Husker_x

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.

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.

+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:

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. 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.

Thanks for putting this together. Thank you for putting this board together.

LOL

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.

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.

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.

I liked Shatel's, and he's usually the last one I get to, if there's time.

All of the OWH guys are hitting pretty hard this morning. Sipple is not as direct in saying it, but even he realizes there is no excuse and no explanation for this anymore. It's year seven. Nearly the end of the season––you know, Pelini defenses get better as the season goes along. I hope no one accuses Dirk of playing dirty. They have every right to print the obvious. Edit: Sip is at the LJS. Sorry for the confusion.

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.

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.

LOL. Wasn't he one of the "Don't underestimate Tim Beck" cheerleaders who balked at any skepticism when he was hired? Oh well. Bygones be bygones. For anyone yet to join us in reality, there is no more rope for this staff. If Bo wants another uninspired season in front of a hostile fanbase, at the very least it's housecleaning time on that worthless staff to grant him the privilege. He could have hired a team of fratboys with "How to Coach LittleLeague" pamphlets––which is what this looks like in the offseason as well––and the results could not have been this disastrous. If Bo gets another year based off the W/L record, it's hard to argue the AD made the wrong call. But let's just be real clear about what this means: this team, basically identical, except for Ameer Abdullah. Problem is we are not representative of the Husker fan base. My FB feed has people "well it was snowing", and "Cant blame Bo, the kids didn't perform". They either cant or wont see a problem, that is a large chunk of Husker Nation. EDIT: A lot of people just dont give a crap any more. once the rout was on how many just turned the channel? I consider this one of the rare times where I'm comforted by the fact that our opinion doesn't really matter. It's the people who pay the big bucks that will pony up or withdraw their generous donations from the university. The only thing the fanbase can do, along with the media, is turn up the heat. And it's time. Pelini has had a long leash and has failed in every stage of coaching from management to hiring to personnel decisions to preparation to in-game adjustments. There's nothing left for him to do any worse than he is doing, and no Ameericling McN. State and drubbing Rutgers does not cancel out getting shellacked every game against even or better talent.

+1, but hindsight remains 20/20. Little by little all of the little variables and possible explanations for these performances have been cancelled out. It's not the conference. It's not the quarterback situation. It's not the overall talent or something specific like having Cam Meredith playing DT in the B1G CCG. It's not even really the coordinators, although I think Tim Beck's weak-sauce offensive philosophy plays right into the general fragility of Pelini's defense. All of these things have been given due consideration. I threw around words like "systemic issues" in the past. I thought maybe this year with a different offensive approach and a new quarterback would find our way past a few of them, but it's not to be. It was just more BS from the spin room in Lincoln. Now there is only one remaining link between all of these avalanche losses: Bo Pelini.

I have trouble with this logic as well. These blowout losses have been happening repeatedly since Bo got here. We play in a weak division of a weak conference. If we were anywhere else––anywhere else––we would likely have pulled the plug on this first-timer HC and his merry band of incompetents. There is no reason to think that this team minus Abdullah and Gregory (who is long gone now if he wasn't already) is going to accomplish something the current team was unable to. Right now the worse part for me is anticipating the Fluffy Puff Spring season. Staring at graphics like this:

This was the performance we got off a bi-week. Two weeks we "prepared" to have the NCAA single-season record shattered against this defense, and to watch Beck's full-retard offensive "system" completely shut down yet again.