Guy Chamberlin

True. We were middle of the pack in most categories. But Tommy Armstrong was #4 in Total Offense among all Big 10 players. As a returning starter it's not a bad place to start. It's also not hard to envision a new quarterback entirely. But also not hard to envision Tommy looking better when everything else on the team gets improved, which has to happen, too.

Also, I think it's hard for an offense to have either attitude or identity when its defense is letting the other team run through it. Still say it's more about Team than Scheme.

Armstrong had 145 carries last year. He called his own number quite a bit. Some complained he didn't give to Abdullah enough. If they knew beforehand who was getting the ball, it wasn't really an option, just a fake. I don't remember that insight/complaint being revealed. It's telling if true. I get the Power-I and downhill running approach. Watched it for many years. Nothing against it at all. But it is a six of one, half dozen of another comparison. You can give an RB a lead blocker and a full head of steam, but you're committing to a specific hole you hope to open up in the middle of the line. Spread option forces a defense to move lateral, almost always creating multiple holes, but requiring a good cutback runner and decision maker. The spread option has gained favor for teams with running quarterbacks for obvious reasons. It's tough to defend. I don't see it as more clever or finessy. Just the latest trend. And the Power-I works really well when both RB and FB are dekes, buying time for your drop back passer, already standing seven steps back in the pocket after the play-action fake. That pro-set passer could really help our power running game. I'm all for it. If you study Tom Osborne's offense, you'll see he did a little bit of almost everything, and the Triple Option that won us those NCs had multiple variations of its own, a very high risk formation that required precision execution. We had huge linemen and beat the crap out of teams, but in terms of scheme and play-calling, you could argue that Tom Osborne teams played with a lot of....you know....the "F" word.

You could do worse than Tommy Armstrong. And a lot of Big 10 teams will.

Bo could not have been more clear in his attack on fans, media, state and anyone who ever doubted him than he was after the Ohio State game in 2011, when Nebraska had just staged the biggest comeback in Husker history and all Bo Pelini could do was rage in vindictive self-pity. It became about UNL leadership when UNL leadership finally fired him. Before that, it was about the expectations Nebraska fans put on the well-compensated head coach leading the program they have loyally supported for decades. And before this recent spate of revisionist history, you'd have to conclude that Nebraska fans were more forgiving of Bo Pelini than he probably deserved.

We ran the ball between the tackles. A lot. No idea what games you were watching. I'd like to see a fullback and some multi-back sets myself. I suppose you could call a variety of multi-back sets finesse if you wanted to. They require a lot of timing and execution. The read option itself is no more finesse than Osborne's old Triple Option, which was actually pretty complex and went outside more often than it went between the tackles. Believe it or not, in 20 of 25 of Tom Osborne's seasons, Nebraska's power running game got shut down by good defenses who knew exactly what we were going to do, and had the speed and strength on defense to stop it cold. There are more of those defenses today. It was definitely a thing of beauty when our offensive line could physically dominate lesser teams, and that's still an issue today. If your offensive line can't drive the power running game, you better be multiple. Last year's offense looked damned good in a lot of games. And perhaps at its best in the Holiday Bowl against a talented USC team, the only game Tim Beck coached without Bo Pelini over his shoulder. You bring up attitude, and that's huge. Attitude was a problem on offense, defense and special teams for several years and with different personnel. I don't see it having much to do with offensive scheme, and far more to do with the culture fostered by the head coach and team leaders. Some folks accused the West Coast Offense and the San Francisco 49ers of "finesse" but I'll take those five Super Bowls any day, thanks.

You only have to go back a few months to find a very large contingent of HuskerBoard that simply didn't tolerate this level of Bo-bashing. Even though he was the exact same guy.

Nebraska's offense wasn't a finesse offense. With an OL not up to traditional Nebraska standards, we remained a run-first offense and a pretty successful one. We ran a read option offense with a running quarterback and prolific running backs named Helu, Burkhead and Abdullah. About 40% of the time we passed the ball. No more or less finessey than more successful teams ranked ahead of us. Just less consistent. We dropped the ball a lot, and killed ourselves with mental breakdowns and stupid penalties. Our quarterbacks have been exciting but flawed. Historically, our offense held its own with past Nebraska teams. Historically, our defense was among the worst on record.

I think whenever an interesting conversation breaks out, just let it ride. What else are we gonna do? Not like there aren't plenty of threads slightly more dedicated to football.

Some very talented people know that everyone is expecting them to "be the best they can be" and they really hate that. At some level, they know they're going to disappoint everybody, so they start sabotaging themselves. The actual drug doesn't matter. They can do it without any drug, too. Sometimes the decision to check out is a choice. The marijuana didn't take the drive away, it just made the doing nothing part more palatable, and the food taste better. As mentioned, plenty of successful people smoked pot until they decided not too, and some manage to remain successful while still partaking.

Uh, no Sip. We all saw this coming. Not defending Sipple on balance, but he's right. I remember plenty of skepticism that the Husker's could steal a win at Camp Randall, and lots of folks predicting another humbling, but I don't recall anyone suggesting that game would be as bad or worse than the 2012 CCG disaster. In hindsight it was a familiar meltdown, but at the time I still found Nebraska's level of helplessness shocking.

Tell that to the GMs that spent millions of dollars on Ricky Williams. The fact is, this is an indication of possibly two things: a) He doesn't care about rules and he doesn't think they apply to him. b) He doesn't have the will power to stop doing something that is against NFL rules long enough to not affect his career. Those two things can be an indication of personality issues that can lead to much bigger problems in the future. This when the NFL is having an image issue with top players being in the news for the wrong reasons. This ^ Fairly or unfairly, Randy's draft position will drop a few ticks and cost him a few millions, but he will be playing football somewhere next year, and cost enough money that he'll be expected to contribute quickly. So for a moment forget about all the other players and leagues and pundits. It's your money and you have to bet on Randy Gregory having a productive NFL career. I'm totally rooting for the dude, but my Spider-sense is telling me Gregory never meets his potential.

His anxiety is kind of understandable given that his head coach was a delusional psychopath. How many times do you have to hear him freaking out about how the AD, Chancellor, fans, and entire State of Nebraska are out to get you before you turn to weed to calm your nerves? Maybe. But my money says Randy Gregory was the same guy before he got here.

Just for a heads up, I didn't grow up in Nebraska. My high school in Illinois was HUGE. 932 kids in my freshman class, 555 graduated. Dope and pregnancy took most of the others. I smelled weed every school day for four years. I saw A/B students falling out of their chairs and then dropping out. So excuse me if I don't buy into theories and conjectures and just go with what I saw and what I know. Why do you think they call it dope? I went to a huge high school in Nebraska. I smelled weed there almost every day. I saw A/B students let their grades drop because they just didn't care anymore. I saw some great football players quit the team because why the hell would you want a coach chewing your ass all afternoon when you could be listening to Dark Side of the Moon on Koss headphones, eating a whole carton of ice-cream sandwiches? But it was an upper-middle class high school, so most of those stoners went on to become successful lawyers and teachers and Marine Corps instructors and heart surgeons and software engineers and real estate moguls and elected officials. The biggest pot dealer in our class went on to be an award-winning high school principal. You'd recognize some of their names, I bet.

First of all, scrape Media Bias off the thread head. The article itself puts the writer smack in the middle of the insights and opinions I've heard from Husker faithful. It's the same optimism + question mark reporting you'll find on pretty much every team worth speculating about. My only issue is with the headline writer, because nothing in the article supports it.

It's more telling that Gregory admits turning to marijuana to cope with anxiety. I'm very sympathetic to that, but anxiety and insecurity are going to be a bigger issue with an NFL athlete than recreational marijuana use.

Yes. Replace "Gay" with "Black" and you'll see similarities in his comments to those of racist pro-segregation folks from 60+ years ago. Ironic that it is now a black man trying to discriminate. Frankly, it's well past time for reasonable folks to call these things like they are. You can believe that being gay is a sin against the Christian god. But if you try to legislate against them, it makes you a bigot and a homophobe. No. Ignorance and evil aren't the same thing. One is conscious and meditated, the other is learned subconscious prejudice that people generally don't have a ton of control over. You don't pick your parents, or where you're born, for example. Not saying that Coach Brown is in the right here, I disagree with his stance, but hitting your wife and consuming hard drugs are different types of things than having a political opinion that you've been taught is right. If you read up on domestic violence, you find an awful lot of men who were taught by their fathers that hitting your wife is right, as long as she had it coming. Ignorance and evil aren't the same thing, but a lot of people preaching ignorance have a pretty good idea what they're doing, and a lot of their followers choose to be ignorant. As the old saying goes: "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." Now let's get the offensive line in shape!

#CoreValues Carl the coke head and philanderer. Marvin the philanderer, etc. Ron the homophobe. Kaz the wife beater. Quite the collection. I won't get into it to much, but it isn't correct to call Ron Brown a homophobe. Disagreeing with something doesn't automatically equal fear and hate. This is true. But Ron Brown's statements make him homophobic. They just do. Which statements? Where have you been the last few years? He said gays and lesbians do not deserve the same protections as groups that historically have been discriminated against, such as blacks and women. "The scriptures teach that blacks were created by God, that women were created by God, but that homosexuals ... that is not what God had in mind at all," Brown said. Brown said his words should not be interpreted as an attack on homosexuals. "I have simply said that based on the Bible, homosexuality, the lifestyle of homosexuality, is a sin," he said. These statements are based on his faith, not on fear, which is what homophobia is, a fear of homosexuals. From Websters Dictionary homophobia noun ho·mo·pho·bia \ˌhō-mə-ˈfō-bē-ə\ Definition of HOMOPHOBIA : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals FIFY. Is it irrational if Ron Brown opposes homosexuality based on his faith? I don't think he dislikes gay people. He opposes their homosexuality. It's a pretty mixed signal to say "hey, I like you, but unless you stop being yourself, you're going to burn in hell." So I suppose you'd rather hear someone say, "Hey, I like you. And I think God will like what you're doing even though the bible forbids your action." Are those my only two choices? I dunno about the Ron Brown quote that's in your post. I don't think he (Ron Brown) would not speak quite that frankly. Although I suspect he might actually either believe what you said, or at least believe that the person is sinning by their actions. Wait. You're doubting the accuracy of my quote? You don't have to take it on faith NUance. Here's the link: http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7855135/nebraska-cornhuskers- aide-ron-brown-faith-demands-anti-gay-stance (I'm pretty sure Ron Brown realizes that it's not up to us (humans) to pronounce who will/will not go to hell.) Then he can take his own peculiar comfort that God will eternally punish some of these fine young men he's been coaching, and not actively attempt to block the human definition of marriage. I'm not sure how I got pulled into this argument. I just didn't think that Ron Brown actually said, "you're going to burn in hell." And even after reading the article you pointed to, I still don't think he said that. But he did point out what he believes to be a sin. And he said people would be held accountable for their sins. / not going to respond anymore. So take your best shot having the last word in this stupid series of posts that have nothing to do with the topic of this thread. Sorry you feel that way. It was a pretty smart series of posts about a coach who brought controversy to the University of Nebraska football team, not exactly off topic for this thread.

#CoreValues Carl the coke head and philanderer. Marvin the philanderer, etc. Ron the homophobe. Kaz the wife beater. Quite the collection. I won't get into it to much, but it isn't correct to call Ron Brown a homophobe. Disagreeing with something doesn't automatically equal fear and hate. This is true. But Ron Brown's statements make him homophobic. They just do. Which statements? Where have you been the last few years? He said gays and lesbians do not deserve the same protections as groups that historically have been discriminated against, such as blacks and women. "The scriptures teach that blacks were created by God, that women were created by God, but that homosexuals ... that is not what God had in mind at all," Brown said. Brown said his words should not be interpreted as an attack on homosexuals. "I have simply said that based on the Bible, homosexuality, the lifestyle of homosexuality, is a sin," he said. These statements are based on his faith, not on fear, which is what homophobia is, a fear of homosexuals. From Websters Dictionary homophobia noun ho·mo·pho·bia \ˌhō-mə-ˈfō-bē-ə\ Definition of HOMOPHOBIA : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals FIFY. Is it irrational if Ron Brown opposes homosexuality based on his faith? I don't think he dislikes gay people. He opposes their homosexuality. It's a pretty mixed signal to say "hey, I like you, but unless you stop being yourself, you're going to burn in hell." So I suppose you'd rather hear someone say, "Hey, I like you. And I think God will like what you're doing even though the bible forbids your action." Are those my only two choices? I dunno about the Ron Brown quote that's in your post. I don't think he (Ron Brown) would not speak quite that frankly. Although I suspect he might actually either believe what you said, or at least believe that the person is sinning by their actions. Wait. You're doubting the accuracy of my quote? You don't have to take it on faith NUance. Here's the link: http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/7855135/nebraska-cornhuskers- aide-ron-brown-faith-demands-anti-gay-stance (I'm pretty sure Ron Brown realizes that it's not up to us (humans) to pronounce who will/will not go to hell.) Then he can take his own peculiar comfort that God will eternally punish some of these fine young men he's been coaching, and not actively attempt to block the human definition of marriage.

#CoreValues Carl the coke head and philanderer. Marvin the philanderer, etc. Ron the homophobe. Kaz the wife beater. Quite the collection. I won't get into it to much, but it isn't correct to call Ron Brown a homophobe. Disagreeing with something doesn't automatically equal fear and hate. This is true. But Ron Brown's statements make him homophobic. They just do. Which statements? Where have you been the last few years? He said gays and lesbians do not deserve the same protections as groups that historically have been discriminated against, such as blacks and women. "The scriptures teach that blacks were created by God, that women were created by God, but that homosexuals ... that is not what God had in mind at all," Brown said. Brown said his words should not be interpreted as an attack on homosexuals. "I have simply said that based on the Bible, homosexuality, the lifestyle of homosexuality, is a sin," he said. These statements are based on his faith, not on fear, which is what homophobia is, a fear of homosexuals. From Websters Dictionary homophobia noun ho·mo·pho·bia \ˌhō-mə-ˈfō-bē-ə\ Definition of HOMOPHOBIA : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals : irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals FIFY. Is it irrational if Ron Brown opposes homosexuality based on his faith? I don't think he dislikes gay people. He opposes their homosexuality. It's a pretty mixed signal to say "hey, I like you, but unless you stop being yourself, you're going to burn in hell."

#CoreValues Carl the coke head and philanderer. Marvin the philanderer, etc. Ron the homophobe. Kaz the wife beater. Quite the collection. I won't get into it to much, but it isn't correct to call Ron Brown a homophobe. Disagreeing with something doesn't automatically equal fear and hate. This is true. But Ron Brown's statements make him homophobic. They just do. Which statements? Where have you been the last few years? He said gays and lesbians do not deserve the same protections as groups that historically have been discriminated against, such as blacks and women. "The scriptures teach that blacks were created by God, that women were created by God, but that homosexuals ... that is not what God had in mind at all," Brown said. Brown said his words should not be interpreted as an attack on homosexuals. "I have simply said that based on the Bible, homosexuality, the lifestyle of homosexuality, is a sin," he said.

Being a hothead and/or occasionally a dick doesn't mean you beat your wife. But if you had to predict one former Bo Pelini assistant to be involved in a domestic violence case, Coach Kaz would quickly come to mind. That's all we're talking about here, right?

In fairness there were a good number of crossing patterns and 10 yard sideline outs that were the ONLY option on the given play, and Tommy completed a decent share of them. But we're all thinking about watching those deep balls developing, while secondary receivers and running backs were standing wide open nearby, with lots of real estate in front of them.

TA can't read ether. I am hoping the new staff helps him with this. Armstrong's pocket presence is actully pretty good. Better than Martinez's, actually. I wouldn't say either was uncomfortable in the pocket, but when you give running QBs the green light to run, they're gonna take off earlier than classic pocket passers when all that green opens up. It's kinda how they got the job in the first place. Steve Young had one of the best completion percentages in NFL history, but was always criticized for having "happy feet." I also saw Armstrong check down on his receivers enough during his first two seasons to convince me he knows how to do it. But there's a reason you have a primary receiver, and I think Armstrong had enough success with the long ball that he hangs in with his deep threat longer than most, and yeah, maybe too long. He likes going for the kill. You kinda like that in a QB, but Tommy needs to be smarter about it. Tommy's yards-per-attempt are pretty close to his Nebraska QB predeccesors, so the high-risk, high-reward strategy isn't hurting us as much as some folks think. But making more of those mid-range and outlet passes the first option will help both ball control and the deep game when we decide to go big. I'm an Armstrong defender, but I'll jump on the Stanton bandwagon the moment it proves to be the cooler option. I think anything can happen at QB this season.

Like Coach Riley, I would also like to see a higher completion % and fewer interceptions. He and I are pretty savvy that way.