Husker in WI

Looks like it started with Boston College since they're apparently the closest FBS team? This is the initial map. It went BC > Kansas > West Virginia > Texas > Oklahoma > Kansas State > Texas again > Iowa State! Maryland lost their territory to Temple, who lost it to Buffalo, who lost to Miami (OH), who lost to Western Michigan, who lost to Eastern Michigan, who lost to Toledo, who lost to NIU, who gave it back to Eastern Michigan. Dang, the MAC sucks.

LSU is 42nd, and Oklahoma is 55th. "Respectable in some seasons" is a little bit of an understatement. But anyway, I don't think anyone is talking about being satisfied with the 66th ranked defense. Top 20 should definitely be the goal, but 30-40 is probably more realistic.

I dunno, they've honestly been pretty bad running the ball this year. That doesn't mean we'll be able to stop them, but they've been more reliant on passing the ball than we have this year. They are better at not fumbling, but we've actually been better running the ball. Iowa: 23.5 ppg, 131.7 Rushing ypg (3.7 ypc), 242.2 Passing ypg, 373.9 total. Nebraska: 28.4 ppg, 206.9 rushing ypg (4.7 ypc), 222.7 passing ypg, 429.6 total.

Right, because sitting at home and being angry will definitely develop them better than an extra few weeks of practice.

I think Thorson was a better QB than I realized, just seriously limited by their offensive scheme. Also lost their best 3 receivers to graduation or injury. And finally, they really weren't that good last year IMO they got really lucky - this year they've been a little unlucky.

Ahh, that makes way more sense. My bad.

Wonder if he was sick this week as well - but yeah, he looked tired. Not unhappy for the most part though!

Totally different type of receiver than Nance/Houston, and we don't want Chase to be our only relatively tall receiver - he's only 6'1. I'd guess if Hunt was on the team still and McQuitty was progressing we wouldn't be looking Juco outside of someone like Manning. None of the young guys have inspired confidence about next year, so while they can definitely be good players down the road I'm good with grabbing someone who can help now.

Agreed, and it seemed like he played more against Maryland - even before the backups were in. Could've had something to do with Nelson not being 100%, I know we've got the 2 different OLB positions but when we're down to Davis/Domann and no one else I imagine Tannor can play either. One thing with this staffs policy on injuries is it's hard to tell if that's been a factor in his overall lack of playing time.

If there wasn't a competition, there would've been rumblings of that from Spring and Fall camp. There are always fans who want the backup, but people close to the team hear about it if players feel like it should be the backup.

So where did the people go who were insisting Chins defense was going to end up as bad as last years? The argument as I recall was Wisconsin/Maryland/Iowa were going to score enough on us that there wouldn't be any measurable progress this year, and yet: 2017: 36.4 (Diaco) 2018: 31.3 2019: 27.8 Unless Iowa goes for 70, that's improvement. Unless they go for 50+, that's significant improvement. Give him another year at least, especially with the younger guys coming up.

Exactly - we dropped at least 2 and I think 3 potential interceptions. Those throws need to be better, but it's not jsut a matter of Maryland being so bad they can't catch a ball.

What's kind of funny is the two plays I remember from him against Maryland were in pass coverage, and I would not consider that a strength of his. But he made both plays, so I'll definitely take it!

I for one appreciate that you and the other Minnesota guy were pretty chill after our game. Stick around, it's nice to get another perspective and input. But with that being said, we're still a little too proud of a fanbase to take a "congrats on 5 wins, it'll get better" as anything other than condescending. I'm pretty sure you didn't mean it that way, but that's how some will take it - not that it matters. What's your Iowa prediction?

Harrison Martin, I must've missed when he joined the team. https://huskers.com/sports/football/roster/harrison-martin/41478

If we're healthy, I think we've got a good shot. Their offense has been really bad - we've made bad offenses look good, but I don't think we're giving up 35 or anything. But their defense is solid, and Epenesa has been playing angry. A fast start would really help.

I think he was pretty far out of position on the long TD, but so was everyone else and I'm not even sure if Reimer was supposed to be around the ball. I agree though, he was flying around! Barry made some nice plays in coverage, that was fun to see. Rahmir was really close a couple times, a little added strength and decisiveness and he's gonna be a good one.

Ah, my bad. Can't even tell what's sarcasm with some of the "realists" on here. I think there's a reason not many people run a 4 man line with all DTs. If you want to slim Stille back down to 270ish, slide Davis down for one of the Daniels, and find another end sure, but now we're just talking about wholesale switching to a 4-man front defense. Which I know a lot of people want. But you think our pass rush is bad now, I shudder thinking about the 4 you mentioned in a passing situation.

That's been blown way out of context. It was about our offense needing to score more, not setting expectations on the defensive numbers. Saying we should be scoring 30+ should not be controversial, and it doesn't mean he's ok with a defense that give up 29.

I mean we've put up 493 and 518 yards on Wisconsin the past two years. They've done a good job preventing points, so it really comes down to whether they can keep that up. I can buy that some of that is due to a good defense making stops when they need to, but they won't continue to keep 500 yards in the 21-24 point range. And we did that with an offense which you point out hasn't been great this year.

It's kind of funny (but mostly sad) that we ran Banker out of town after our best scoring D since 09/10. I've said before though, I'm a little bit thankful - Riley might not have gotten fired after '17 if the defense was decent, and Frost wasn't going to get easier t opull away from UCF.

And I guess to say it a different way, is our defense bad because we line up certain ways and give a lot of cushion in some scenarios, or do we just notice and complain about those things when it's just the defense is bad regardless? I was surprised on the rewatch how few of our issues last week were anything other than guys not getting off blocks and not making tackles. I still think this is a vast improvement over Diaco, but giving up a lot of points consistently has been a hallmark of our defense for some time.

Got it, I totally agree with you there. I just wonder how much of what we perceive as the issues - lack of adjustments, how we line up, etc - are symptoms of a bad defense instead of the cause. If we just made more tackles on Saturday I don't think the narrative is about any of those things, even if there are still times we line up with a cushion or in an 'exploitable' way.

Almost like us fans don't fully understand the intricacies of different defenses. Curious specifically about your reasoning for the bolded. I think a lot of us have issues with how players are positioned, although I'm sure there are drawbacks to however we would do it. And it's hard to argue against easily exploited given our results. But I haven't seen a lot of cushion being given recently, and adjustments are made every game.

I don't like how we line up a lot either, but thinking back I don't know if I believe it's our problem. I think the biggest plays where we failed defensively against Wisconsin were: KO Return TD (7 points) 4th and 6 conversion to Cephus on our 27 (3 points on the drive) 55 yard TD pass with a bunch of missed tackles (7 points on the drive) Taylor 14 yard run on the first play after the INT (7 points) 3rd and 10 screen pass where about 4 guys miss the RB (3 points) 3rd and 3 conversion from our 33 on a drag route (7 points) Questionable PI call on 2nd and 8 from their 34 (0 points, backed us up when they punted though) Obviously more things went wrong than just these, especially on offense. But the bolded one is the only one where I have issues with how we lined up on defense, and if we make a few of these plays that potentially takes points off the board. They still likely would've scored on a few of these, but maybe field goals instead of TDs. As dumb as it seems to me sometimes, the scheme didn't cost us this game - bad tackling and not being able to get points with our opportunities offensively did.