Husker in WI

How do you quit 2 teams without getting to an actual season? No coaching changes or anything.. Transferred out of USC between signing day and spring ball, not transferring out of Texas between spring ball and fall camp.

Yep. I'm a little more confused about Gabrielle Union, if that's who the lower right is. I know she's a Nebraska fan (alum?), but a weird inclusion. Also "a rivalry like no other" is pretty bold at this point. The biggest point of tension I can recall is that Iowa band member claiming our players didn't participate in the children's hospital wave. Wherever you place Iowa/Nebraska personally on a rivalry scale, it does not stand out in any way.

Probably better off buying them from somewhere like stubhub at this point, but the prices are pretty jacked up. $200+ for even the bad seats.

I agree for the most part, it is ridiculous to expect Fields to be better than Martinez. But their offense (and spread offenses in general) are pretty much designed to make easy reads for the QB - I fully expect Fields to have a very good year. I'm also dreading the fact that they actually have a dual-threat QB again as well, the nice thing about playing Haskins was the complete lack of running ability. Obviously Fields will be a step back as a passer (probably a very large step), but he's basically another running back. I think we're still a year or two away from having all of the athletes we want on defense - I love Mo and Ferguson, and Honas should be good as well, but I'm worried about Fields just running away from them. Less of a problem if Deontai and Dismuke can lay a few hits on him.

It's more of an opportunity to get noticed, and Martinez will actually be a counselor - the camp itself is for high schoolers. The college guys participate in a lot of challenges though, so it's a good opportunity to get noticed. But it's not a camp where coaches will be trying to change his throwing motion or anything.

I think the embarrassment of not getting into certain schools was enough motivation for him. A somewhat ambiguous "grade concerns" is different than stating a GPA the athlete is below - nobody specifically reported the thresholds Barry didn't meet. There's enough embarrassment in the first example, even if there are good reasons for whatever issues like transferring schools. It's fair to report on potential issues but there's no need to get that specific, and really weird for it to come from the JUCO coach. There's no reason for him to be commenting on admission requirements for a college he doesn't work for, and really no reason for him to comment on a former player's grades at all.

Well the Bucs defense is at least interesting now, particularly from a Nebraska perspective with David there too. Hopefully Vita Vea can actually play and let Suh be a 3-technique - honestly I think a lot of the Suh criticism is because he just eats up blockers as the nose. He doesn't really go for sacks the way some guys do - McCoy did, and he still has fewer sacks in his career than Suh.

I think he meant Minnesota for the "certainly better than," but yeah that is not a great sentence. Pretty much every one of these has a "huh?" line, although it's usually something like terrible picks for impact players. From living here I don't think anyone actually believes Zack Baun is their best defensive player, and that was his pick. It is tough to do good previews for every team though, any fairly serious fan of a team could pick out issues with their team's preview. At least he doesn't talk about players no longer with the team like some previews do, those are always funny.

Yeah fair enough, didn't realize it was the bowl game ring. Intentionally misleading tweet, and I fell for it. I still just don't know about Annexstad - he was thrown in as a freshman, so I'm sure he'll improve. Fleck's Western Michigan QB improved a lot freshman-sophmore years, and doesn't look like he was much of a runner either. But Annexstad did get benched, so it seems like he'll have to win the job back to start. They've got some receivers in any case, Johnson is a stud.

It's just a weird culture Fleck is building there - clearly it can work to some degree, he won at Western Michigan. They really need that defensive turnaround to be real though, and a QB to take huge steps forward.

That still seems like a pretty extreme opinion - I'm excited to see what the new guys can do, but I don't even see a silver lining in Stanley being gone. He's the kind of receiver you can force the ball to. I don't recall seeing wide open receivers on plays where it was forced to Stanley, but I'm sure it did happen. I can't blame Martinez though, and frankly more experienced QBs probably would have forced it to him more, not less.

I think Warner will take a step forward this year, and he contributed last year where some of the expected guys did not - particularly the JUCOs. I'm just saying that's a low bar if we're considering Warner's production proven. I definitely expect him to have a role, can't have enough skill position guys in this offense and you can trust him to block and catch - that's probably more what was meant by saying "proven." In any case, I'm excited about Noa. I'm sure at least a couple out of Warner, Williams, Woodyard, Hunt, and McQuitty (not to mention the freshmen) will take big steps forward this year, but I like adding someone with P5 production.

I hope he's unproven. Because if we're saying his current numbers prove who he is, he's a receiver who averages 5.6 yards per catch. I think another year with S&C will help, and ideally he's not the target on bubble screens as we get more athletes like Wan'Dale. But I'm definitely hoping Warner takes his game to another level, because we're not competing if 17 catches for less than 100 yards is considered proven depth.

It's very likely to be in tumult at the start of this year too, but the overall talent will be better.

Think his roommate was accused, not Steele. I'm sure the coaches do a character check before reaching out to any potential transfers in any case, but I'd be surprised if he had any interest here. Interestingly one of his recruiters to Florida was Charlton Warren.

I don't think he's actually 250 lbs yet, but this dude is a man. He's the kind of ILB I'd love to see in the 3-4, a Carlos Polk-size thumper. Looks like he has offers from just about everyone though, so I'm guessing somehwere like Bama or Texas.

No, obviously there was a ton of talent there. But that team just quit - plenty of the blame goes to Fickell for that, but there's a difference between your coach and several star players being removed from the team, and your coach stepping down and appointing his successor. That second piece doesn't always work well, so I guess we'll see. We have no idea how good/bad of a coach Day is but he doesn't need to be elite for OSU to win 10 games a year, at least as long as he has Meyer's talent pool. Fickell is actually the reigning AAC coach of the year, so he seems to have rebounded well enough. Interestingly Day has about as much experience as Fickell did, so maybe it will be the same situation.

I don't expect OSU to take a huge step back this year. 2011 was a complete dumpster fire for them, this is just a slightly awkward handoff coaching wise. I don't necessarily think Day can keep them at their current level, but who knows. Fickell wouldn't have gone 6-6 with this years team.

Suggs didn't play at ASU until 2000, it wasn't him in 1996. Nothing humps out to me as a big change to make their defense that much better - the only name I recognize on the defense is Pat Tillman. Second year DC, fifth year HC. Can't say I remember anything else unique about ASU that year, they just out of nowhere had a phenomenal year. They probably weren't as bad as they looked in 1995 either - we just stunned them early (11:00 am game too) and didn't let up. Their other losses were 3 points @ ranked Washington, 31 points at top-5 USC, 2 points at ranked Stanford, and 3 points in a rivalry game to Arizona.

Except it sounds like in this case he was specifically being coached to throw no matter what, so I don't think it was mixed messages. Also can't say that I've heard a slant called high risk before - as long as your receiver starts wide enough and the qb throws it on time you really only have to worry about one dropping defender, and they should be able to find a window. That being said the concept you run is pretty foolproof. The only downside would be your slant/snag receiver isn't catching it on the run, but he probably appreciates that since he's not running full speed into a middle linebacker trying to take his head off.

Probably mostly walk-ons. There are only so many practice reps to go around, and the roster needed to lose close to 10 players for Title IX stuff if I remember right.

Agreed, the point of contention was making those games the "most important" ones. He'll play for sure, but I think it's more likely to be in games that are not in doubt or if we lose a couple guys to injury.

There are some leaps (like the others doing well, you didn't specify that), but it's not that far off. "Last four games" isn't exactly "four most important games near the end of the season," but it's close. How are we defining "near the end of the season?" And I understand you saying that would allow time for conditioning/learning the defense, but it's still true he wouldn't have played all year to that point. I admit I thought of the same scenario you did, but barring injury or him being a complete stud I don't see a lot of reason for him to play the biggest games at the end of the year. We've got a lot of depth this year, but like Big Ern pointed out we lose a lot after that. I don't think we're planning on him contributing much this year, but who knows.

He has the potential to be the best fit we have, I'm not sure he's there yet. But I have no problem grooming him for the job, and seems like we're still giving plenty of reps to Forbes/Farniok as well.

Nowhere specific, maybe I should be more concerned than I am. Just judging based on walking off the field, and Frost saying we got out of the game "pretty healthy." I know the staff doesn't like to disclose injury information, I just feel like the question would've been answered differently if they were worried about an ACL or anything. Hopefully I'm right, but I feel like no news is good news.