observer3

1 minute ago, gobiggergoredder said:

id be trying everything to get Rattler in Lincoln next year.

Ha if that somehow did happen, Rattler vs his old team the Sooners in Lincoln next year.

A major portion of college football success is psychology.  Getting people motivated and in the right frame of mind to win.   The Frost regime seems to be not getting it done in that regard.   The team was not ready to play today, and needed to be coached to a higher motivational level, and that obviously didn't happen.

Another major are where things are not satisfactory is overall attention to detail.   Special teams, penalties, basic technique for blocking and tackling and ball security, etc.

For year 5,  I really hope that Trev and Scott can come up with a plan that successfully addresses these issues.   

I think that Coach Frost should not call offensive plays, so he can focus on overall team cohesiveness.  Scott loves offensive theory and so can still be a major influence to designing plays and whatnot but I think he is spread too thin.   Coach Frost needs a talented OC he can lean on.

Scott needs some "energy" assistants too to help fire up the troops, and he can do some of that himself as well.  The staff needs to coach the emotions of the players during the game, which is perhaps even important that the theory stuff.

Game day - time for Nebraska to begin to separate themselves from B1G West programs of NW, MN, and Purdue. 

NW already in the books this year, today bring on MN.   This game shouldn't be close - so those close game issues are for another week to improve upon.

If they can then split with IA and WI this year,  the Huskers will be ready to take the next step to win the division in the near future.

Looks like good weather in MN for football.   39 currently with ~50 for game-time.

These bowl projections are ridiculous in a way,  some are released before a game has been played for the season. 

But yea it is fun to watch the predictions get more accurate as the season gets closer to the end.

I think if Nebraska cat get to 6-6 they will get a relatively good invite vs. their record.  Nebraska should travel well, plus that schedule is tough.  The slop in the bowl invitation process would let them play a potentially pretty good team.   A good opponent though means a losing season is more than possible.

7 hours ago, RedDenver said:

One of the intangibles in this game is that the Huskers have faced a lot more adversity than Mich has. Not sure if that ends up playing much of a role or not, but we've been in bad situations before without folding or letting one mistake avalanche into many.

Hey that's surely true.   

One thing though, so far Nebraska still has still not responded quite well enough.   Every close game this year - Illinois, OK, and MSU were all L's.   But y,ea the team has battled back to stay in games even when things go wrong. 

Just need to get all the way there to get those W's.   This game would be a great time in the prime-time spotlight.  And a win here make a bowl game super doable.

Hey all, mgoblog has an interesting piece scouting the Nebraska offense.

Fee Fi Foe Film: Nebraska Offense 2021

https://mgoblog.com/content/fee-fi-foe-film-nebraska-offense-2021#read-more

quote at the end:

What does this mean for Michigan? 

This is going to be quite the test for Michigan's ends. They didn't handle the read option game of Noah Vedral all that well against Rutgers, but that was a few weeks ago and it features much more prominently here. You have to believe that Mike Macdonald has spent the entire week in practice drilling the read option into the heads of his defensive linemen. Still, it will be interesting to see how some of the younger linemen (Mike Morris and David Ojabo notably) handle this more mental component of the game. 

Building off of that, the game needs to be won on the defensive line for Michigan. We talked about the pass protection struggles in general and with two first or second year offensive tackles starting for UNL, the Wolverines need to follow up last week's dominant pass rushing performance with another monstrous effort. If they can get into the backfield with regularity, it will disrupt Martinez's rhythm, and also go a long way towards blowing up the run game. Remember, Nebraska wants to run the ball more than they want to throw it, so getting a lead on offense and then forcing them into passing situations, where Ojabo and Hutchinson should feast, is pivotal. Winning the battle of the line of scrimmage and forcing the Huskers into longer downs is another way to make Nebraska have to pass.

Putting Nebraska into those uncomfortable situations should be the prime objective on Saturday and everything else will break down after that. This is a team with rather unremarkable receivers and running backs, but a QB who is really dangerous. Winning up front and bothering that QB will go a long way towards bottling up Nebraska's offense. 

I think would be really interesting is if the Big 10 merged with the Pac.

That is a lot of teams over a large geographic area.  So that adds opportunity for an interesting schedule.

East and West divisions, mostly the existing Big and Pac  as each division.

Drop to 2 out of conference games.

Have 2 cross division games that would involve a high travel game.

Strict rotational schedule within division for the remaining 8 games.   So Michigan Ohio St for example would not happen every year, but best if schedule is a systematic and fair as possible in terms of difficulty.

The championship game is the Rose Bowl.  Checks boxes for tradition and a great money TV game.  Played a bit earlier than now so as to not conflict with playoffs.

The Big 10 network (or whatever the new name is) helps the Pac teams, whose network has not really taken off.

Very large national recruiting footprint, this goes from coast to coast, although doesn't directly hit the southeast.

Also think it would be great to to team up with another conference vs raid.

I know the above scheduling suggestion leaves plenty of room for tweaking.

Very interested to see how Nebraska plays after the bye week. 

Hope to see good execution on offense with several TDs.   And the defense shouldn't be over-matched this week by the opposing offense.

5 minutes ago, moveitforward said:

 

There is a reason they actually play the game - to determine who is the better team. Your statement falls flat, IMO.

Sure, I agree that the actual games played do count.  At that point in time Iowa was better than Iowa St.   And Maryland better than Texas.   And Oklahoma better than Ohio St.

I am just making the point that rematches of earlier games in, say, conference championships, often have a different result from the first game.   Because good teams use losses as opportunities to improve.   Last year, Oklahoma was a much better team later on, after learning from the loss to Ohio St.

27 minutes ago, moveitforward said:

5. Finally, I guess we should be thankful we no longer play in the Big 12. A few weeks ago, OU beat Ohio State in Columbus, and last week Iowa State beat Oklahoma. 

Last year. when Ohio St beat Oklahoma in Norman, the Sooners used that game as motivation to improve, and were a much better team afterward.  If the two teams had played at the end of the year again it would have been a different game.

Likewise this year, after Oklahoma beat Ohio St, the Buckeyes studied their weaknesses in that game and analytically worked to improve.  This is a much different and better team that played in Lincoln last night than that game vs Oklahoma earlier.   If Oklahoma and Ohio St played next week, different game.

Besides Iowa beat Iowa St FWIW....

in any case I actually think the two conferences are about equal  most years in terms of difficulty to win league games.  All the power 5 leagues are tough week in and week out.

Tanner Lee CAN play a game without an interception, and against a fierce defense !

23/38

303 yds

2 TD

0 INT

It is the first year under Diaco's system.   It was expected to take some transition time to reach peak performance.

I do think that it is believable that more improvement can/will be made over the season - although there may be a VERY rough patch in the timeline in the form of the Ohio St game. 

(The mistake from the Wisconsin game are still on Diaco and the defense, talk of getting better aside).

4 hours ago, BIG ERN said:

I feel like Riley's last chance was against Wisconsin and we lost 38-17.

Nebraska seems to be in a similar place as in 2011.   

From this Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Pelini:

"Nebraska was defeated by the Wisconsin Badgers in the Cornhuskers' first Big Ten Conference game. The Cornhuskers came out strong tying it up at 14–14 with four minutes to go in the 2nd quarter, but Wisconsin's offense dominated Nebraska in the 2nd half and ending up winning the game with a score of 48–17." 

The description of that game from 2011 is remarkably similar to the game Nebraska just played vs Wisconsin in 2017...

https://www.landof10.com/nebraska/nebraska-ohio-state-wisconsin-stats

“If you’re a fierce competitor, you don’t like sitting here at 3-3,” he said.

But he said his defense didn’t get “beat up, pushed, around or mauled” in Nebraska’s 38-17 loss to the Badgers.
“That did not happen,” Diaco told reporters Tuesday night. 

“Every single play is correctable. Not players. It was plays, and the plays are correctable. You can’t help but be encouraged, I would think. I was encouraged. I mean, [I was] disappointed, I don’t want to minimize that for Husker nation, disappointed, but encouraged for the future.”

2 minutes ago, Excel said:

Yep, it's because they play really intelligently, until they don't. 

 

https://cf-e2.streamablevideo.com/video/mp4/lgull.mp4?token=1506817476-egKEJPOMRsHJhhWV6z%2BLWrGbGeOh4vAj6UZwQlVTNWw%3D

 

I forgot how to inbed stuff in to posts...but anyhow, if some team could somehow poach Fitzgerald out of the Big Ten that'd be just swell though that will never happen.

Ha, nice example.   Yea I saw that play live today, was like "throw the ball away........WOW he took a safety!".   After fighting back to get within a score what an absolutely bizarre way to lose in the end....

49 minutes ago, Excel said:

Northwestern doesn't count because we always have really wacky, twilight-zone type games with them.

That perfectly describes several teams' series with the Wildcats, for whatever reason....

Tough to get an exact read on this game.   As others have said, I think both teams will score.  

I think Oregon will pull away to win something like 58-38. 

I wonder which defense - Oregon or Nebraska - will end up giving up more yards over the season?    I predict Nebraska, but hopefully wrong about that.