brophog

That and due to our own turnovers, some of those are cases where our defense is tasked with moving them out of field goal range. The first field goal in both the NIU and Northwestern games came on drives in which the opposition had negative yards. The only two I can think of that are concerning is the end of the Minnesota game, obviously, and Colorado before half time. Both situations where they were able to drive down and score with time running out. Situations where it's either a really short field or they go on like a 10+ play drive and have to settle for a FG are winning football, most of the time. Field goals conceded is just a really situational stat.

I think this spread is way more accurate than those betting percentages suggest. Mich St is both better than their record and their stats suggest. In a small sample size, those beatings by Washington and Michigan are carrying a lot of weight. Washington in particular was 713 yards of offense! The two team's profiles are similar. Both defenses are better vs the run than the pass, both offenses struggle, and both teams turn the ball over way, way too much. While it's cliche to suggest whomever controls the turnover battle wins, in this game it may be the entire ball game. It's hard to have confidence that Nebraska can ring them up many times through the air, and if you don't do that their defense is actually fairly stout. Home underdogs against a team that not only turns the ball over a lot but has a tendency to do it in its own territory......I can't say I'm betting against that 91% of the time. This line has trap written all over it.

I wouldn't say he's a bad OC. Nebraska is putting up bad numbers this year but turnovers and injuries are playing a massive role in that. To use an analogy, we paid Ferrari money for a Toyota Corolla. That Corolla will be adequate in the day to day, but it's going to get lapped on the track. We paid a lot of money to the head coach and put a lot of resources into the program and so I'm of the opinion it's perfectly justifiable to pay top money to the coordinator positions. I'd frankly be upset if we did all of that and then tried to cheapen out on coordinators. However, if you pay a guy top money he has to show he's at least capable of something relative to that in performance. Satterfield will never justify this salary. I doesn't mean I think he's a bad OC, but it does mean I think he was a bad hire.

I'd throw a shout out to ole Pot Roast and the S&C staff, too. I said before the season that neither side of the ball was likely capable of 'carrying' the other side and that the offense in year 1 may be ahead of the defense. That was because that's typically the case. There is a reason offensive coaches get promoted so, so, so much more often than defensive coaches and that's because they can scheme around issues so much easier because that side controls the game. Even the most aggressive defensive scheme is still at the mercy of what the offense chooses to do. I also questioned, even after seeing the spring, if the defensive line and overall pass rush was capable. We were asking some guys, that let's face it haven't performed all that well, to do some things that they weren't really asked to do much. So while I loved White and I loved this defensive scheme I just thought we were probably a year away from being able to implement at a decently high level. While the whole defense has been very good, if I had to single out one unit it is the defensive line, though. I'm not going to pile on the offense, because what would be the point in that, but I will say I think the biggest draw back in terms of big picture is this season's unfortunate bad luck on that side buys Satterfield a year or two more. He's pretty much what he's always been and that's not a guy deserving of that kind of salary. I wouldn't have hired him, regardless, but for that kind of money there are a lot of options. At this point we're just hoping the offense scores more than they give up. What our defense has done on quick change and short field situations has been truly remarkable.

That was awesome. A much deserved celebration for one of the greatest programs in collegiate sports history. A fine time was had by all and the party continued well past the match end time. Nebraska could have gone out there and broke the volleyball record way cheaper than they did. The spectacle matched the accomplishment. Instead of just settling for a small record, they went big, but not just for volleyball. They took the premier program at the University and used it as an anchor point to make a statement: Nebraska can still accomplish the biggest of dreams. People have asked for years, can Nebraska football come back? We just saw through the cooperation of the athletic department, university, coaching staff and fans that a WORLD RECORD can be broken. Now, I don't expect this record to last very long. The biggest accomplishments often don't because they set the bar so high that others are inspired to break them. For all of us as fans, that's what greatness looks like. Lets go and have as much fun this season as everyone had tonight.

I've said for a while that I think this Minnesota game is very important. Not that it makes or breaks the season or Rhule's career or anything like that. But it's a momentum game. That momentum started with Iowa and has just torpedoed through the offseason. I know I just cursed us, but Nebraska is in about as good of a shape as a program heading into Week 2 of fall camp as could reasonably be expected from where they found themselves before that Iowa kickoff last fall. I have a lot of appreciation for what Minnesota has built and for that reason I think they're underrated entering the season. How many other programs would be coming off back to back 9 win seasons, and 3 of the last 4, to such mundane hype. They need a few things to go their way like everyone in this division, but I think they are clearly underrated heading into the season. Heading into Week 2 we've seen representatives from every position group now talk. Ben Scott the other day said it best, and I'm paraphrasing for effect but only slightly....hold yourself to this standard or GTFO. I don't recall in many, many years this many players with that attitude. It's pervasive throughout that team. It just seems like these guys are really, really tired of losing and they've just had enough of it. You could argue Nebraska is no longer a blueblood in the sense they once were, but when bluebloods bounce back its rarely done quietly. The dam usually breaks wide open. They may have been down for too long for it to be this year. There's a lot of talent throughout nearly every position group, but it's almost all unproven in some definition of the word. Regardless of the result of this game or this season, there is definitely a strong sense that this program is different in a way it hasn't been in an extremely long time.

If Rhule's past is any indication, the days of spamming QB Power with your only viable QB are over. There are ways to have your QB in the run game that are safer. Deep routes against man coverage where your QB can take off with the defenders backs turned. QB Draw out of empty where you can get a light box and control the pursuit. Bootlegs and Zone Reads are really instances where your QB is effectively indirectly blocking a man because the backside pursuit has to account for him and if they don't he can often pick up a lot of yards before contact. When they do want to bring that QB Power element into the game both Rhule and Satterfield have history of using the Wildcat so it's someone other than your starting QB taking those hits. The key to all of these ways of bringing the QB position into the run game is letting others be the focal point and allowing your QB to take advantage of the numbers. You can get a lot of yards in the run game without him being the head of the spear. That's much, much more typical of how they've utilized the QB run element in the past.

That's one reason I haven't been around here in years. That's not about you guys, that's about me. My posts at least attempt to be informative rather than argumentative and if all I have to say is negative I kinda don't want to take the time to bother posting.

Disclaimer: I could be completely and totally off my rocker with what I'm about to say. Sometimes I wonder if Frost would have been more successful at a school other than Nebraska. I think the idea of "Husker Power' poisoned his offense. These spread to run type offenses developed because these teams didn't have Rimington award winners on them. Offenses like Mike Leach's Air Raid have those big line splits because someone went out with a stopwatch and went "Our Left Tackle sucks, how long would it take an opposing DE to get to the QB if he wasn't blocked". That's a big reason those line splits are so wide is to extend the distance between the DE and the QB's launch point. A lot of today's popular offenses were developed for this reason; to overcome offensive line talent disadvantages. The spread to run offense Frost used as a base is one of them. It's designed to run against light boxes and to use pulling linemen to create numbers advantages. Somewhere along the line it all got big and bulky and slow.

That's absolutely true. Football is the gateway to your University. That's why you can't take a deal on a subscription based service like Apple even if it were the same money you'd get from a national broadcast network.

Statistically, everything is considered a run until it is not in college football. QB scrambles, sacks, occasionally screens are all counted as runs even though the intent was to pass. Teams also often run the ball more late in the game to kill clock. For these reasons when a data modeler or analyst wants to profile a team they'll throw out that sort of thing to get a better idea of the true intent of the offense. When you look at just the raw stats, a huge swath of teams sit at that 50%-55% rush area for these reasons. Michigan under Harbaugh generally sits in that 55%-60% rush area. Where Ohio St has been getting into trouble the past few years is instead of realizing Michigan skews run, they act like they're playing Navy. Michigan still plays a lot of 3WR and even 4WR (on 3rd down) and Ohio St has been putting 8 and 9 guys in the box, playing a ton of Cover 1 and getting smoked because of it. Michigan runs a lot of 3WR Shotgun like everyone else is, the difference is they have a better offensive line than just about anyone else.

Between Temple and Baylor Rhule's general philosophy didn't change, but the method in which he employed it shifted. At Temple it was more two back, at Baylor it was more one back. Recruiting the respective areas has a lot to do with that. At Nebraska so far he hasn't shown through essentially 2 full classes that he'll be limited in the type of offense he can run. Rhule likes to talk about 'earning the right to play Minnesota'. In football, you often earn the right to run the ball, and that's what we've seen at Temple and Baylor. Even though personnel at those schools leaned differently, the trajectory of how much he ran the ball was the same....the better they got the more opportunity they had to run the ball. As the years go on at Nebraska and he can refine how he does things it'll come down to what's working. What player types can they best recruit, what characteristics do conference defenses lean towards, etc. Some coaches are pretty set in terms of personnel groupings and pace and those sorts of things and they try to make that work for all situations and Rhule isn't really like that. If in two years all of this receiver speed he's bringing in pans out, he's not going to sit his best players because he thinks fullbacks are cute. On the other hand, if the conference shifts to more one back where defenses adjust to stop that and he thinks he can find success going counter to that trend, the way we've seen some Big12 teams win in recent years, he may do that. He's a flexible, adaptable guy and he's willing to change to best fit the situation.

You misspelled 4TE. And I wish I was joking.

He'll put it back in his pants when he sees how much 4WR is used.

I really wish reporters would stop focusing on Sims running so much. They paint a false picture of both Sims as a player and Rhule's tendencies. Expect to see upwards of 8-10 QB runs per game between scrambles and designed runs, with that number decreasing with better offensive line play. Designed QB runs are part of Rhule's offenses, but they are no where near the focus of the offense the way we often saw with Adrian and Taylor. When you combine Satterfield's offensive tendencies to Rhule's, do not be surprised if we see some runs from the QB position that are not from Jeff Sims.

I wouldn't argue that at all. What makes this round of realignment unique is it was not initiated by a conference attempting to become stronger. This round was initiated because the networks are mostly tapped out of funds and the PAC was therefore struggling to put together a competitive media deal. Ultimately that led to member institutions leaving for better situations. The really worrying thing here is what the financial landscape looks going forward as media distribution networks change. Nobody is really sure at the moment what the future holds as cable declines and streaming attempts to fill the gap. Financially, everyone is getting tapped out as they all spend money they don't really have to secure anchors that they think will make theconsumer choose them over their competitors. This is very different from any previous era. In the broadcast era, the consumer had access to any of the 3 broadcast networks they were capable of receiving. In the cable era, the consumer paid one cost to the cable company and didn't really care if the networks carried by that provider were competing with one another. In the streaming era, everything is ala carte and the consumer must choose which services they will subscribe.

To clarify this a bit: The Jack is your EDGE backer and the other two serve as your off ball backers. Depending on the exact front and coverage used, all three can have a myriad of roles. Some of the most common fronts we will see: Pinch the DL over the guards and center and roll down a backer off each end. Spread the DL to cover both tackles and have 2 backers against the guards. Slide the DL and have a 4 man line with the JACK Use the previous front but roll down a Safety to act as the other edge. The biggest advantage of this defense is in its versatility without needing to substitute with a bunch of sub packages. The three backers ability to blitz, cover, and play the run goes a long way into determining how versatile you can be.

Everyone has strength and nutrition programs now. The game isn't about fighting in a phone booth anymore, it's about angles and spacing.

I feel like some context is needed when discussing run vs pass in inclement weather. After all, you'll see half of the city of Green Bay shovel snow for Rodgers and Favre and the Siberian wilderness known as Buffalo, NY has had guys like Josh Allen and Jim Kelly. The thing that is easily forgotten is passing is already inherently more efficient than running. That's why passing numbers across all levels are up over the decades and scoring has followed suit. The question isn't that passing is less efficient in inclement weather than it normally is, it's a question of how much and is that still relatively better than running is. One way we can look at this question is as follows, and these are pretty typical numbers. If you average 7.0 yards per pass attempt in good weather and that gets reduced to 6.0-6.5 yards per pass attempt in inclement weather are you still better off passing if you average 4.5 yards per rush attempt. One of the biggest mistakes you can make is giving the weather too much credit and becoming so risk averse that it begins to impact your running game, too. You can become so risk averse that you find yourself running into heavy boxes or find the other team 7 yards from the line of scrimmage.

These segments are like a monster truck dealership telling you they get great gas mileage. They exist purely to make the league’s teams seem interesting enough to watch.

I really wish we could just move Corcoran inside and be done with it. Can't seem to get any luck on injuries or transfers or seemingly anything that would allow that to happen. I like the guy, but I have zero confidence he's anything at that position except an emergency option.

I feel like that when Rhule was talking about the guys increased mobility over the summer. Nash is suddenly a ballerina and Satterfield can call a play without five TEs. I don't believe either of those things, but I've been wrong before.

Nebraska brings in something like 6-7 mil a home game and adds about that much to the local economy per home game. Those aren't exact figures, but it's in that ballpark. That's very substantial. Football is 4-5 times more profitable than men's basketball in part because of those large stadiums. 8 of the 11 stadiums in the world that are 100k capacity or larger are college football stadiums. TV right now is very risky because no one knows what the future holds. Cable numbers continue to plummet and even ESPN isn't immune to that. They had a massive on air talent purge just a few weeks ago in an effort to cut expenses. Rumors have been swirling for some time that Disney may be looking to sell. Nearly every streaming platform is losing money at the moment in a rampant surge to create/acquire as much content as possible in hopes that it allows them to break away from the pack. Peacock, who has been as aggressive as anyone in growing live sports via a streaming platform, is expected to lose 3 billion this year. There's a good reason Apple's offer was not only fairly low, but incentive based.....no one really knows yet if any streaming partner is strong enough at the moment to carry live sports in the way we're accustomed to with cable. The BIG was smart, imo, not only in diversifying their media portfolio, but in continuing to partner with broadcast television. It's the safest avenue right now and the BIG are as strong as they are in this current round because they prioritized those broadcast time slots.

I do agree with this. I don't agree with his take here, and I'll give you a few examples. In international soccer, Spain's league worked like this where Barcelona and Real Madrid got a much bigger piece of the pie. The problem is when they tried to sell their international television rights they didn't get a lot because the only two teams anyone internationally cared about was those two, so that was at most two games a week anyone cared about. Meanwhile, by far the richest league in the world is the English league because they have many more teams of interest. That was the case when Nebraska joined the Big10. One of the reasons you want a brand like that is it makes a bunch of games more interesting. Now Nebraska-Purdue is more interesting, Nebraska-Indiana is more interesting, etc. That's why adding big national brands helps a conference because it effectively multiples the number of games that have a chance of having higher ratings. When USC and UCLA leave it creates this situation they're in because you hadn't really built up any other programs of interest to make someone like Cal or Wash St interesting. Of the remaining schools, almost all of the higher rated games involved Oregon because that was the only real brand left in the conference. He does make a very good point about the PAC Network distribution and why it going alone was a terrible idea. It's very common for deals for these sports networks to happen right before the season starts because angry fans calling into a cable provider provide a lot of leverage. Well, if the PAC Network was part of ESPN or FOX then when their carriage fees are negotiated, they come along for the ride as part of the family of networks. As he points out, by going alone they had no such leverage and therefore no distribution avenue.

There has been a lot of good interviews this camp, but Ben Scott's is one I'd definitely recommend. Talk about leadership and experience. Of all the things he said though, the one that really caught my attention is when he's talking about pass protection calls. He talks about how we (the offensive line) need to put our heads together and figure out how we want to call this. It wasn't in reference to how the coaches tell them to do something, it was ownership, as a unit, on how they were going to do things. Everything he said was that way. Not mean, not arrogant, but very matter of fact and with a plan of action. Great listen, highly recommend.