whateveritis1224

As fans of NU, we turn on the players and coaches so quick. One bad play/bad drive and all of a sudden we're calling for Pelini's head. We're down to SDSU 17-14 at the end of the first quarter, but the rest of the game we outscore them 45-3 and it still was a terrible game. Against SDSU it was the epitome of bend but don't break. But then NDSU holds SDSU to negative yards rushing and suddenly we're worse than NDSU? It wasn't a good game by the defense, but we held them in the most important defensive stat.

We're going to finish the year 3-9 with Pelini stubbornly keeping Martinez as the QB as he finishes the year with 6 tds and 30 ints. He won't play TA because TA will be in Pelini's doghouse for even thinking about being better than Martinez and the defense will end up giving up more than 600 ypg and 50 ppg.

FYI, and this goes for everyone who cares, I changed the original post to include big plays. Take a look and come away with whatever you want. I do plan, when I have the time again, to take a look at how other opponents have done against those teams. Those numbers tell me we gave up way to many big plays to SDSU. It would be way worse if they had gotten to 30 points, but they only scored 3 points in 45 minutes. At this point I don't give a flying f' about how many yards we give up, just as long as the defense keeps up timely big plays. (see what happened after SDSU got called for OPI through the rest of the game) The biggest thing that concerns me is going to be the W-L record. Right now we're at 3-1 with no game on our schedule that we can't win. Do we need to step up? Absolutely, but Pelini has shown he can get his defense in respectable shape. Last year the defense came back from the bye week and held Northwestern to 300 yards of offense (including the Mark 80 yd td run). I just don't see the doom and gloom about Illinois beating us. Sure it's possible, football is an unpredictable sport. But if the offense is anything close to what it was against SDSU, we win the game going away.

This past fumble was more a good play by the SDSU defender than Ameer not securing the ball. Sometimes the defenders helmet lands directly on the ball and there's little you can do to hold onto it. I was actually more afraid of Ameer having a separated shoulder or something with his collarbone, that was a pretty brutal hit. I'm confident that Cross and Newby could take his carries, but I'd rather have a 100% proven commodity of being THE MAN as opposed to great promise.

Beck dialed things back, and while SDSU is a good FCS team they have a pretty bad defense. Their pass defense ranks 106th out of 114 FCS schools. Their offense will take them places (as long as Zenner can heal from the ankle sprain), but their defense might hold them back.

We played about as good of a half defensively last year against Arkansas State after Bo went to the hospital. This D is young and is not consistent right now. Way too many ups and downs (mostly downs), but they can be very good (see 1st half of UCLA). Consistency is key.

Run defense was very shaky in the first quarter, but overall the defense shored up and only allowed 3 points the rest of the game. The offense looked great with either Armstrong or Kellogg.

OLB followed the crossing pattern to far to the inside on both plays.

He's a slippery one

D has been very good in the redzone since the first quarter. It's been sketchy between the 30s, but they haven't got points.

Defense has been very bend don't break today.

Let's put another nail in the coffin, go deep to Bell and see if he can get it.

Hold on Valentine, but there should have been an LB or S to help fill the hole. Good first drive by the offense, bad first drive by the defense.

Impressive first drive by the offense. But's it's still way too early for a QB controversy.

I honestly didn't know. I just assumed so based off all the Burkhead and Woodhead comparisons this week. I knew what you were saying and wasn't trying to make it a big thing but I hate that crap. No beef with ya bro Just this is a case where the two guys are pretty eerily similar in there college careers. Not knocking him because he's white, just quoting Tunnel Walk of Shame.

Does he have a lot of heart?

Evans got the pick off of the RB pass against Wyoming. That's where the 3rd pick comes from.

Do we want to run more? Have Armstrong start. But truthfully I'd rather have Kellogg out there because he'll probably be able to get it to the playmakers easier.

Bringing up the fact that he said he doesn't want to be here in the tape is also a moot point. He said that TWO YEARS ago. A lot can change in two years. Was what he said bad? Absolutely. But it should not be the reason to fire him. Fire him for his on field performance. Don't fire him because he said something in private that was recorded. He's on a very short leash now. I can't see Eichorst or Perlman letting this go without some internal punishment. But it would be sad to see a coach the players love leave because their punishment burns bridges and makes it so he can't coach here effectively.

The only games where we'll have to play our best to win are Northwestern and Michigan. Every other team on the schedule falls into that same type of team that Pelini usually wins against (barring the meltdowns I.E. Iowa State in '09). Teams that just don't have as much talent as Nebraska. Illinois is the only team before Northwestern that can give us a scare. Why? Scheelhouse. He has shown he can be a very good QB, but I also don't think they have enough at their other positions. I'm not going to say we're going to win the rest of our regular season games this year, Northwestern and Michigan are too big of toss ups. But to predict a loss before Northwestern is an overreaction to last Saturday's game. The only way we lose before Northwestern is if we crap the bed.

It's interesting to me that Martinez takes so much heat, and rightfully so, yet Ameer gets virtually no criticism. No one questions Ameer's leadership even though he seems to always fumble/muff punts in crucial situations. We were not likely to overcome UCLA but leave it to Ameer to fumble at the 5 to ensure we have nothing positive in the second half. He runs hard and gives great effort, but i'm not sure why he's still the starter based on what i've seen from Cross and Newby. and i get it, a total team failure, but I've seen enough of Ameer fumbling. Ameer has had a very disappointing season thus far. Cross has clearly out performed him, yet finds himself on the bench for the better part of the game. Abdullah has almost started the year out with 3 100 yard games (got 98 against UCLA). He's on pace for over 1300 yards for the season. He hasn't met expectations, but he hasn't been a disappointment. Hell, only a handful of guys on offense have come close to meeting or exceeding expectations (Newby, Cross, Enunwa, and Bell are the only ones off the top of my head). The whole offense has been a disappointment more than any individual players.

On the brightside, not matter how bad it seems to be in Nebraskaland, Texas is an even bigger S*** show.

We can't trust this team in big games right now. But there are some good things. The defense looked spectacular until that missed sack. The offense still has boat loads of playmakers. It's definitely hard to have confidence in this team, they will have to show me they can not do this type of game again before I'll believe it. But I'm not going to throw away the rest of the year because of 1 game in which we played poorly and lost. There's still 9 more games.

A lot of it is gut reactions. We absolutely did terrible today, but we are not going to see a team even close to UCLA until Northwestern. Crap absolutely needs to be cleaned up, but we had a play where things didn't go our way when they should have and things snowballed, again. I'll take the entirety of the 2013 season before I'd make a decision, unless the team has another game like this.

Start off this game f'in sucked. It's crapping our pants again on a big stage again. It's letting ref calls affect the game (though there were a couple of pretty bad roughing the passer penalties). It's turtling once we get up big and letting the team back in the game. It's a lot of different things that makes Nebraska under Pelini absolutely frustrating to watch. But, this is absolutely not the end of the season. There is a lot of time and a lot of games until we face another team with a semblance of a pulse (Northwestern). A lot of things can happen between now and the first week of November. Pelini should be on a very short leash the rest of the year. IF there is another game like today, something needs to change. I'm not giving up on this year because a lot of our goals can still be accomplished. This game does not affect our ability to do anything in the Big 10 and getting back to Indy. I'm waiting to see how the rest of the season plays out.