Husker in WI

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.

I believe they are required to have at least weekly press availability, and while they don't have to disclose season ending injuries it is now a requirement to publish the list of players who are Out or Questionable a couple hours before game time. So they can't do what you're suggesting, but you can make it seem like they do by just not watching the press conferences or reading message boards talking about them?

In that way, it's honestly a great fan engagement tool. Either the offense is better and you have fans paying attention to evidence of that, or they get to track progress until the least popular coach on the staff finally coaches himself out of a job. But I'm not super clear on the repercussions - does he need both the points per game and the wins? And IIRC, failing will just not automatically renew his contract past 2024. So he's still the OC next year regardless, or did I miss something?

I felt obligated to read the Colorado stuff leading up to last Saturday, it's been such a joy to just scroll past it this week. Although I have no doubt the stories and quotes are coming. What I am dying to see is somebody to ask if they didn't have enough disrespect as fuel leading up to the game when they do lose. But I don't think the reporters have the guts. And it would admittedly be unprofessional - although I'd call Prime's responses unprofessional, so it's arguably warranted.

Easier said than done when they ask about it every time. It's not like they're coming up and saying "we thought of some minor details that may have contributed" unprompted, it's an attempt (albeit somewhat clumsy when there's clearly a party that should bear most of the blame) to take accountability for the performance of their team. Which frankly has been lacking for a long time. Everyone can interpret it as they will, but it's never sounded like blaming crowd noise or motions to me - just ways the coaches could try to make mistakes even less likely. I have not heard anyone deny that he should have caught those snaps regardless. At the end of the day, we're all pissed that the turnovers happened and no press conference response will appease everyone. I for one would be terrified if they came out and said Haarberg is starting because of the turnovers - I think the gap between 1 and 2 at QB is much larger than people realize. I do expect the QBs to play a lot better than we've seen on Saturday, regardless of who is in.

You still don't publicly throw them under the bus, and Satterfield/Rhule did say (among other things) that he does need to catch it. I'd rather hear the coaches are thinking of ways they can make it even easier for the players, as opposed to the Frost-era "we just can't do that." Those weren't incorrect statements, but you never got the sense the coaches were actively thinking about ways they could make the situation even easier. At then end of the day, yeah Sims needs to catch the snap and I am sure he's aware that it is 99.9% his fault. As far as I know Sims hasn't spoken to the media this week, but I guarantee he wouldn't be going on about the other circumstances - he would say he needs to catch the ball and that it's on him.

If you want to come up with a list of criteria that the "best fans" must collectively meet for you to consider them the "best fans," go right ahead. But can you name a fanbase where no one would leave some of the games we've played? Every fanbase has fans who will leave early when the game is clearly lost, and that happens more when the losses pile up. Every fanbase has fans who will stick it out until the bitter end. I don't think it's a particularly good measurement of a fanbase's quality, and Nebraska is at least not worse than anywhere else in that regard.

It was 3rd and 12 too, first down and we're driving with a little over 2 minutes to go and only down 3-0.

That one was incredibly frustrating - you have to watch both views, but it appears Fidone came out of his break wide open at exactly the time Sims ran out of the pocket for no reason. By the time he got out of the pocket and re-acquired Fidone, it was way too late. Why are you moving out of this pocket? From what I can tell this is about when he broke the pocket, although it might be right before (which is actually worse) Outside of this pass, the decision making and throws were good. But it's a very costly mistake, as were the snap/handoff issues.

I definitely agree with this, he's at best a questionable fit for what Satterfield wants to do. I do think Sims largely threw the ball well against Colorado, just the one bad decision which was really, really, bad. The offensive issues were almost entirely the turnovers, and a few plays getting blown up by blitzes.

I do think it's easier to run a fairly complicated offense in high school because the defenses there are not even close to college-level complexity. And as the offense you get to dictate things more than the defense does. That being said I definitely agree our issues have been incredibly basic on offense.

He doesn't need the money, this is all about legacy and I don't think A&M has a good path to championships. Texas or Florida State would have obvious appeal, but both appear to be settled at Head Coach for now. Shedeur very well could go pro, but Hunter has to stick around in college another year - he's a true sophomore.

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm expecting too. He will probably look great against NIU and Louisiana Tech, and then bad against Michigan (understandably). Then the question is, are the teams like Northwestern and Purdue on our schedule closer to NIU/La Tech, or Minnesota/Colorado? If you take out the mishandled snaps (which I understand you cannot do, but I expect them to be a non-issue moving forward) Sims played pretty well against a bad Colorado defense. I just don't know what the "bad defense" cutoff is and how many random turnovers will add to the chaos, so it will probably be a roller coaster each week. Illinois' defense is way worse than last years, but are they good enough to get a bad performance out of Sims? I guess we'll find out. It's also possible he turns the ball over several more times in the non-conference games, and assuming Purdy is healthy for the next couple weeks I do think Rhule would consider a change after Michigan.

I have no inside info, but would suspect Grant's absence last week had less to do with his fumble against Minnesota and more about how he responded in practice.

We're a lot closer to where Kansas was than K State, and it was ugly during Leipold's first year there. Its a little early to be calling it on Rhule.

A lot of great players invent slights and disrespect as motivation. Quite possible he didn't buy Rhule's explanation and still considered disrespectful, also quite possible it had no impact and he just wanted to say something. But it's pretty common for players to take things personally to fuel their competitiveness, whether or not they actually beleive it was meant to be an insult.

This is probably wishful thinking, but I do still think Colorado is going to collapse in the second half. They are a lot better than I expected, but I just don't think they can hold up. Shedeur was super impressive, he was freakishly poised back there. But he took some shots, and if he goes down teams are going to feast on the freshman backup who is less mobile, less experienced, and likely less turnover-averse. If the OL takes a hit even Sheduer might not be able to save them, and Dylan Edwards doesn't have a college build yet. Plus better offenses will put more stress on them. They have absolutely proven me wrong so far, but I still think depth is going to be their downfall. And that will always be the issue - while Deion probably can reload next year with similarly talented guys (and some like Hunter and Edwards will still be there), none of those impact transfers will show up just to be depth. So they'll always be susceptible to injury or key guys underperforming, but even the 2 games so far are probably enough to get top-end portal guys to jump in again next year.

No, Rhule said it was described as a high-ankle sprain on the field but didn't appear to be the multi-week kind. Sounded like we expect Sims to play Saturday, but too early to say for sure.

They had a pretty high talent level, but 0-12 is 0-12 and it's hard to do. We can admit Frost did a great job at UCF (even if it there's more context than "they were 0-12!") without needing to claim he did a good job here.

We are familiar with Rocky Lombardi, one of the few positive Nebraska football memories over the past few years

Texas, Illinois. UCF under Frost These schools initial "rebuild" seasons had win totals of 5, 5, and 6 games for what it's worth. That's still well within reach here, although I will admit I was hoping for more which now seems unlikely (or at least to beat Colorado).

Backing up his point that he "has never disrespected an opponent," but this feels a bit hyperbolic. I'm sure they're good. Mentioned Fleeks turning it on, and Coleman/Lloyd will play. When pressed about the freshman receivers he said Jeremiah Charles is probably next in line currently, although also said Doss will probably play once he's healthy. He had a broken arm and just made it back to practice this week. Did like that he said we should be more aggressive offensively, although talked a lot about the execution and what the defense was doing when we did call shots.

I agree, but I don't think he feels that way.

I'll walk back my previous statement a little bit, guys do obviously cut down on turnovers to some degree with experience. I do still think there are turnover-prone players though, and that never totally goes away. But Sims was trending the right direction: Year Pass+Rush Atts TOs Extra fumbles Plays per TO 2020 377 18 5 20.9 2021 258 9 3 28.7 2022 275 4 1 68.8 2023 63 7* 0 9.0 The asterisk is whether you count the fumbled handoff against him or Ervin, the argument could be made either way but I included it. You could also count the fumble that hit the TE in motion as an 'extra fumble' (fumbled but we retained possession) against him - I have no clue on whether it's the TE's fault for being slow, Sims for the snap timing, or Scott for the snap timing. So he has trended a positive direction until this year, and last year was actually pretty impressive. It will likely get better if we stick with him, but it does need to be a lot better. I will admit I did not realize how bad his freshman year was, and how much that skews the numbers - but I also guarantee the 68 plays per turnover is not something he can replicate, especially in the Big Ten instead of the ACC. EDIT: Used FoxSports for fumble data, but added the fumbled handoff which they do not attribute to him. https://www.foxsports.com/college-football/jeff-sims-player-stats?category=rushing&seasonType=reg

No, but it is akin to an "unreliable" receiver. Sometimes that's dropping a pass, sometimes a bad route, maybe ball security, etc. Turnovers can happen a lot of ways, but some guys are just prone to it. And I can't think of an example of a guy shaking that to be honest.