brophog

While not as bad as the start of the season, some of what you're describing is a mirage. Nebraska was 122nd in plays defensed per game last year, partly because they themselves were 109th in offensive plays per game and partly because teams like Iowa still somehow exist.

I don't believe it's that far fetched. I'm not going out on that limb because there are certainly some challenges to overcome. For instance, while I'm super big on this defense in the long term, a lot of the guys that need to play well to transform this defense don't have much experience and a lot of the guys at those positions that do have experience may not be quite the right fit for this scheme. While Nebraska has challenges, the others in the division share much of those. A lot of new coaches and QBs could either level the playing field or give one or more teams a sizeable edge. Northwestern is safe to say likely out of the conversation, but the other 6 teams all can make at least a decent preseason argument for why they could win the division if things if things went well.

Let me put it this way. Based on what we know now, because these things can radically change over the course of the season....who besides Michigan would surprise a neutral observer reading the paper on Sunday morning if Nebraska beat them the night before?

I'd certainly hope so, they won 2 games and 1 game, respectively. A warning isn't the same as firing the guy. Frost showed a red flag in his inability to win his first half season, but the back half of the season showed tremendous enough progress that he was pre-season ranked the following year. Our expectations of Rhule are low not because of Rhule but because we've been beaten down so hard we're afraid to even have expectations. It's just easier to not have them than to risk disappointment. Rhule himself has stated this is closer to the Year 2 situation at his previous stops and all indications we've seen have backed up that claim. Take away the new coach angle for a moment and Nebraska would still be projected to be about a .500 team based on previous performance, returning starters, etc. That's not even conjecture, that's exactly what we've seen the past few years. Nebraska did not need a new coach because it needs a total rebuild. It went out and got a new coach due to chronic underperforming.

I think we will see a pretty good split of carries. I do put some stock in the idea that he began to get worn down last year.

I very, very much disagree. If you win those 2 games you're very likely 4-0 heading into a home game against a very, very likely undefeated Michigan. That would be a nationally televised game and with all of the momentum Rhule has generated since his hire, that would be a ridiculous atmosphere. I know we are all getting ourselves conditioned to the idea Rhule is historically a slow starter, but this isn't the situation at Temple or Baylor and coaches in the transfer portal era are showing just how quickly a program's fortunes can change. I would definitely consider Minnesota to have the advantage, but anything worse than a 3-1 start considering the other 3 opponents would be a red flag.

Minnesota is an interesting one this year. One would think with Fleck having established himself now and so much of the division having new head coaches that they'd be getting a lot more buzz. Even their own fans seem relegated to a 6-7 win season. They do have the tough crossover with Ohio St and Michigan, but the only significant division road game is at Iowa. They have Illinois and Wisconsin at home.

If the thought process is, "do we have room to improve" then I'd say yes. It is another indication of just how poor the run blocking has been to date. I'd wager if we were to run a poll today on everyone's biggest concerns at this point, run blocking would rank extremely high.

They have been the better program the past few seasons, but not dominant against Nebraska, specifically. Frost had the big win year 1, Minnesota had the big win in his year 2, and I think its been one score losses for Nebraska since.

The biggest advantage to the dorms is time. Fall camp is the one time of the year the NCAA isn't hovering over you with a stopwatch. By putting everyone together, it greatly decreases downtime and distractions and can allow everyone to maximize the amount of football related work that can be done in a day.

I have no idea why your post is so hostile, but maybe you should reconsider the fact mine isn't intended to be argumentative.

If we were ranking teams by how unpredictable they are coming into this year, Colorado probably has to be number 1 due to the social studies experiment they are running, but TCU would likely rank very highly, too. If you look at the 10 actual football regular season games they played (Colorado and Tarleton St dont count) TCU had (4) one score games, and although they defeated KSU by 10 they were down at one point by 18 in that one. TCU was a very good football team last year, but they were also a few bounces away from being an 8 or 9 win football team. If that were to have happened, we'd be talking about them being a plucky darkhorse this year, similar to how we view Texas Tech. Instead, they're preseason 5th in the Big 12 and that may end up being too high. They have some exciting transfers but they lost an awful lot -- including their starting QB and OC. That's huge for a team last year that was so offensively dominant.

Chip Kelly was 1st and 2nd, respectively, in his 2nd and 3rd seasons (12th in season 1). The variance between him and everyone else then was negligible and the variance between him then and the NFL now is also negligible. The NFL is simply a slower paced league and it's very hard to speed it up to any real degree. "About 2 quarters" is pretty much spot on before an NFL coach comes to that conclusion.

Despite the fact rules have changed to negate most of the advantages, there are still teams (notably in the Big 12) that try to play at that 80-85 play range. Most of the upper tier teams are now about* 70 or so plays per game and expect Rhule to play at about that sort of pace. *Note: reduce these numbers by ~5 plays per team per game as the NCAA implements rules to lower the total play count and shorten the overall game time.

Bring it on. If they want to play fast, they can't substitute, and that's fine with us. We don't have a defense that relies on running a bunch of personnel groups to match up. When they substitute we can rotate guys.

Is there a real possibility they don’t do the stadium renovation? I’ve seen speculation from various sources, but nothing with any substance attached.

As more and more of the Big Ten comes to realize you're not actually legally obligated to punt every 4th play, it will be interesting to see if Iowa can hold up. Last year they had a negative differential in practically every stat with the notable exception of turnovers. That means the difference in what their offense generated in a particular stat was less than their defense gave up in that stat. That's remarkable as they had a legitimately good defense last year, even when adjusted for pace of play.

If you want a lifetime job, just coach at Northwestern. You only need to win 3 games, and they don’t even have to be in the same year.

And where else can you lose to Howard the Duck and people be like “that guy did a really good job this year.”

I think the beauty of the game is in the variance of styles you can deploy. Even when the pendulum seems to swing one way, as more offenses copy that more defenses adjust to it and then that is an opportunity for it to swing the other way. The Big 12 of recent years is a good example of that. To me what you do is not as important as how you do it. Looking at great offenses in college football over the years, one commonality you'll see is they often have a set of core concepts they get really good at and then they branch out off of that. Here's our core play, here's the constraint plays, and here are the complimentary plays. In terms of this conversation where we're talking about how play calling affects opportunity and how to counter defenses, I think this branching logic works well. In terms of Satterfield, I honestly don't have a great feel for how specifically this will play out at Nebraska, partly because his time at Temple and South Carolina are very different.

I figured out where I screwed up here. That graph can't be about football defenses, because KU is on there and they didn't play any defense last year. I think it has something to do with cookies. Those ones on the perimeter are the people who put raisins in everything. They think they are really clever and I'm like stop it you can't put raisins in a peanut butter cookie. Then that group in the middle, with like everyone stacked on top of each other, are the chocolate chip people. They all got the recipe off of the back of the bag.

Hopefully he doesn't throw like one.

There are several examples over the years of the reputational harm done to head coaches fired for off the field reasons. Fitzgerald is still a pretty young guy for a head coach, so if his attorneys were to seek not only damages related to his current contract but also future earnings he could have made, then that number could exceed 100 million or more.