J-MAGIC

3 hours ago, Dogs In A Pile said:

21 things you need to know. Husker Dan A Frosty Forecast

 

I saw this on the other board and found it interesting. While I'm sure many will see it as being overly negative the 21 things he lays out are indeed facts or pretty much indisputable observations.

"Here are 21 contextless negative facts, which surely means we'll have a bad upcoming season"

5 hours ago, The Dude said:

 

I think I just fundamentally disagree. It's perfectly healthy accepting a situation for what it is.   I can understand how someone who thinks Nebraska will go 8-4 this year might think I'm being negative, but no clear-thinking person would.

 

There's a great Carl Sagan quote that went something like, "it's far better to accept the world as it is than to persist in delusion, no matter how comforting".

 

1) There are plenty of "clear-thinking" reasons to see 8-4 as a possibility if you aren't a total crank who only wants to focus on the downsides of the team

2) Sports are supposed to be for fun. If you're quoting Carl Sagan at people to police their realism about a leisure activity, you might be doing this for the wrong reasons.

39 minutes ago, ZRod said:

I think the 12 personnel with a flexed TE was pretty common at Oregon, or in pretty much any true spread offense. They're looking to get a mismatch on a corner, or have a LB try to cover in space. You see it a fair amount in the NFL too. KC loves to flex Kelce out at almost every possible receiving spot. I think New England even use to do it a lot with young Gronk and Hernandez.

 

But if they line up out wide from the start that's a little different I guess. Usually this offense has them either flexing from the line or motioning across the formation to get the mismatch.

You're not wrong on any of this, I just think it's very telling that our coaches thought playing Austin Allen in the slot on almost 75 percent of our plays was the best thing for our offense. We also basically spent zero time in 10 personnel in the back half of the season, which is a huge departure from Oregon and UCF. I just think it's pretty clear from rewatching stuff that outside of Wandale we just didn't have a Big Ten-caliber receiving corps. I think that can change with the Omar and Toure additions and with the Betts-Brown-Nixon trio learning the playbook, but we didn't have it last year.

2 hours ago, Cobra Kai said:

A play callers job is to put his guys in the best position to be successful.  If we don't have rbs with good vision, running an inside zone play with any of them is poor play calling.  We could run power, with or without a FB, we could run options/reads with the qbs or the often overused screen game.  

 

Running an inside zone is not like running isos with a FB...ramming it down people's throats.  You have to be able to make split second judgment calls on where to go based upon the leverage of the guys up front.  

 

Good play caller-puts players in the best position for success

 

This doesn't track for me because almost all of our run concepts have some sort of read or RPO off them. Everything had an unblocked player or a tag on the outside. If the defense is dictating it's a give to the RB then I don't see what you're suggesting our coaches do (beyond completely changing the offense or developing better players).

I'm doing a little project and breaking down some of our games from last year. It's amazing how much 12 personnel they were playing last year after Martinez took back over with two of Allen, Volk, or Stoll out there at all times. It's like over 75 percent of the plays I've charted so far. And it's not like traditional 12 personnel formations or plays -- it's 11 personnel formations and they have the tight end split out like an X or Z or even in the slot and just performing those roles. Not everything obviously but I think that's pretty telling on what our coaches thought of our talent level at receiver. 

4 minutes ago, FrantzHardySwag said:

B1G brings in north of $700 million annually thanks to the athletic end. They bring in north of $2 Billion annually thanks to research. I know we tend to focus on the athletic end of things on this board, but the media isn't wrong when they say a school has to fit the B1G's academic profile as well. B1G will add brands that will allow them to continue to get massive media contracts for athletics AND bring in research dollars. Schools have to check off multiple boxes. People here seem to be laser focused on how much money athletics bring in and completely ignore how much money academics bring in. 

FWIW KU and ISU are both AAU accredited with strong research bona fides. I think that's where they end up going. 

Our offensive scheme and playcalling have been fine and a lot of times pretty cutting edge. We won the Rutgers game after we saw their backside end was crashing down and started hammering a Bash play I had never seen them run before.

Sometimes they go into the grab bag a bit, but Frost has always been that way, even at Oregon, but you take the good with the bad. People who complain about bubble screens or swing passes don't understanding the function they serve. The basic truth with our offense is that our players have just not as good/experienced as most of our opponents and we're young and make bone-headed errors.

17 minutes ago, Bledred said:

Your telling me that NU and OSU (and maybe MU) were the sole dissenters to starting a late football season in the B1G last year?  As Stalin correctly said:  it is not important who votes, but who counts the votes.

Basically every Big Ten president except ours and OSU's came out in full support of the decision because it wasn't Warren's decision, it was theirs.Some of you guys have created a boogeyman out of a middle manager.

1 hour ago, Archy1221 said:

Seems like a conference realignment discussion not just a football discussion.  Getting the Kansas basketball property would justify bringing a s#!tty football program into the mix.  

Basketball isn't nearly as monetarily profitable as football. Kansas' football team brought in more money for the university than its basketball team in the last pre-pandemic year because of the Big 12 TV deal

15 hours ago, Lorewarn said:

 

 

Did we seek them out because they were the guys we wanted above ALL other quarterbacks, or did we seek them out because they were the best we thought we could realistically get? 

 

No way to know for sure, but I feel fairly confident that at least Torres would never be a Nebraska commit if we were winning 11-12 games a year.

Yes, if we were winning 11-12 games a year and were one of the very best programs in the country we would be recruiting a lot better? What are you arguing for here?

With more wins we can definitely pull in some more top 100 four-star guys and maybe be a consistent top 15 recruiting school, but without a natural recruiting base this is always going to be primarily be a scout-and-develop program that's heavily dependent on finding under-the-radar guys. The staff evaluated everyone they thought they had a realistic chance at and chose the best one. I think there's some writing on the wall that we chose Torres over four star MJ Morris and higher-rated AJ Bianco. I think it's inarguable recruiting has tailed off a little this year because of the lack of wins (I would also argue not being able to get anyone on visits until a month ago has hurt a lot more), but some of you guys are way overreacting to a slight dip that is easily fixable if the wins come. 

12 hours ago, runningblind said:

Iowa is always tough, but what makes you think this looks like his best team on paper? They have to replace both lines almost entirely and have a new O line coach this year.

 

 

 

Also, for anyone talking about purely star rankings on the roster,  here:

 

https://247sports.com/Season/2020-Football/CollegeTeamTalentComposite/?Conference=Big-Ten

 

2021 isn't updated yet so we've lost a couple 4 stars and added a 5. Lower than Michigan,  higher than Wisconsin and much higher than Minny or Iowa.  Highest in the west. We are doing less with more,  like we have for a long time.  Other teams (NW, Iowa, Indiana) punch way above their rankings.

Connelly is projecting them 16th, which would be Ferentz's third- or fourth-best team.

36 minutes ago, Husker in WI said:

 

Not to mention we win Minnesota if AM doesn't reaggravate his shoulder OR we had a competent passer as a backup. AM started 14/17 and then went 2/10, including some missed TDs. I forget exactly when in the second half he reinjured it, but coaches might have pulled him if McCaffrey hadn't gone 0/2 with a pick when he had to jump in early. This is on the coaches, but seems like a lot of the gameplan involved some shots to Wan'Dale on an LB and once we were down to AM with a bum shoulder and McCaffrey with a noodle arm, we were in trouble.

Also McCaffrey only had to come into the game because of an equipment thing with Adrian and immediately tossed a pick. No excuse for not winning but that was a weird, fluky game. 

Maybe I'm in the minority here but I think we would have handily beat Illinois last year if AM is starting. Receivers were running wide open downfield all day and McCaffrey was incapable of getting them the ball. Eventually Illinois figured that out and sat on everything short. AM came in and we went right down the field and scored. Defense didn't look good either but it was on the field a ton because of the turnovers. If we show up I'm not super worried about that game (though they are certainly capable of beating us if we play poorly as last year showed).

1 hour ago, ColoradoHusk said:

So, 3-4 games which you count as wins, the odds have near 50% win probability? That’s a tall order to win that many 50-50 games. 

Yeah it'd be cool if we just won every toss-up game we played but that's not realistic. So the schedule is as tough as it seems to me. 

And I think people are really underestimating how tough @ Minnesota and the Iowa game will be. I know we've played Iowa close the past few years but on paper this looks like one of Ferentz's best teams so just shrug them off at your own risk.

11 minutes ago, Archy1221 said:

Looks like you really don’t understand much once again. I’ve stated all who rioted at the Capital should be punished.   At what point was our Democracy in question that day?  When were you afraid we would under the control of those couple hundred people for the coming future?  We’re you getting your Red Dawn face on in case you had to fight back against the rioters in those coming weeks?   

I can't speak for others, but personally when an inflamed mob (some of whom were carrying assault rifles and zip ties and planted pipe bombs) broke into the U.S. Capitol by force in an attempt to circumvent regular government proceedings I was very concerned for the continuation of our government. Maybe not everyone who broke in that day was serious but generally I think we should react and be concerned by coup attempts, even if some of the people doing them were wearing funny hats! But you do you.

Based on the win probabilities we have about a 37 percent chance to beat all four of Illinois, Northwestern, Buffalo, and MSU to get to 5-1. Seems like what happens in these four games is going to be the key to our season. Win them all and eight wins are on the table. Drop one or two and you're flirting with bowl eligibility.  

Just now, Hilltop said:

I get you but he is right.  So much more goes into it- right team, right position, win loss record, media, etc...  It is widely thought, even outside of Nebraska, that Suh was the best player the year he should have won it.  I think it's more of a popularity contest than a true vote for who is the best based on individual merits alone.  

I completely agree it is a narrative-based award but I assumed all the narrative stuff was included when we're discussing someone's "college career". The suggestion here seemed to be that Crouch's Heisman is somehow lesser because he didn't go on to NFL success as other winners did. Maybe I'm misunderstanding Loewarn and if I am my bad. 

I know this is a few days late, but, man, Marlon Lucky would have absolutely killed in the spread offense era. He would have been great in Frost's offense. Feels like he was ahead of his time.

8 hours ago, Lorewarn said:

 

 

No it's not.

Damn I forgot that they wait until all the players have finished their NFL careers before they award the Heisman so that they can evaluate those, too. 

Personally I think it's cool a player on my team won the Heisman. I was 9 years old when Crouch won and I though he ruled and was the coolest person alive. If people want to be upset one of our players won an award over Rex Grossman or Ken Dorsey I guess that's a thing you can think but I truly couldn't care less.

1 hour ago, Husker03 said:

Tell you what, I think that more and more moving forward this is all moot. People are being conditioned to not want to go out and do things as much anyway.  Door dash, Amazon, remote work on the increase, etc, we are becoming a society of homebodies.  I think all events are going to struggle more and more moving forward as more  people who have gotten used to rarely having to go out to get things they want/need become a larger and larger portion of the population in general. 

Those are real trends but watching the game in someone's basement is never going to be as fun/memorable as going to the stadium to watch in person.

35 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

We're recruiting at a top-20/top-30 level. We're getting top-50 results. That's a huge problem. 

 

We have a mental check-out game every season, and in bad seasons two or three. That's been going on for 20 years through five different regimes.

I mean to a certain extent that's just what you get in a sport played by 18-21 year-olds. Every school has check-out games; Alabama, Wisconsin, Iowa. They just usually have the talent or depth to withstand them, which we haven't recently. 

https://twitter.com/mikegolicjr/status/1417155660345749508?s=20

58 minutes ago, Lorewarn said:

The one good point I saw made in the article is that the rest of the conference has gotten a lot more competitive since it did when we joined. The floor has risen considerably for a number of programs while ours has dropped out.

 

We're also trying to find firm footing in a division marked by stability, and consistency and momentum. Iowa/Wisconsin have decades long identities and approach and personnel while we seem to hit the reset button every few years.

The last 5 years have been the worst five of our modern era and we're playing in a division with three of the teams on historic all-time stretches in their programs' histories running development systems that have been entrenched for 15+ years. This isn't always going to hold true. It would be nice if national media people had enough context to not write short-sighted stuff about how NU and Purdue are the same now but I guess it comes with having our recent record.