Husker in WI

Especially because I'm sure every player knows and in a lot of cases cares about their area code, if you took the name off I bet a lot of people can't even identify their state flag. And most definitely don't particularly care about it.

You keep your speed better rounding off, that's how a lot of them are run now. I don't know what Walters teaches specifically, but especially if you're selling a fake post it's not going to be a super sharp out cut. I agree on the jump though, he almost didn't get the foot in because of it. There are more sprinkled throughout that game (and other games I'm sure), some are more rounded than others. I'd guess that's what they're being taught to do, but there are actual coaches on the board who would know more about that. We switched to rounded outs when I was in high school though, it's really hard to do a 90 degree cut and maintain any kind of speed out of the cut. You don't want to curve too far upfield, we tried to keep it around a yard. So if it was an 5 yard out from the twenty, we wanted to stick pretty close to the 26 on the turn and get back to the 25 within a few steps. You just can't go from straight upfield to straight across the yard line without coming to almost a complete stop. This may have been to help compensate for our general lack of athleticism though, it's possible college/pro receivers should be doing sharp cuts.

To be fair, ~40% of the starters (9 out of 22) are OL or LB if you run a 3-4 defense. But yeah, looks like 9 of their 12 commits are in that category, that's crazy. They'd make room for Johnson as well though, he's a stud.

Haskins comes to mind, and I think plenty do come out as 4th year juniors.

Looks like #58 to me, which would be Josh Wegener. #28 is Luke Reimer - true freshman walkon, he's had a few shout outs. Makes a nice tackle right after that play too.

Why not? I don't see any reason they'll be a lot better on offense. Lewerke being healthy will help, but they've got no receivers and a couple bruising but slow running backs. Shifting the entire offensive staff around doesn't give me a lot of confidence either, seems like a bizarre way to make it look like you're shaking things up without hiring anyone better. I agree on Penn State, but I don't see MSU hanging anywhere close with Michigan or Ohio State.

He was like the 4th string safety when they got there, so probably quite a bit. A lot of that was the old staff being stupid, but I imagine he had a lot of improvements to make from day one as an LB.

I still put a lot of that on the coaches. There are a lot of decent safeties who shouldn't be matched up one on one with receivers consistently, and they didn't adjust. From what I remember one of the freshman was supposed to play that role against NW and got hurt early, which is why it fell to Williams. But at least by the last drive, whether it's Fisher just subbing someone else in or Chinander making different calls, they needed to adjust and didn't. But more to your point, we shouldn't have a problem moving forward with our safeties being unable to man up from time to time. None of our regulars last year were particularly athletic, we'll at least be faster this year. Nobody is asking them to cover Rondale Moore one on one, but having safeties who can cover other receivers man to man is big.

The ones that come to mind for Young are the long runs by Michigan, but I'm not gonna pretend this is based on any deeper analysis than just watching a couple times so I'm sure that happened as well. Iowa was rough for both LBs, but there were a couple in there where Barry was way off on his gap or (maybe more likely) the Dline was destroyed to the point where the gap shouldn't have even been there.

Yeah some of the re-watches were more rough than I remembered. He wasn't actually playing nose, but Stille ended up lining up between the center and guard a lot against Iowa and it was baaad. Those guys being bigger and having 2 actual NTs is huge. And I love Barry, but he's got quite a bit to clean up too - Young was really noticeable because he was generally in the right place so you saw him whiff. Sometimes Barry was so far off you couldn't tell whether he was supposed to be in the open gap or not, but a lot of times I'd guess he was. But I expect him to take a big step forward this year, he just needs to be consistent which is bound to happen in year 2.

Yeah that's my bad, I stretched what you said a bit. I feel a lot better about our QBs than last year, but I think from an outside perspective thin is still fair. But it's probably just an out of the box response - what's something slightly negative that I could say about almost any team? Ah, they're thin at QB! Outside of Ohio State when they had Miller/Barrett/Jones, most teams are as you pointed out. Almost ruined Clemson's year.

Fair point, I feel like I've heard claims of deep but can't actually find them so I was probably jumping to conclusions from claiming to be not thin. Which I would buy, that's just having guys in the system instead of all transferring out. True, but neither of them did a lot as true freshman either. I think Martinez set unrealistic expectations for what true freshmen can do - maybe McCaffrey could step in and be really good right away, but our ceiling for the season drops dramatically if it's anyone other than Martinez. Which is true for most teams and their starting QB as well.

I think we may prove to be deep at QB, but I think we're kidding ourselves if we're claiming it's "deep" now. You've got Martinez obviously, but for depth it's: Vedral - he's been in the system for a couple years, but he was basically a 2 star and has had very limited game reps. He hasn't been overly impressive with those game reps either - the UCF numbers are good, but it's super limited action. Objectively there is nothing outside of the coaches saying they're comfortable with him playing to indicate he's ready to play on a division champion team. Bunch - a little more playing time than Vedral, but similar in that he really hasn't played a lot and is a walk on. Technically he was rated higher than Vedral out of HS, but Vedral is a better fit for the offense. But again, nothing from the outside indicating he's good depth. McCaffrey - obviously the most talented, but he was generally regarded as a very raw QB prospect. It sounds like he maybe wasn't as raw as people though and Verduzco/Frost are QB whisperers, but just because 2AM played at a high level as a true freshamn doesn't mean all QBs will. I get the argument for us having depth, but it's pretty much all based on the coaches saying their comfortable with all of these guys playing. No one outside of Martinez is proven in any sense. If another school claimed to be deep at QB when the players behind the starter were a low 3 star sophomore with 38 career passes, a walk-on junior with one start and 47 attempts, and a highly rated true freshman athlete we would call BS. I don't really believe anyone has QB depth, you don't know until it's tested.

I accidentally clicked 2 stars and it doesn't look like I can change it. I am fully on board with the hype though!

Are they though? They're just lime green.

Per the press conference, we were not in Frost's top 25 if anyone was curious.

At this point who's better is irrelevant, since Jurgens is hurt Farniok is the #1 either way. Even when he comes back, I imagine Jurgens will have to win the job back - it's not being held for him.

I see a couple of differences - Wisconsin's offensive style needs the defense to be very good. They'll put up points because people can't tackle Taylor, but they're not designed to win shootouts. Our offense is much better equipped to handle playing without a great defense. Also between the dynamic offensive players I would take a QB as the dynamic player over an RB any day. If your best offensive player can take over in both the running and passing games that's huge. Taylor is phenomenal, but some teams can limit the running game and that's the only area Taylor can make a real impact. I'm sure it's not a super popular view on this board, but even if you grant that Taylor is currently a better player than Martinez, I'd take Martinez because he's an excellent QB and they just have more value. Edit for clarification: the unpopular view is that Taylor is better than Martinez currently. I'm sure taking Martinez over Taylor is not unpopular.

It's uncertainty at QB, an OLine that lost a bunch of starters, but mostly the defensive regression from last year without a lot of clear replacements. 7-5 is a little on the low end from the people I know, but 7-5 to 9-3 seems to be the range they're expecting. The o-line will still be good, so that's not a huge worry overall. Their receivers are so inconsistent I'm not even sure QB is that big of a deal unless Mertz is an absolute stud. Overall the questions are on D though. D-line depth is bad - the starting line of Bryson Williams (thanks Diaco), Loudermilk, and Rand is really really good. Nobody knows what the guys behind them are yet though, and you've got to have some depth in the B1G. LB is also a little thinner than usual, they're not just rolling draft picks out there anymore. The media guys love one OLB (Baun), but IMO he's not a difference maker and they had no pass rush last year. Hard to see where it's going to come from this year. They do have a freshman ILB that is going to be a stud in Chenal, and Orr is proven as well. But there's no one like TJ Watt, Jack Cichy, Tj Edwards, Ryan Connelly, etc - not that they can't develop a few LBs, just rare that they don't know who will make an impact at LB going into the season. Secondary should be fine, they played a lot of young guys last year so they got some good experience. I'd be a little worried about safety if I were them (and some of them are), although they love Nelson and I think D'Cota Dixon is more replaceable than outsiders would guess. He was a team leader, but I think a little overrated as a player.

I think it will depend on the game, we'll definitely see a lot of 4 man fronts. But other than on the goal line, the 4th down lineman is more likely to be Alex Davis or Caleb Tannor than it is to be another lineman. All of our lineman are basically DTs at this point, and running four DTs out there is just asking to get beat on the edges regardless of how athletic they are.

I'm not convinced anyone is ahead of anyone else in the West, other than Illinois being the bottom feeder and I don't buy Northwestern. I won't be shocked whoever wins it. Wisconsin would be a little less surprising than Minnesota, but it's a crap shoot at this point. Also wouldn't be surprised if Wisconsin's QB turns it over 3 times in a game or two again, they're going to have some growing pains there.

Good point, swapped them and Purdue in my head for some reason. Brohm is really an incomplete too - looks like he'll be good, but he's only had two years in the Big Ten.

That's a pretty bold claim. Most annoying sure, but outside of Lovie I don't know how to rank them. Frost is very unproven, even if we believe he's the best coach. Fleck has a similar but less impressive resume - took a terrible-P5 team to an undefeated regular season, just took a a little longer. Rebuilding Western Michigan was definitely a bigger task than UCF though - prior to UCFs winless season they were good, there was some talent. WMU was not good. Chryst was mediocre at Pittsburgh (understandable), and has been good at Wisconsin but no conference titles and had his worst year last year, when it's finally a team he built. Fitz gets a lot of love because no one thinks you can win at NW, but it's tough to call him the best coach without winning a conference title in 13 years. I get that it's Northwestern, but I don't feel like he has a stronger argument than anyone else. Ferentz and Dantonio both seem good but not great. They're definitely proven with actual conference titles. Iowa's was a long time ago though, and Dantonio followed up his 3 in 7 years by going 20-18 since then. If you're going purely on resume, it's probably Dantonio - Ferentz - Fitzgerald - Frost/Fleck - Lovie. To be clear I don't think that's accurate, but ranking it any other way is subjective to some degree. It's really more incomplete grades for Frost and Fleck (and Lovie technically, but it seems pretty clear he's not good), they just don't have the time at P5 schools to know for sure. It's too early to tell, but I see nothing about Fitz/Ferentz/Chryst that makes me think they are definitely better coaches than Fleck.

Given the coaches comments about finding players wherever they are, I think they disagree with the posters suggesting we abandon California as soon as we can. We'll definitely make a point of trying to get the best players nearby, but they're not going to take a lesser prospect from South Dakota if they think they can get a better one from Cali or anywhere. And I see no basis for 'West softies' - the common factor in those players mentioned is they were recruited by Riley. I probably would've changed my mind after being around the program for a year or two as well.

I believe in Minnesota less than Iowa or Wisconsin as well, but it's a reasonable pick. Really just depends on how much you believe in the defensive improvements. Their offense will be good, although I don't think great unless on of the QBs takes a huge step forward. But they easily have more skill position talent than Iowa, and better receivers than Wisconsin.