiana to prepare for Hixson's weaknesses, I don't know how he and Bando compare in that regard.

Ah, well that would do it too.

Just needs to be merged with the new improved version with all the options:

I think it's just the skipping practices, but could be more.

I'd have to see the numbers proving they are running at Jackson. They're absolutely running to the edges, but I think they're happy running left or right regardless of who we have on the edge. And running away from the dline does show it's a strength (or the rest of the D being a weakness), but stopping the run isn't everything. I haven't been impressed with our dline pass rushing for a while.

I'm gonna guess the redshirt Rahmir plan is out the window if Washington is gone. We need more speed. I just hope if they burn it they commit and actually give him the ball a few times.

Yeah good point, we don't play a lot of corners so it's pretty much him or Bootle. But better than Bootle, and better than Taylor-Britt/Dismuke/Domann/Clark when they have been covering receivers. Obviously expected for Domann and Dismuke, they shouldn't be expected to absolutely lock down receivers in their roles. Seems like Bootle technically covers fairly well, but just never makes a play on the ball.

Pretty much where I'm at. I think it's possible we win both Purdue and Maryland, particularly if we were able to get healthier and reset some things during the bye. If I squint I can see 4-1, but that is counting on improvement that we haven't seen so far. I'm holding out a little bit of hope for Wisconsin - we have another bye right before, and we aren't the first game after their upset so they shouldn't just crush us out of frustration. I would still be very surprised if we won, but I have hope. If they run all over us (which I expect), my Chinander concern level will definitely be higher. Year 1 I can give a pass for not having a great gameplan, but year 2 and with a bye we have to be able to slow them down. We won't shut them down with the guys we have, but I need to see some kind of scheme to give us a chance.

There's argument for the dline, but I don't think it's a given. It's tough to compare different position groups - way easier to notice a DB's mistake than a dlineman, a lot of times we don't even know what the lineman's responsibilities are on a given play. The safeties are not playing better, they were both pretty bad against Minnesota overall. I'd probably group them, like I said above it's tough to compare across postion groups. I think Darrion, Jojo, and Lamar have been our best 3 with Taylor-Britt and Stille/Davis twins not far behind. But I feel like Jojo has been disappearing a little bit, probably as teams adjust to how we're using him. And Khalil is probably on thin ice, a stupid personal foul your first game after being suspended is a bad look. Jackson is not a good tackler, this is true. But I don't think he's any worse than our other corners for tackling, and his coverage has been by far the best this year. He's definitely blown a few, but so have the other guys.

It would be, but let's at least let it play out before jumping from 0-1 over the second half to 0-6. We have 5 to play to decide if it's actually regression.