Guy Chamberlin

After Pelini was fired, Nebraska treated the 2014 USC Holiday Bowl as a test run for a high octane tempo offense. It worked pretty well as I recall, although the Husker defense couldn't cover its end. If Frost wanted to roll out a new look, some new players, and even a bit of a gamble for either Rutgers or a self-selecting bowl game, I might get a lot more interested. Getting more reps doing things that clearly aren't working doesn't help the team and isn't fun to watch.

Agree. Boston College had a legitimate 11 game winning season and the players voted to opt out of a guaranteed bowl game to spend December with their families. Apparently there was a big cheer when the vote was cast. Kansas State, Louisville, Va. Tech, Stanford, Pittsburgh and Virginia have opted out, too. Imagine committing to the practices, not seeing your family over the holidays, and having the game called off a couple days before kick-off. Yay. I get the supposedly irreplaceable value of game situation reps, but if there's the slightest remaining hint that a bowl game is the reward for a regular season, I'd opt out as a matter of pride.

I was trying to think of a Nebraska football game that I was less interested in watching than this one. Closest I could come up with was the Holiday Bowl rematch with Washington in 2010, a no-win situation to cap a brutally disappointing season. But of course I watched that game. And I guess I'll watch Rutgers, too.

Will there be a 2020 Football Season? Someone should start a thread.

That's perfect weather for long lateral pass plays behind the line of scrimmage.

Ah. I see what you mean. I think we would have gotten Michigan if we'd beaten Minnesota. A team we beat (Purdue) gets to play a red hot Indiana team. That could have been us! It's a mess. The Big 10s only obligation is to get out of the season alive, squeezing in one extra game that is literally meaningless. If the Big gave Nebraska a marquee match-up, would we consider that respect or punishment?

Lining the two divisions up against each other in descending order is one of the few things the Big 10 got right. It's not the conference's fault that we earned Rutgers.

That's what I'm thinking. I'm imagining that without football to watch in 2020, the speculation about Nebraska's desire to play, Frost's plans for a breakout Season Three, and a Big 10 revenge scenario would have made the long long off-season insufferable in a different way than what's in store. There might be a case that a non-COVID season with a non-conference schedule would have played out slightly differently in Nebraska's favor. But let's face it: the Huskers were a lot healthier than a lot of teams, and avoided Cincinnati. Dominoes may have fallen differently in 2018 with the Akron cancellation, but I'm guessing we still end up in roughly the same place. So rather than no season and nothing learned, will 2020 teach Frost what he needs to know to right the ship we thought was getting righted? Win, lose, or rout, I can't imagine learning anything useful from the Rutgers game.

What if the season had remained cancelled? What if we never saw this 2-5 team, and only imagined the progress Frost would have made with his young players?

In fairness, UCF had established a pretty solid program well before Frost. George O'Leary had 7 bowl games and 6 division or conference championships between 2005 and 2015. UCF was 12-1 in in 2013 and 9-4 in 2014 before the winless season that brought Frost to the program.

Do you know what's harder than finding a quarterback who can hit open receivers? Finding a quarterback, multiple running backs and an offensive line than can successfully execute the triple-option, an offense that's probably a lot more precision and high-risk than you remember. Fun fact: "triple option" is two words.

Certainly some truth to this. I generally just watch the games and avoid the game threads. The announcers and analysts never bother me and whatever blown calls the refs make, they never seem one-sided or excuse the team's performance a bit. Then I check in on HuskerBoard and learn that the rest of the world wants to s#!t on Nebraska for reasons that make no sense. Even calling Nebraska the "villain" exaggerates our influence. Nobody is afraid of us. We're not the victim, either. We fought for the right to play football this year and a lot of people appreciated it on behalf of the sport. It wasn't really surprising that we didn't compete for the division. We weren't expected to. When Nebraska starts winning again, we'll be a good story.

The saddest part? I end up becoming a fan of every team we lose to. Every opponent seems scrappy, opportunistic, motivated and able to step up and close the deal in the fourth quarter. When I wish we were Illinois or Minnesota, something's really wrong.

We weren't the villains. Not then. Not now. We just didn't have much of a team this year. If the Huskers had come out on fire and been any kind of factor in the Big 10, we would have been a feelgood story and the Big 10 would have welcomed it, like they did Indiana. If anything the media has been nicer to Nebraska than our own fans. Like it or not, the unexpected failure of Scott Frost's return to Nebraska is a story. Otherwise there's not much reason to talk about Nebraska at all.

I think we can put the talent issue to bed. This is a team that plays inconsistently in the first half, then plays even worse in the second half. Every game. That's 100% on coaching. I still think he gets two more years, but today is the first time the talk of firing Scott Frost doesn't feel like impatient Husker fans over-reacting.

The truth is, nobody else cares about this game. The announcers are paid to pretend. The analysts have more important teams to analyze.

So if millions of people aren't willing to get the vaccine, that would alleviate the potential shortage for people who want to get the vaccine. Ignoring the children for a moment: If grown adults refuse the vaccine, they would only be infecting fellow grown-ups that refuse the vaccine, and we get a Darwinian win/win out of this. Even as I type that, I'm certain I'm overlooking a crucial aspect of epidemiology. And of course the kids are the worst part. States and school districts will want to get involved, arguing both public health and child endangerment, and the anti-vax movement will be totally galvanized by the moment.

That was always my assumption. So it's weird that that the media parses the daily rise and fall without acknowledging this built-in inaccuracy. I follow Worldometers, and find many days where Nebraska doesn't even list new cases or deaths. Those numbers just show up in the running totals at the beginning of the next day. A couple other small states do this periodically, but it appears to be a decision by the state when and if to report daily numbers. Doesn't seem to be conspiratorial, but to my eye Nebraska jumped up to 1,200+ deaths without much warning.

The number of people getting a flu vaccine this year more than doubled over last year, clearly attributable to coronavirus concerns. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/flu-shot-rates-increasing-year-as-experts-worry-double-whammy-covid-19-season I've never doubted that getting my flu shot was a good idea, but I typically space it off until it's too late in the season. That didn't happen this year.

They must really think they’ll miss Bateman. Tanner Morgan is a shell without all those dudes he had before. Put Cam on Autman-Bell. Stack the box for Ibrahim.

This reminds me of something I noticed early in the pandemic, which has never changed. Numbers go down over the weekend. Pick back up a tick on Monday. Then crest over the mid-week. It happens every week. This would seem to have nothing to do with fluctuations in the virus and everything to do with how medical facilities and states report their data.

Your post suggested you thought people (liberals) should have been equally upset with the Stone arrest, and I just want you to admit they're not equal situations at all.

Again, like everything, there's a tiny bit of nuance here. The arrest of Roger Stone was needlessly dramatic and designed for the cameras, which were notified and waiting. But lying to the FBI and a lifetime of creating professional disinformation contains a real crime and a notorious a$$h@!e. A data scientist accused of insubordination for using an office computer to encourage whistle blowers on behalf of public safety doesn't rise to the same level. Fun fact: Roger Stone has never denied that he lies, slanders, and creates political chaos. He's actually quite proud of it.

That was a CNN exclusive, right? So Drew Holden is using CNN reporting to bolster his argument? Interesting. Of course the news media reported all kinds of skepticism regarding China's response and culpability from the very beginning, and this merely confirms they were right. You may be mistaking the "praise and defense" for the fact that China's incredibly strict lockdown actually was successful, and the same news media accurately reported that those same measures wouldn't go over well in America. Don't know where you get the idea that liberals trust China, a country without a free press. As far as being apologists, I think at some stage around March when the coronavirus was going global, some folks thought calling it "the China Virus" or "The Kung Flu" had a xenophobic edge that didn't really help the cause moving forward.

Decision making also means making quick decisions whether to run, pass, or scramble, how long to wait for the primary receiver to get separation, and when to kill a play that isn't working rather than force a play and risk a turnover. I get what you're saying about impatient fans, but as mentioned Scott Frost and Adrian Martinez himself acknowledged that Adrian lost some of his confidence last year, and it appeared to be bleeding into his Junior season. If you want to look at it critically, Frost essentially platooned both quarterbacks to start the season. Both were good runners -- but McCaffrey was a little better. Both were inconsistent passers, but Adrian was a little more consistent. In Frost's tempo offense, McCaffrey was a little quicker getting the team to the line and executing the bread & butter plays --- that's from Frost himself, not armchair Husker fans Given the chance to start against Penn State, McCaffrey played well enough to win the game, a performance pretty similar to a Martinez performance. Both QBs often missed seeing wide open receivers, and neither did a good job of getting the WRs involved. McCaffrey then had a meltdown performance against Illinois -- Martinez has had those, too --- at which point Frost turned to back to his Junior QB over his Freshman QB. Martinez responded with a good statistical game against Iowa, but a costly turnover. Then followed it up with a highly efficient game against a pretty bad Purdue team. But his confidence is back and that could make a big difference going forward. Not sure why you're quick to dismiss the mental game, or simply throw the receivers under the bus. . Except for the predictable one series package Frost gave McCaffrey against Purdue, McCaffrey has run the same offense as Martinez. The QB draw is a designed play for both QBs, but McCaffrey runs it slightly better, so he runs it more often. Luke has only 22 fewer pass attempts than Martinez. That's not a wildcat. The difference between Martinez and McCaffrey isn't night and day. It's more dawn and day. As mentioned previously, we can congratulate Adrian without s#!tting on Luke quite so much.