J-MAGIC

You're comparing 42 pass attempts to 21, with 10 of those 21 coming on the final drive against a Northwestern defense playing off man and happy to give up easy, short throws. If you take away Luke's long pass in garbage time against the OSU backups, he is only slightly ahead in YPA (and even with that pass included Luke is still currently lower in YPA that Adrian's career average), and if you take away Luke's 47-yard run as a tailback against OSU (i.e., plays where they're both playing quarterback) he is averaging fewer yards per carry than Adrian. They have the same number of turnovers. If you apply context here, there has been no significant statistical difference between the two. Adrian played a bad game against the No. 5 defense in the country; that doesn't mean he deserves a hook. I understand that people want quick fixes, but that is not how the incredibly complex and team-dependent game of football works. The biggest problem in our passing game right now is that we have no one who can get open downfield. Adrian has looked extremely skiddish to put the ball in harms way this season, and that coupled with no one being able to create separation leads to the over- and under-throws we saw Saturday. I am not in the meeting rooms; maybe Adrian is not getting the ball where it needs to go, and if so, sweet, let's make a change. But I do not think QB is the main problem with our passing game right now, and if Luke takes over I think you are going to see him struggle with a lot of the same things that Adrian is struggling with right now.

Luke really wasn't doing anything Adrian already wasn't. His numbers look better because NW was playing prevent on the last drive and giving him stuff underneath. He certainly wasn't pushing the ball downfield anymore than Adrian was. If coaches think the ball isn't going where it needed to with Adrian and need to make a change, then let's do it. But I think way too much blame is being placed on the QBs for our passing game right now and I think Adrian gets one more chance from me.

People need to chill the hell out and stop whining. We've opened the season against the No. 9 defense in SP+ in Ohio State and the No. 5 defense in SP+ in Northwestern, and we moved the ball well on both while starting two non-FBS-scholarship wide receivers. The young talent on defense looks great and we are wildly improved on that side of the ball. The downfield passing game is going to get better as the actually-talented younger receivers work in. The red zone execution and discipline need to improve but those things are also kind of fluky and Frost is taking responsibility for those. Before the season we universally agreed that the opening stretch of games was going to be brutal and that we needed to be patient and get through it (and only got more brutal than we anticipated after we figured out NW was actually good). And then the games start and we drop a close one to a good team known for stealing games and everyone starts acting like things are an unfixable disaster. A big part of this fan base needs to start using their brains, stop crying every time something goes wrong, and grow up.

So with the news of the Illinois positives (presumably from playing Wisconsin last Friday) ... glad we aren't exposing our team to that this weekend.

Then for all of our sake I am glad you are not in control of our athletics department.

You're not reading what anyone is saying in response to you. Wisconsin doesn't know who has it and who doesn't. These tests giving people false negatives allowed it to spread there in the first place. It's not "keep the sick kids home" because they don't know who the sick kids are, and the only way to know is to get everyone away from each other and test for a period of time. Real question: Do you really want Nebraska to play Wisconsin this week, knowing Wisconsin has an uncontrolled outbreak that would then put Nebraska's next three games in jeopardy? Because I don't! Let's just punt this one and play eight total games instead of for-sure playing this week and potentially only playing six.

This isn't about breaking or following the rules. You can follow the rules perfectly and still have an incredibly infectious disease get in anyway. That's the reality of how pandemics work! With COVID's long incubation period they clearly feel the spread is bad enough on their team that the only solution right now is stop gathering in large groups until they can get a handle on whom they need to isolate and whom they don't. I wish this didn't happen either because I think we could have beaten them at full strength, but I'd also much rather miss a game now than get our team exposed to them and miss three.

They are choosing not to play one game voluntarily in an attempt to stem a burgeoning outbreak and not go above the threshold that would make them cancel three games. Don't be intentionally dense because you're mad. The tests are giving false negatives; that's how the outbreak at Baylor happened. Wisconsin can't be sure of who has it and who doesn't, so they are choosing not to gather in a large group to limit the spread. I would hope our coaches would do the same thing.

People buy into conspiracies because it's easier to do that than accept a bleak reality: That there's a surging pandemic going on, and that playing sports during it was going to be difficult and unwieldy at best. Ask yourself what's more likely: 1) That one school that has kicked our asses for 10 straight years without really passing the ball wanted to duck us and coordinated with a massive, de-centralized corporation in a couple of days to intentionally screw only us over, or 2) That one school just had some players make a dumb decision during a pandemic and are trying to stem an outbreak before they are forced to cancel a third of their season. Constantly playing the victim any time something bad happens is getting really old. Sometimes you just get unlucky.

They're down to their fourth-string quarterback ... because they're having an outbreak

There's no conspiracy and they're not scared of us. It seems as if they're having an outbreak (possibly their players' fault, or possibly just bad luck) and are trying to get ahead of it so that they only have to miss one week voluntarily instead of three mandatorily. Get mad at the Big Ten for bungling this season and providing no flexibility with this asinine half-measure of a schedule.

Personal responsibility is great and I agree, but you can be as responsible as possible and this stuff can still find its way in. That's how pandemics work and why trying to play sports in one without any spread was never realistic, even with the best intentions. One of your equipment managers gets takeout from Chipolte and pulls his mask down in line for a second and spreads it to three players as he's passing out laundry, and you've got an outbreak going. Wisconsin could have been irresponsible or they just could have gotten unlucky. We don't know so it seems uncharitable to judge when the same thing could happen to us.

Minnesota faced like seven backup quarterbacks last year and then talked endless trash about the season they had, we should be able to dunk on beating Wisconsin with one, too.

He was recruited here as a 4-3 defensive end, so he is probably not going to be good in space. But he is playing because coaches feel he is the best option. When people talk about a rebuild and lack of talent, this is what they're talking about -- not having to play 4-3 ends at inside linebacker because you have no one else.

No. 4 would probably running the scout team offense each week.

His back foot comes up a split second before the snap. I've seen a lot worse go uncalled but he did move early.

The Stoll play here worked because that motion is used a lot to run split zone. The motion guy typically cleans up the edge defender on the backside, so when the LB saw that motion he crashed inside. Heupel at UCF runs that play all the time.

Our gameplan going into today was very clearly to load up against the run and not get beat deep. Since we aren't really a competent enough defense to stop everything Ohio State can do I thought it was a smart to pick things to take away. OSU's eight NFL receivers made us pay for that but I'm not really shocked or upset by that.

I seriously don't understand anyone looking at today's game negatively: Our biggest question mark entering this year was the defensive line, and a brand-new two-deep looked better and more stout against a top-5 team than they did against anyone with a pulse last year Martinez hung in the pocket and stepped up instead of bailing to the right every time he felt pressure. Also looked like a much more effective runner than last year. Luke looked like a legit weapon with the ball in his hands and we appear to have a creative plan to use him in a variety of roles Offensive line at times *moved* a really talented OSU defensive line The secondary paid for our very clear schematic decision to sell-out against the run which made the numbers look a lot better than maybe the level of play. OSU has a top-five-NFL-pick quarterback and like eight future-NFL-pick receivers so getting upset about our corners getting beat seems very silly. Pass rush was inconsistent, but that's better than non-existent, like it has been the last few years against anyone with a pulse Linebackers appeared to have actual run fits and executed them reasonably well Team played physical as hell and seemed to care a lot more than it has at any point in the last five years There were some negatives. Those receivers are not going to get open against any even decent secondary. Somehow the snaps are still a problem. Fumbles and penalties. I'm not sure either of the QBs can throw the ball consistently. But people seem to be b!^@hing a lot about how the box score looks against an essentially NFL team instead of looking at how the game actually went and appeared before our eyes. I think that's pretty dumb.

I'm not saying this to slight Luke or say that he can't have drastically improved to the point he could win the job outright. If he really has improved to that point as a passer, then we should be ecstatic because we are going to have an excellent quarterback. But last year they basically had Luke running a glorified version of the Wildcat. He had a sweep play, a read-option play, a handful of screen passes, a shovel pass, a three-step play and then a heavy play action deep-shot play off the sweep action (that he threw both his touchdowns on). Frost called it a "package" and it really was just that: a handful of plays outside of the normal structure of the offense to be run with Luke specifically in the game. He was not trusted in games to run the full playbook and was not asked to make complex reads of coverage as Martinez and Vedral were. Luke looked incredibly explosive in this limited package and it was nearly enough to beat Indiana, which is great, but this is kind of a classic example of a small sample size: a guy with nine pass attempts in favorable conditions being compared to a guy who has had over 600 attempts to show us his flaws. If Luke had been/is the full-time starter, he would have been asked to make those complex coverage reads and would have had to make some throws to receivers without three yards of separation, and he would have shown some warts, and possibly (probably, even) a lot more than Martinez. It's very easy to get mad at Martinez for the dumb interception against Purdue or the dumb out-of-bounds decision on the final drive against Iowa because we've seen it and can hold it against him; it's likewise very easy to believe Luke wouldn't do the same thing because we truly haven't seen how he would respond in that same environment so everything is theoretical.

You're taking this to be a negative that our coaches didn't know what they were doing or were incompetent to this point. But I think the quote more meant that they are just going to try to have a different style of playcalling that hammers concepts that are working as opposed to the more grab-bag philosophy we've seen the last two years. Grab-bag can work; Andy Reid just won a Super Bowl and ripped apart the Ravens doing it. But there's also something to be said for just running a play until a defense stops it and then hitting them with your counters when they do. That's all Verdu meant, I think.

I assumed it was shells at first because you can see pads on people's backs but these do not look like full shoulder pads

Are they ... tackling with no pads on?

Wilson's lateral movement was pretty bad and he seemed to get beat a ton in pass pro, but he at least seemed like a good run blocker. Hixson was bad at both. I think the priority this offseason by the staff and the reason we're seeing Farniok at guard is to fix the interior pass blocking. Teams were getting pressure up the middle constantly last year on basic twists and stunts and I think that was a big part of why AM was skiddish even in clean pockets. Having a tight end at center making the calls for the line certainly didn't help that, and hopefully with a year of experience he'll be a lot better.

Look I generally agree with the point you are making but J.D. was not even remotely considered a second rounder had he come out last year; he was projected as a Day 3 to UDFA guy everywhere serious. Tyler Johnson from Minnesota was a much better player than him and went R5. J.D. isn't even listed in any top 100 players for this upcoming draft. I have nothing but respect for him for playing hard and making plays on three bad Husker teams and standing up for the stuff he did off the field. He was a good player who would have helped us and I wish he were still here. Our team is certainly going to need some big leaps to replace him and the fanbase is being overly optimistic about the chances of that happening. But we also didn't just lose prime Randy Moss or anything, and I think there's a likely universe where our receiving corps is a lot better this year overall than it was last year.