Husker_x

So Minny runs something along the lines of my dream offense.

Oh dear.

Man up D. This is what it'll look like all day.

Good opening drive, and good on Tommy for avoiding the sack for the long bomb.

Cold, wet, and windy, Sam McKewon tweets.

Perfect day for four-wide and a lot of downfield passes. Take what the defense gives you, Beck. Take what the defense gives you.

I read the whole article at ljs. Price mentioned the defensive shifts, and the blitzing from different angles.

 

It made me think of an idea --- Huddle, call a play, come to the line and snap the ball. Don't stand there moving the back to the right or left, waiting for the OC to read the D, waggle in a new play only to see the D shift into something different as the play clock ticks down.

 

Just sayin'...

This, this, and more this.

The guy who makes ~3/4 of a million dollars every single year to field this garbage cannot for whatever reason understand the beautiful simplicity of this idea. The offense knows where they're going before the ball is snapped. It's the element of surprise, and it's a huge advantage. What we do––apparently––is forfeit this so we can run a no-huddle clock-draining offense that can barely get set before the ball is snapped. If we execute the snap without dropping it twice in a game, or without drawing a procedure penalty, that is our new benchmark for success.

Meanwhile on defense, how many games do we have to watch guys looking around and flapping their hands literally as the ball is being snapped? I'm not a football expert, but if David Santos is looking sideways at Trevor Roach, or backward at Corey Cooper, I can imagine how this might lead to him getting out of position.

This is in a way one of the strongest arguments for coaching change.

Who in their right mind would attend the spring game? Who's going to read Sam or Steve or Dirk's spring articles? Who's going to tune into Sharp and Benning or USC? I'm serious. What would be the point? To hear nine months of "erg herm––well" rationalizations about why we should expect anything at all out of next season?

Count me out. I got a stack of books a hundred deep I've been meaning to get to. I'll always be a fan, but I can't cry on cue, and I can't make myself not know what I know about our prospects.

Barring some miraculous end to the season, what does Bo––or anyone who makes coin hawking the program in some way––have left to sell?

 

John Gaskins

@937JohnGaskins

 

Bell: #Huskers fans who "post on their boards... are same people who come up & slap your hand & ask you take a picture with their son."

 

KB: "Attack me, whatever. It's when u talk about my head man. I don't like it when ppl talk about Bo. Thats what I get angry about" #Huskers

 

KB: #Huskers fans criticizing him on twitter "care & they want us to win as much as anybody else" but also want pics & autographs in person

 

KB: "I understand how u want to reach out to an athlete but shoot, I like the Denver Broncos. They haven't played well this week..."#Huskers

 

Bell cont'd being fan of struggling Broncos "...and I'm not shooting tweets at anybody. But, different strokes for different folks" #Huskers

 

Bell on Bo: "Anybody that says he needs to go is crazy. It's literally insane." #Huskers

 

More Bell on Bo: "If 9 wins, 10 wins isn't good enough for you, I don't know who you should be a fan of." #Huskers #GBR

 

Bell: "Honestly, the guy can't do much more but win. Obviously we want conference championships but sometimes it's not in the cards"#Huskers

 

KB: "Its not easy to come out & win every single week. We dropped a big one last week. We dropped big ones in the past too, but..."#Huskers

 

Bell: "...they're people, these coaches. They have a family. They have a wife & kids they take care of & put food on the table for" #Huskers

 

KB: "You want to get rid of them, take away their job b/c you can't watch your team win a championship? Give me a break. Its absurd"#Huskers

 

Bell: "It's like me telling the mailman since he missed my mail, or dropped one in the snow, he should be fired. It blows my mind." #Huskers

 

KB: Not a big deal when #Huskers fans criticize him but "to go after my teammates or my coach, unless u can do better, I wldnt say anything"

 

My cousin said this after the game Saturday and I couldn't have said it any better: Whether or not I can or cannot do the job better than Bo does not apply here at all. It isn't my job, however it is his job. As with all jobs, they come with expectations that are to be met or the pay and work stops. The question is - are expectations being met?

 

It's like watching an architect build a building that constantly falls down. Do I need to build it myself to prove that it shouldn't look like a pile of rubble?

Also, I don't often get all scriptural on here, but Kenny's comments reminded me of this little chestnut:

 

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.

1 Corinthians. That's in the Bible.

 

Kenny can go ahead and become that man and stop reasoning like a child any time now. And mothball his twitter account until then.

That's scripture.

So I just sort of got caught up on the news of the day. Apparently after having its season crushed, our resilient team has two defensive captains wearing different colored jerseys, and Kenny Bell is actually going out of his way to stir up his Twitter account and antagonize the fanbase.

Has anyone seen Minnesota play lately?

Oh dear Lord.

It is possible for Bo to win enough to save his job––though I put little stock in beating our next two opponents. It is impossible for Bo to win enough to persuade any thinking person that the status quo is acceptable regarding that overpaid, underachieving staff.

Beating mediocre teams with mediocre talent is not the standard here. Bo seems to have forgotten that, along with how to coach defense and stop the run.

That's some team defense we got there.

Seriously, this has gotten absurd. Save these players from this staff.

 

So isn't the question rather simple? Can Nebraska football get to the level we all want quicker

 

 

 

This isn't a race; it's not a matter of speed.

 

 

It's a matter of how high up on the mountain we spend the majority of our time. In a perfect world you would be on the peak at all times, and the goal is to spend as much time as possible as high as possible.

 

Some coaches get to the top faster than anyone else but then fall down immediately, but right now we're just chilling a few hundred feet off of base camp.

 

And looking at a chasm below us. Can somebody please explain to me how they think next season is going to be better than this one without Ameer or Randy? Same coaches, same scheme, lesser players.

What irks me the most about the OP's quote is that it's factually untrue. Is Bo an idiot, or is he being deliberately ignorant?

Yes, dingus, giving up the most rushing yards a single player has ever achieved in the history of the game DOES ONLY HAPPEN TO YOU. It doesn't happen to Iowa. It doesn't happen to Iowa State. It doesn't happen to Purdue, Minnesota, or Northwestern. And it sure as hell doesn't happen to Wisconsin, who has made you their bitch two times in two games on national freakin' TV.

I thought I was waaaay past irritated or angry, but when you hear rationalizing idiocy like that coming out of your defensive-guru HC's mouth, it's like a needle prick to the brain.

It ain't just Wisconsin. Take any team with equal talent and there is an overwhelming likelihood we will be flat out-coached, and that's the best case scenario. More likely we will watch a meltdown. Our offense has been a joke since Joe Ganz moved from the huddle to the sidelines. Forget the coordinator decisions; Pelini's own defenses have achieved statistical failures beyond even Kevin Cosgrove's. The superficial glimmer of the nine win season becomes more and more laughable every time it's trotted out. Bo simply has no excuse in year seven to field teams this incompetent.

People have always been hard on Dirk because he has been no Bo fan. But Dirk has always been that guy that will tell you what you need to hear, rather than what you want to hear.

 

As opposed to a guy like Sipple who befriends coaches and writes stories based off those friendships, Dirk shoots straight from the hip. Whether you agree or disagree, you at least have to respect it.

+1

I never thought any of the controversies surrounding him––especially in retrospect––turned out to be radically off base (I'm thinking of the undying glory Taylor Martinez now lives with, specifically).

What Dirk wrote here is a skeptic's honest assessment of what this loss meant. The part the OP quoted is an objective fact. With Melvin Gordon breaking the NCAA rushing record on that defense's ass, this probably is the single worst loss in the Pelini era, and arguably Nebraska history. Pelini has made a habit of collecting these kind of trophies.

I especially liked this bit of the column:

 

“At the end of the day, in this world, in this profession, I point the thumb,” Pelini said. “I take responsibility for this football team and how we played. It wasn’t good enough.”

 

That explanation, which Pelini has delivered almost verbatim after big losses, plays well with the accountability crowd. But it doesn’t actually fix anything. Pelini doesn’t seem to know how.

Told ya. This column and Lee's both laid the hammer down. If we drop the Minnesota game, it's going to get unseasonably warm under a lot of seats in Lincoln.

It did seem like the clock was constantly getting down to 1-5 seconds and TA was changing things at the line. I'd have to know more about what specifically he is doing and why, but we're both a) not huddling, and b) watching the play clock drain to nothing to make all of these checks.

He's not as strident as the guys from the Herald, but Sip does have his own way of landing a blow. His column overloads with facts and setting, seemingly goes out of its way not to say it directly, but there it is between the lines somewhere.

 

A loss such as Saturday's gives you pause. I'm guessing it will give Nebraska athletic director Shawn Eichorst plenty to think about on the long ride home — none of it pleasant.

I'm sure Eichorst has a lot of unpleasant things to think about and a few even more unpleasant conversations ahead of him. What he lacks is a lot of time to stew. Nebraska has a date with another power running team in Minnesota, an outfit which two weeks ago dismantled Iowa (say what you will about Kirk Ferentz; his teams rarely get blown out), and last week took the Urban Meyer-led East Division frontrunner into the fourth quarter. After that, it's a short week and a road game against an Iowa team that bounced back from their drubbing, and would feel like Christmas came early if they could pound one more nail in Nebraska's season.

Papuchis was right about next week. We will find out a lot. If that salty Minnesota squad goes up two scores before the half, the boo birds are going to start filling their lungs. If the game looks remotely like yesterday's, Eichorst may well have his decision made for him.

This is going to be a weird week.

 

You can vote with your pocketbook. You can vote with your feet. Or thanks to the design of Huskerboard, you can just plain vote.

 

Here it is, as simple as I could think to make it.

Thanks for putting this together.

 

Thank you for putting this board together.

I think it was the dancing and the singing. How nice that our arrival could herald the best day in the history of Madison.

 

I suspect that tomorrow the governor will stand at a crowded square in the center of the city and declare November 15th "The funnest day in the history of Madison" much like the mayor of Springfield in The Simpsons.

 

This is not exaggeration. I used to live in Madison and can't imagine anything that would be more significant in the 3000 year history of the city, including pre-tribal times, Indian princes and Cro-Magnon ancestry.

LOL

 

 

Do we sub players much on defense? It seemed we were in our base 4-3 most of the night. I didn't see a lot of different faces out there.

 

Two problems here. One: Lack of depth. Same issue we've always had every year on and on.......problem is, Wisconsin doesn't stray from what they do. They will run it at you over and over with those big boys up front. You may stop them in the beginning with ultra talented dudes like Collins, Valentine, Gregory and McMullen, heck we saw the success early. Over time these guys wear down.

 

Which brings me to my second issue with this. A team that prides itself on solid defense but doesn't have a lot of rotation or depth, should that team be running a hurry up offense? Why are we in such a hurry to get our defense back on the field when they are exhausted? Sure, you'd expect the offense to pick up some first downs and stay on the field a bit longer, but what about when that's not happening? Is there any thought to helping the defensive players out a bit by slowing down the offense for a few series at least. Hell, maybe it helps the offense get back on their feet a bit by slowing down and letting the game come back into focus for a minute.

 

We seem like we just keep going and going with the same routine, no matter how the game is going or changing. Why do we do this?

 

How about when you go up 17-3 against an opponent that is self-destructing and you are expecting the ball back to start the second half? Bo's not a big picture guy. Maybe he needs help. This is something any idiot with a playstation can figure out.

 

Beck's offense––or whatever you call that mess––does nothing to compliment what Bo is doing on the defensive side of the ball. And that's the fault of no one but Bo Pelni. He hired the clown. He kept the clown in his employ. Given the chance, history predicts Pelini will attempt to keep the clown on the payroll, making a cushy three-quarters of a million dollars to field this garbage for another season.

 

This is why, in your poll, I changed my vote from "Yes, but only with staff changes" to "no." Bo's history of keeping his buddies on payroll and when pressed, hiring idiots, leads me to believe any chance he hires a new, competent staff is next to nil.

 

I haven't voted in my poll, partly because I never want to be the first person to vote in a poll I post, but mostly just because I need time to think. The problem is clear enough. What I don't know is if Bo is going to ever have his Michael Corleone moment: a transformative insight that as a head coach––an executive in this game we so love––you need to be ruthless. Loyalty has bought you an inept offense. You are paying for your friendships in losses and national humiliation(s).

There's also the practical issue of firing a coach who has a shot to win ten regular season games. I can see both sides of it, so for me it's not an easy call.

 

To the OP:

 

Ignore sarcastic quips; if they could write what you did, they would have.

 

The question is whether or not anyone would be responsive to coaching change at this moment. I seriously doubt it. We have one week and then one more short week before an AD would consider making a move. With a chance to finish 10-2 this situation is a lot trickier than Callahan. I'd file it away until then, survey the lay of the land, and hope Eichorst is way ahead of you.

I appreciate the positive reply and generally agree with your outlook on this situation. However, I feel as though waiting to send something until things get worse will inevitably result in hoping for losses so that I feel more confident about mailing something like this in. Also, the letter addresses that the program could look good on paper with a solid record while the true nature of the team (probably more like what we saw yesterday) being less apparent making it just as acceptable to present at 10-2 as it would be at 8-4. Maybe my logic is off; it very well could be!

 

I definitely see where you're coming from. Nebraska fans are really wedged between that rock and that hard place right now. I admit I don't have a good answer.

Do we sub players much on defense? It seemed we were in our base 4-3 most of the night. I didn't see a lot of different faces out there.

 

Two problems here. One: Lack of depth. Same issue we've always had every year on and on.......problem is, Wisconsin doesn't stray from what they do. They will run it at you over and over with those big boys up front. You may stop them in the beginning with ultra talented dudes like Collins, Valentine, Gregory and McMullen, heck we saw the success early. Over time these guys wear down.

 

Which brings me to my second issue with this. A team that prides itself on solid defense but doesn't have a lot of rotation or depth, should that team be running a hurry up offense? Why are we in such a hurry to get our defense back on the field when they are exhausted? Sure, you'd expect the offense to pick up some first downs and stay on the field a bit longer, but what about when that's not happening? Is there any thought to helping the defensive players out a bit by slowing down the offense for a few series at least. Hell, maybe it helps the offense get back on their feet a bit by slowing down and letting the game come back into focus for a minute.

 

We seem like we just keep going and going with the same routine, no matter how the game is going or changing. Why do we do this?

How about when you go up 17-3 against an opponent that is self-destructing and you are expecting the ball back to start the second half? Bo's not a big picture guy. Maybe he needs help. This is something any idiot with a playstation can figure out.

Beck's offense––or whatever you call that mess––does nothing to compliment what Bo is doing on the defensive side of the ball. And that's the fault of no one but Bo Pelni. He hired the clown. He kept the clown in his employ. Given the chance, history predicts Pelini will attempt to keep the clown on the payroll, making a cushy three-quarters of a million dollars to field this garbage for another season.