Nebraska55fan

Yes, the line doesnt do AM many favors. But AM has to get rid of the ball in reasonable amount of time. Here right at the end of the first- the pocket is pretty clean. The deep route he is looking for is covered and there is 6' 8" Austin Allen coming across with a clear line of sight on a 3rd and 8. Hit that in stride and its a first down. Instead AM gets happy feet, doesnt throw and gets sacked. So now we have to punt- give MSU short field from their 45- they SCORE>

Does he have a "last last last great adventure" or "I'm adding to my retirement bankroll" in him? Sure for any sucker that will pony up and pay him like we did

Very true and Coach Chins has said he wants to be a HC. Expect an AAC or Conference USA team to come calling soon. They always seem to have openings. Then we would be left with our Offense and Special Teams. Not a pretty picture. If he does go, PLEASE PLEASE take Verduzco and Austin with.

We would break almost every drill into groups- competitions. When doing fit and freeze offensive team reps- we kept track of how many perfect plays in a row- competing against yourself. Positive reinforcement is great- has to be the majority of your communication with players. However some negative seems to work as well. I'm hoping Coach Frost comes off of his "no fear of failure" thing. When X was hurting us we would work the heck out of it- if that wasn't working we would try something else. One year it was fumbles- any time the ball would end up on the ground- everyone would take a short lap, including the coaches. Every player, didn't matter if you were in or not- It worked.

Wouldn't it be wiser to just have Martinez drop real deep and toss a high lob inside the 10 with our receivers only role- tackle whoever intercepts? Worked against Oklahoma

With an Aussie kicker who arguably knew nothing about football in camp- did he really understand the implication of kicking the ball to the wrong side of the field? We don't have a Special Teams coach- do we really know how much this has been practiced, taught correctly etc? With our team struggling even to not kick it out of bounds further than 7 and 29 yards on a straight kick- does it make sense to attempt a more difficult kick with a kicker who is really new to the game?

Minnesota under Fleck is 28-21 In the previous 49 games- before Fleck got to Minnesota- Minnesota was 28-21. Jerry Kill was a very good coach. PJ isn't bad either- but it isn't like he turned them around. Jerry K had already done that.

Yes, good catch. I was going to talk about that later today. Great coaching by MSU on this and reason why they averaged 56 yards per punt. Typical teams will try and get good hang time of 4 seconds or so- so their tacklers can get in position to make the tackle. Higher punts mean shorter punts. But since our punt return team is so bloody awful and opponents know we wont field many punts- opponents just do the low trajectory long punt. Opponents don't need to have their defenders downfield to tackle- since they know we aren't going to field many punts. Brilliant strategy to take advantage of our ineptness. I'm guessing everyone else does this from here on out- Northwestern has a pretty sharp coaching staff- they will do the same.

It's interesting the punting and kicking issues. I like to watch a variety of High School football games- lots of Class B games. Nearly every week I seem to be able to see punters who are kicking well and kickers hitting it to the endzone. A few weeks back I went to watch a neighbors youth game- he coaches, has a son on the team- been bugging me to come. At halftime some kids were out on the field throwing and kicking. Maybe 15-16 year olds. Punting high 40 yard kicks, making lots of field goals. I just don't get why we struggle so much with this.

Correct And we have what 4 Four Star players on the Oline? Just sayin. Weve been hearing for 2 years that they were going to be the strength of our team.

Most close games come down to a handful of plays. Thats always the case in football. Interestingly enough most of the teams that we lose to in these situations aren't making the same mistakes or a similar number of like mistakes. It's systemic- the "no fear of failure" culture taken to the extreme. And remember that statistically over the last 4 years we are near the bottom in winning the turnover battle, special teams effectiveness, penalties. So its not an unlucky break- its cultural- systemic. I did see Coach Frost jawing a bit at one of our Olinemen after an offsides so he may be coming off that a bit one would hope.

12 Wins in 4 years so far. So that's 3 wins per year and we've only played 5 games this season as of today.

WHo on this board wouldn't trade finishing 30th in Special Teams vs LAST which is where we are now in exchange for firing Verduzco? The reason some of us weren't happy with Read was that he came with Riley and doubled his salary. Word was he was on the golf course during the later part of practices. He is one of those coaching "insiders" coached for dad for 10 years, then LOTS of 1 year and fired stints before latching onto Riley and his retirement fund building "last adventure" here in Lincoln. Bruce is now coaching Special Teams for about 1/10 his salary here at a Junior College somewhere. The Real market rate when you run out of friends who have jobs or desperate coaches you find in the hotel bar at coaching clinics.

We learned THIS familiar face is a pretty good Special Teams coach. Ross Els Everyone I know that played for him at Hastings or Nebraska loved the guy. https://msuspartans.com/staff-directory/ross-els/584

Is it OK to say OU probably isnt that good? I know that some of us that thought that may be the case got blasted for it. OU struggled with Tulane. Tulane is getting BLASTED- they are not very good at all. OU beat West Virginia 16-13. Maryland beat WV by more than that. I liked how we played minus the Special Teams and miscues on offense- but lets be real OU is not a legit #3-4 team in the country.

Read was one of "those" guys. Not a great coach, not a good coach, but not a terrible coach. He- like Mike Riley is well liked, has LOTS of connections. They always find jobs- usually short term ones where the team just needs a body. His only long tenure was his first job working for his dad. LOTS of 1 year gigs. Then he latches onto SMilin Mike at a coaches clinic and is with him at OSU and Nebraska. The problem people here had with him- is he was Mike Rileys buddy and doubled his salary by coming here. Not a fan of the check cashing - retirement fund piling scheme Smilin Mike put on here for his "last adventure". Bringing your buddy along to cash in on the big $$ with mediocre results just didn't sit well with many. He wasn't awful, but our Special Teams were even better before him- Bo coached them himself. He's now coaching Special Teams in Junior College ball- if that gives you any idea what is market value really is in a TRUE open market situation.

When it comes to Special Teams- failures. I've seen this before. Mostly from teams that think they can outscore and outscheme their opponents on offense. Usually coached by an offensive minded coach with lots of plays, lots of nuances that just eats up all the practice time. This could be part of the issue. HOW COULD IT NOT BE FOUR YEARS OF THIS CRAP Since both offensive and defensive players play on Special Teams- any investment in Special Teams- coaching, reps, implementation- eats into that valuable Offensive Practice time. Teams like this were often times really bad in Special Teams, that impacted how we played them. Onside Kicks, Fake Punts were in order. They would usually blow up like we do- missed PATS, no Field Goal game, punting game would stink etc Just think about some great Special Teams teams like K- State under Snyder. They knew they werent going to steam roll anyone on offense- they were great at Special Teams. Same for Iowa- yeach.

Special Teams- Scott Frost's kryptonite it seems. The gift that keeps on giving. In the punting game alone- NU punted 7 times- averaged about 33 yards. MSU punted six times for an average of 59 yards. So we gave up 124 total yards in the punting game. MSU had 3 Kickoff Returns for 84 yards. If you combine all the return yardage MSU outgained NU by 320 yards. So the big advantage we had thanks to our great defense was totally negated by our awful special teams and struggling offense. I'm saying once again- our Special Teams issues are STRUCTURAL> We struggle with all 6 aspects of Special Teams. YOu can SAY you are focusing on Special Teams- but if you don't know the properly implement schemes, efficient scouting and game planning or how to effectively teach and communicate effectively to your players, it's going to fail. I don't think they are devoting the time, they can't be. If they are that's bad too- they can't coach it. Not sure why when we have trouble kicking ANY kind of punt- 7 yard shank, 29 yard shank etc- why would we attempt a directional kick with less than 4 minutes left in the game? We were supposed to kick right- we went left- not sure if this was communication error or player error. MSU kicking off from their 20- thanks to penalty. We return it to what the 17? Please for the sake of all things holy- Just fair catch everything until we hire a Special Teams Coach.

It's interesting to see. I have thoughts on how well kids will or won't do- but I don't root that they do poorly. However- the data might say something about the NU program. If a player does well- is that evidence that we made a mistake? Maybe he should have played more. Maybe we didn't manage the relationship well. Maybe they got better development once they left? If we have a lot of these, that's not a good sign, we don't seem to have a bunch of these. If a player didn't do well after he transferred- maybe he wasn't a Power 5 level athlete to begin with or wasn't developed well. Or he had an injury or situation that couldn't be overcome, even in a different environment. A mixed bag of signals- not all bad.

What we learned? The defense is outstanding- confirmed that. Excellent scheme, game plan, calls and execution. They play well together, swarm. Good block destruction technique and tackling. A. Confirmed Offense is still very spotty. Oline is simply awful. QB has his good moments, (great kid, good citizen we love him blah blah) but he still holds the ball too long, has a tough time finding receivers even when he does have good time and overthows open guys with seemingly easy open sight medium length throws. Oline deserves most of the blame- Martinez is still best option- but still not a very good one- D Special teams confirmed total dumpster fire. Dirk nailed it in his article and this was more of the same. PUnt return for TD. We gave up 24 yards of field position on average in the punting game. We let them return 2 kickoffs for significant yardage. When we returned a kick- they were kicking from their own 20 due to penalty- we only got the ball out to the 17 yard line. YEAH no PATS blocked or missed FGs- so on the special teams side of this we were AWFUL on 4 of them and good on 2 of them Overall score- F- We learned that those making fun of those of us who voiced concerned with the structural issues of our special teams- and suggesting we do something drastic like hiring a special teams coach- owe the board an "I was very wrong" apology

I've been saying for weeks- any enterprising youtube earner needs to string together our special teams snafus together along with some Benny Hill music. Gold- Jerry Gold I'm telling you. Is Americas funniest videos still on? Send it over.

Watch the band marching down into the stadium. Go over to South End and watch them march down the street. North End underneath before the game. Tunnel walk. Walk along the sidelines before the game.

Here you go- using your own post= "With some help from RSS: Keyshawn Green (FAU) is in the portal again but hasn't landed anywhere CJ Smith is still looking for a home Henry Gray (FIU) had one tackle last year. No stats this year. Jaiden Francios (UCF) no stats recorded Miles Jones appears to be out of football Ronald Delaney hasn't played at Toledo Marcus Fleming has played two snaps for Maryland, catching one pass for minus-six yards." Data is pretty clear.

That seems to be what the data says all right.

Well you're wrong again. Most players who transfer to lower levels of competition- IF they were legit Power 5 kids- one would think they would START ahead of the lesser competition that are on their teams right? Most aren't- they aren't even starting. Those playing often times are playing in leagues where the teams are playing against LESSER competition than Power 5- one would think if they were legit Power 5 kids, they would do well. The facts are MOST of them aren't. Most of the thread I started posts are just discussing where the kids that left NU went- not some debate. Sorry- got to run, heading to the game and where I'm from it's rude to be on your phone when you're with your friends.