brophog

2 hours ago, Undone said:

I think I remember you saying that you expected this to happen coming into year 2.

Well this time last year I said the QB run game was just gonna be a nice little change of pace, so what the hell do I know.

The NCAA tried to make it a rule that recruits couldn't discuss NIL before enrolling and it was thrown out by the courts.

Quote

"Without relief, the NCAA will continue to deprive Plaintiff States' athletes of information about the market value for their NIL rights, thereby preventing them from obtaining full, fair-market value for those rights," the opinion states. "Their labor generates massive revenues for the NCAA, its members, and other constituents in the college athletics industry — none of whom would dare accept such anticompetitive restrictions on their ability to negotiate their own rights. Those athletes shouldn't have to either."

NCAA NIL Injunction

35 minutes ago, teachercd said:

Yeah, if the passing game is a true threat it could open up the run, hopefully! 

I don't think you even have to be that good at passing and it is often more how you set things up. Satterfield at times in his past gets real infatuated with compression sets with 27 tight ends. You can be really good at passing out of that stuff and they're still going to load the box just because you loaded the box. Meanwhile there's more than a good chance if you put a WR on the boundary they gonna send someone out there to cover him.

Obviously it helps to have a QB like Raiola that can spray the field and receivers that can threaten but there's been a lot of QBs over the years that could create enough space to run the ball and rarely threw the ball more than 10 yards down the field. It's my opinion that if you're running into 8 man boxes it's because you allowed the defense to put 8 men there.

48 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

And, if the running strength is to the 3 WR side and the RB is lined up on the 1 WR side and you run a few running plays to the 3 WR side, there should be an opportunity for a quick pitch to the RB going to the 1 WR side, correct?

Oh yeah. At least this spring, the QBs seem to have the freedom to make those calls at the LOS if they see something they like. I'm curious how much latitude they're given this fall, that may be more of a spring thing. All three of these QBs are pretty sharp, though.

Even if the coaches do reign that in a bit, they still get until 15 seconds on the play clock to talk on the headset so if they get up to the LOS and see that kind of opportunity they can check into it and toss it out there real quick.

The alignment on the long Barney TD is probably a good setup for what you describe. The LB is in the B gap, the CB is 8 yards off and the FS is playing deep center. The tackle can reach easily and the guard is uncovered. Very conceivable that a quick pitch there is running for a while.

11 hours ago, Undone said:

I need a second watch this weekend, but I noticed that we seemed a little more committed to "spreading out" a bit on offense. We weren't, like, a spread offense. But formation-wise and what we did out of those formations I was really encouraged by what I saw.

Very much so. The spacing was way better on the offense, and we can do it in some interesting personnel packages.

I'll go back to my favorite example from the game, Raiola's first TD to Bonner. 3x1 set, the single side is an inline TE. It was a receiver much of the day, but in this example it's a TE who along with the RB stay in for a 7 man protection. Bonner is in the 'big slot' about 2 gaps off the Tackle, and of course, two WR out side of him.

That big slot could be a TE/HBack/WR....whatever we're calling things in this offense....but we have several athletic big bodied 220 lb-ish guys that could play there. On that play, the defense has to defend the full width of the field because as we saw Raiola can make that long throw from the far hash, and yet it's effectively out of 12 personnel where you can still run the ball with mismatches in the blocking game. 

Haarberg a few drives later hits Barney on the go route using the same formation, except he's the single WR on the short side. He gets 1 on 1 because the defense rotated to Cover 1 to cover the 3 man side. Here's how that formation's ability to run the ball helps the passing game. On that play, the RB is aligned to the single receiver side in Shotgun, meaning the running strength is to that 3 man side, a big reason why the defense rotates that way. Barney is going to be a helluva WR, and this formation gives him the opportunity to use those remarkable talents of his.

The width was better, but the playcalling using that width was also so much better. Again, 3x1 set with the single on the short side, defense rotates wide to account for the strength and they throw a RB screen to that near side. Next play, same setup, seam route on the wide side where if that defender drops to cover it, there's a drag coming from across the field.

4 plays I listed, all some form of 3x1 to the wide side and all three stress the defense in different ways. All of those screens to slots, tight ends, hbacks, running backs, all of that stuff helps establish width and then with that width we hit Corner routes, Seam routes and Go routes.

8 hours ago, I am I said:

turnovers and penalties.  And every year without fail we lose both categories. And we lose games (and tons of close games). 
 

I don’t give a s#!t how our spring game looked or weapons we might have or defense plays hard blah blah blah. Take care of the ball and don’t have untimely penalties. 

Penalties really don't correlate with wins. Certainly some untimely ones can have a major impact, based on situation. Passive penalties, like procedure penalties, have little upside. Aggressive penalties, like pass interference or holding, could be argued to be offset by the gains made in being aggressive. Last year, the top team in penalties was Michigan, but their championship opponent, Washington, ranked 126 in flags per game. It's funny, but it doesn't mean much, there's no particularly correlative value to wins and penalties across the teams.

Turnovers are why you should care about weapons and defense and blah blah blah. We all know turnovers have a high win correlation, but why? At the end of the day, they're really just explosive plays by the defense. The defending team was already going to get the ball back because it's an alternate possession game, so getting the ball back isn't what's valuable. It's the combination of your opponent not scoring and field position.

We really shouldn't think of turnovers and turnover margin as what's important. It should really be explosive play margin, of which turnovers should be considered a part.

RE: Red Five

Those stats show Nebraska has not been great at turnover margin over most of the past 20 years, but they show that turnovers, even for Nebraska, have a ton of year on year variance. Look at how many times in that list there is a 30 or 40 place jump one way or the other year to year.

Our goal is not to regress to the mean. Our goal is to become #1 in that list every year. That list actually shows quite well what it means for turnovers as a stat to regress to the mean.

2 hours ago, teachercd said:

I mean, turnovers for the offense will be way down, period, we know that.  Say it is even 10 less, that will be HUGE.

This is going to sound insane, but it's a testament to how bad things were. -10 isn't that big of an improvement. That still ranks 93rd last year in turnovers lost.

That number needs to be -20 or so, and that's actually very achievable.

2 hours ago, teachercd said:

Passing game will be better, running game will be "worse" just because there won't be the QB run game.

It's hard to say on the impact of the QB run game. Yes, it helped at times to move the ball and it generated a few big plays, but it led to a lot of those turnovers. 3 fumbles in the Purdue game alone were on QB runs.

 Nebraska the past few years has run the ball pretty good until the opponent decides they are not. Once the other team starts rolling down defenders and loading the box the run game shuts off, and it becomes a game of hoping you pop a big play somewhere. Last year, because of the QB run game more of those popped than the year prior, but unfavorable box counts were still hugely responsible for the anemic offense.

A better spaced field, like we saw this spring, I think will not only counter any gains there may have been with the QB run game, but make the overall running game better. The game becomes 6 on 6 and first contact is 3-4 yards downfield and it's up to the RB to beat someone. That scenario is more controllable for Satterfield because he's accustomed to using the screen and RPO game to control defenders much better than he is trying to sequence run plays to control defenders.

I also think we have some big bodied receivers and tight ends that will create a lot of issues for those conflict linebackers and nickels and help control the Safeties. We can play like a 12 personnel team, but those two "tight ends" are a very athletic Fidone who can line up at various spots and a 220 lb receiver and then still put 2 speedsters out there that you have to somehow account for. There is a lot of room for creativity with personnel and alignment and Satterfield can be a pretty creative playcaller. I think we will see him much more in his element this year.

Overall, what I think will likely happen is the run game will be more than fine against average or so defensive lines, but may struggle some against the very top end units because they can make up the numbers through talent. Man on man, though, when we're plus 1 or even against most defenses I like this line and it'll be up to Satterfield and staff to put them in the best possible position for success.

58 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

That was my next question.  What has our defense done?  They were decent last year overall.  But, they have room for improvement in getting turnovers.

There is a lot of randomness to turnovers, that's why they fluctuate year to year so much.

In terms of what you can control, you control so much more on offense than defense. There are things you can do on defense to try to help your odds, like getting more pressure with only 4 to allow yourself to play more zone so your eyes are on the QB. Getting more hats to the ball so you can have a better opportunity to strip it, those sorts of things. By and large, though, the things that increase your chances on defense are just products of playing better defense.

The offense, from whichever side you look at it, has to create opportunities for a turnover to happen.

45 minutes ago, Undone said:

I do still think that a lot of mistakes the team has made over the last six seasons are rooted in some kind of team psychology/mentality sort of thing.

I care about fixing the things that were bad last year and making the things that were good, better. In that vein, a lot of what we did this spring were plays we ran last year. Those plays were run so much cleaner this spring. The execution was by no means perfect, but the proof of concept that we can fix these things is on tape. It's now a question of taking the confidence gained this spring in knowing we can execute and refining that through summer workouts and fall camp.

52 minutes ago, Undone said:

I think that checks out with how our relative recruiting talent level stacks up against so many of these middling Big 10 teams

I don't think securing the football is a talent issue. Put two hands on the ball, they rip it free....those things happen at times. Watching your QB dangle the football out like he's feeding a horse some carrots, that's just not acceptable on any level. 

12 minutes ago, Undone said:

For us to actually be one of the top 25 teams in the country, there'd be a huge assumption that we've pretty much completely ditched the problem with turnovers & false starts in one offseason.

 

I find it really hard to believe that will be the case, but hopefully we at least put a big dent in the problem.

Because turnovers regress to the mean so heavily year over year, they're actually one of the best predictors for this sort of thing....in both directions. If you have a team that won more games than otherwise expected but they had a large positive turnover margin or lost more games than otherwise expected because of a large negative turnover then they are strong candidates for their record to also regress to the mean the following year.

1 hour ago, Decked said:

I’m not sure it’s 100% ideal but with the injury to Blye Hill and theoretical addition at safety it makes a lot of sense

Hill is supposed to recover in time.

1 hour ago, Decked said:

Ethan Nation & Bootle are both of the same build and are vying for that spot now.

Don't be surprised if Bootle makes a similar transition inside one day. This staff wants more length on the outside. They train most of these DBs for multiple positions so they can play at what they are ultimately best at.

Hartzog may still make an occasional start outside if needed, but ultimately you move a guy where he's best at, if at all possible. Cooper in his early spring press conference apologized for putting Hartzog where he did last year, citing injuries as a prime reason. He's said he wants him exclusively inside this year, rather than moving him around all of the time. He also flat out said moving Hartzog was about Hartzog and not a reflection of strength at the corner position.

Cooper April Press Conference

On 5/6/2024 at 12:25 PM, Undone said:

Still so many examples though (and we could even pick ones from last season) where I feel like you can basically just write off the late-game turnovers because of the first half mistakes. We're often times playing tense and scared from the opening kickoff, and that sets up the failures at the end of a game.

I don't feel you can write them off at all. As an example, see a post of mine from after the spring game comparing the final interception in the Maryland game to Raiola's first TD of the spring game. Same play, same read, better execution by both players and coaches in the spring.

Did the coaches start making bad decisions because they were scared of turnovers? At least in the Wisconsin game they did. Played super conservative for OT when the right choice was to attempt to win it in regulation. Hard to blame them based on previous games, though.

Too many fumbles were just sloppy ball handling, especially by the QBs. The interceptions were a combination of not recognizing defenses, especially Safeties and underneath Linebackers, and poorly executed routes and throws. A lot of the interceptions last year were clean pocket throws.  

I strongly feel, based on the tape, that the number one culprit was bad execution. Not pressure from the situation, often not even because of the opponent's pass rush, but bad execution. Sims threw the game sealing INT against Minnesota right to a Safety playing Cover 1. That ball should never be thrown against that Coverage, but he did that kind of thing constantly. He just can't seem to read a defense. His third pick against Maryland comes game tied, 12 mins left, 1st and 10, cleanest pocket you could ever ask for......throws it into triple coverage.

As I said a few weeks prior, expect Nebraska to appear on these sorts of 'darkhorse' type lists because the numerical indicators are very strong. The spring only reiterated that Nebraska is fully capable of turning last year's negatives into this year's positives.

14 hours ago, Decked said:

Frees up Hartzog to go back to corner 100% too.

Last year Hartzog wasn't 100% corner even when he was '100% corner'.

He's much better suited at his size to line up inside rather than outside.

26 minutes ago, teachercd said:

I feel like the team sees Prime once a day for about 10 minutes at the start of practice and 10 minutes at the end of practic

He sits on his phone DM'ing portal guys all day. All he's ever known as a 'coach' is how to use his personal brand to out talent the other team. He has nothing of himself personally invested in most of these guys. They are, by all definition, disposable to him.

Quote

How would Title IX be impacted?

This should not be buried in that article like it's a minor obstacle. That's a federal statute that has huge ramifications.

6 hours ago, Guy Chamberlin said:

Are we at the point where there can be no second string? If a hotshot recruit discovers someone is ahead of him on the depth chart, does he just say ef-it, I'm outta here? 

Every time the NCAA gets sued the rules get looser and looser. We're almost at the point.....and I'm not joking....we're almost at the point you'll see a team go to the opposing team's locker room at halftime and offer their QB a bag of money.

One thing  I'd like to highlight as a difference to last year is how wide our offense was this weekend. Everything played very narrow last year and it led to stacked boxes and defenders jumping routes.

One play I think highlights how good Dylan is was his first TD to Bonner. Bonner is playing in "big slot' role as the 3rd receiver to that side. He runs a corner route with the two outside receivers running double ins which against man coverage are designed to hold the safety in the middle of the field. Bonner runs a really good route to create separation and Raiola throws a perfect ball with anticipation and placement so the defender has no chance.

I think this is one of those plays that Raiola almost hurts his own hype because he makes that throw look so easy. He's on about the 23 yard line  throwing to the right pylon....from the left hash mark. That's a very difficult throw to make and far more difficult than it is at the pro level because the narrow hash marks effectively make the field play narrower at the pro level.

Lastly, other than being a great throw, why do I choose this play, in particular, as someone that is excited about what I saw this spring? Because last year we threw picks with this play. In particular, it's the play that cost us the Maryland game. Now, I didn't love the play call in that situation because we're on the 7, throwing to the short side of the field so everything is more condensed and that helps the CB drop off his man to intercept the pass. But the biggest culprit is we ran that route a little too flat and Purdy drastically under threw the ball. If he throws that ball more towards the back corner it's either a TD or we're attempting a chip shot for the lead.

Not only did we see that same play, executed and called so much better in the spring game, but we saw that same scenario. Dylan threw two passes in a row towards the end zone on a drive where it was either our ball or no ones. We missed the FG attempt, unfortunately, but we gave ourselves the chance that we so often didn't last year.

I hope anybody that thinks the spring game doesn't matter will read this and see how we're taking the same scenarios, even the same plays, that cost us games last year and executing at a much higher level this year. 

2 hours ago, RedDenver said:

I think HH has an important role to play this season still, and as I said, that's not a popular opinion right now.

This entire offense is being set up for the pocket passers and they're training Haarberg to work within that. They're not setting this offense up like last year and training the new QBs to work within that style. Everyone needs to take last year's tape and burn it. Yes, it's the same offense in the sense it's the same language and organization and so forth but that QB heavy run style that we were forced to adopt by circumstance is completely gone. You may see an occasional zone read here or there, especially if Haarberg is needed for a sustained time, but Raiola and Kaelin are just not built for that style of play.

That's why what Haarberg did this spring was so impressive. He's being asked to play in an offense built for someone else, and I think he's doing a great job. But, there's no QB controversy here. Rhule is just dipping into his psychological bag of tricks to get what he wants from these guys. He knows exactly who his starting QB is.

Barney is emerging as that player you just have to figure out how to get on the field.

Have we tried him at kicker, seems he's successful everywhere else.

1 hour ago, RedDenver said:

Remains to be seen if the rest of the team is good enough for DR to succeed without the threat of the QB run and option

I love the option as much as the next guy, but year on year there are fewer and fewer coaches that know how to call and teach the option and Satterfield isn't one of them.

1 hour ago, RedDenver said:

Can the OL protect and the receivers get open against B1G defenses?

See all of those screens and RPOs designed to get the ball out quickly. That's what Satterfield does well, but he tends to lose focus of what's working and decides to play with his other toys.

It's important to actually read that link in the tweet to understand what this exercise is and isn't doing. The methodology and source materials are linked.

TLDR: It's not about how good a player is, what he's projected to be, how good he fits on a particular team or anything like that. It's simply looking at what draft pick a player went vs where that player was projected to go. If you have a grade A bum who is projected to go in the 5th and you got him in the late 6th, then in this analysis it was a pick that would score well regardless of the fact he's a bum.

8 hours ago, floridacorn said:

I'll piggy back off this by echoing this as well as a noticeable difference in his mechanics.  He's still figuring it out and there were a few passes where he put too much air under the ball because he's still thinking about his mechanics.  There were a few plays where you could see him working through his progression while remaining poised in the pocket and we never saw that last season.  Hard to look at that and not believe Rhule made the right call bringing Thomas in.  

I thought Haarberg looked like the backup QB and I mean that as a compliment. What do you want your backup to do: don't take unnecessary risks, check down when necessary, throw it away when necessary, get completions and move the chains. He played within himself and listened to his coaching and because he's a very talented guy he can do that and still make some big plays. I said coming in that he was the QB I wanted to see the most because he was the benchmark last year and that benchmark has risen substantially.

I thought Kaelin looked like a talented freshman. I've seen some people out there say they were disappointed in him, but it's not a crime for a freshman to play like a freshman. There's a reason why even the most talented freshman QBs rarely play significant time their first year. It's not an easy transition to make and I thought he did some good things and some bad things but overall showed he's a very capable player with an exciting career ahead of him. I don't think it's fair to compare him or Haarberg to Raiola because I'm not sure by the end of the season it'll be fair to compare any college QB to Raiola.

I think if the offense continues to make strides this summer and fall (and a lot of people did a lot of good things today) then once Raiola starts stacking games on top of each other and learning from those experiences......I just think his trajectory will be very steep. He just makes things look so easy, and not easy "for a freshman" but easy for anyone. He has the physical tools, the intangibles, the leadership, the work ethic, all of the coaching resources in the world......but he lacks the experience. 

I'll tell you what you can't do if all of your players leave via the portal....play a spring game.

Anybody catch any of CU's spring game? I've seen more competitive games at recess.