Huskerzoo

Is the thinking he's number 1 on our board right now?

And an undefeated season.

I had a nice salad with quinoa and chicken. Thanks for asking!

I want to believe that this is a function of our line play and that we will see it improve over time. I think in year 1, it was more of a function of young TE. The discrepancy between TE use at UCF and here has left me scratching my head a bit.

There are a lot of reasons we should be pessimistic. No doubt we will hear all about this over the next 8 months or so. However, if you've read my posts at all, you know how much I like to contextualize things. Today, I want to talk about our WRs while I eat my lunch. As everyone knows, our team is in the midst of a serious youth movement. I think we all recognized that needed to happen, but we seem to be in disagreement about how much that should be impacting our team. While the impact is very obvious in some places (e.g. Jurgens snapping the ball), I don't think we have appreciated just how much youth hurts us at WR. This manifests in two different ways, the first is catching, the second is blocking. The numbers I'm going to talk about are without regard for RS status. If someone wants to dig that deep, they're welcome to. Of the 200 leaders in receiving yards in the NCAA this year (up to this point) 16 are FR, 46 are SO, 80 are JR, and 59 are SR. In looking at our WR corps, we had 3 SR (Noa, Mike Williams, Woodyard), 1 JR (Spielman: The only player we had in the top 200, ranked at number 47 overall), 2 SO, and 3 FR listed in our 2 deep. I would make the argument that our SRs were all borderline P5 talent. However, that's neither here nor there. What it does suggest to us is that the best is yet to come. As we start having our WRs mature, we're going to start having more productive years. This year I think we were particularly vulnerable to a drop off because we lost a number of players expected to contribute. We are without a doubt in better position for next year as FR in particular struggle (16/200 of the top receivers). With regard to blocking, this comes down to guys putting in effort and getting bigger. Iowa in particular took advantage of this all game this year. This will help our screen game in meaningful ways. I didn't have the time to run the analysis based on line experience, but if you look at our OL rankings, they weren't pretty and this is clearly another area where experience is going to pay huge dividends.

Ah yes, Huskerboard, where the reactions are so big because the stakes are so small. Please refocus on Manning and take this side conversation to the shed.

I don't know his interest in us. Has visited Oklahoma and Florida.

I think it's also important to remember context. Omar's in his young 20's and is being wined and dined by some of the wealthiest programs in the country. As someone in my mid-thirties, if you told me I could on the one hand be done with something and not have to think about it for a few months or could have paid trips around the country to see great examples of something I love during which people would tell me how great I am....I'd choose the second one. I can only imagine what that's like for someone in different circumstances than me. This is especially true given that he can't get on campus and have the benefits on being on campus early one way or another.

Sounds like the guys on Huskermax (I'm assuming we can reference them now) think this is going to be a very difficult pull. Would be a really nice add, but I get the feeling this is going to be a hard one.

I'm on my phone so this may be a little more disjointed than usual. 28ppg 415.8 ypg. That's where the offense is sitting after 2019. In 2018 those numbers were 30ppg and 450ypg. I'm one of those people that doesn't think hcsf suddenly forgot how to coach. I think this is a case where it really might be we're missing some pieces. Going to the point of the post keep your eye on two things if you rewatch the game. The first is the inside of our line, in particular boe. He was getting rocked all game by a first round draft pick. This was impacting every aspect of the game. I think this is the first problem that is going to get addressed; our guard play. He wasn't doing well on linemen and we were also missing key blocks on our screens when that was the guards assignment. I think that this is going to get solved next season. Farniok will slide inside, we'll have better tackle play and better guard play we will be young again though. The guards getting blown up made for problems developing deep plays and consequently the run game. So instead you try to get things moving laterally. The screen is pretty simple in theory, you get your wr or a linemen as mentioned above to make key blocks and it functions a bit like a run. Our second problem is the lack of big bodied we who can sustain blocks. If you rewatch, we were struggling with blocks enough that our players didn't have time to make one man miss. These problems were amplified by injuries to our skill players (Noa, Warner, Robinson), suspensions, and transfers. Its further compounded by some of our rb right now being one trick ponies. I expect Mills will be spending a ton of time in front of JUGS so that we aren't showing our hand every time he's in the backfield. We're in on the right players but I'm more concerned about this as we don't have the bodies on the team yet to fix it. With regards to rb who can catch, we are doing ok, they just need to develop, stay healthy, and not get kicked off the team. I think a focused mo Washington changes this whole season for us. So given the game that Epenesa was having, we had to adjust to a lateral. If we get the blocking we need, we get the results we need. I think what we saw this season is the floor that this offense is capable of. We are yet to see the ceiling, which I think is a top 10 offense when the pieces are in place.

Time to see if Rudy was really joking about that insurance or that was like when you joke about having a crush on your highschool best friend.

Are you talking about impeachment or removal? Two very different questions. Remember that Clinton was impeached, he was not removed. Additionally, I'm curious as to what additional information you would need to conclude that Trump asked for an investigation? Or are you of the belief that it's not a big deal one way or another? Finally, what potential crime did the Bidens commit? If it wasn't a federal crime in the USA, should we be asking other countries to pursue criminals? That is to say, if Trudeau called up Trump and was like hey, I want you to investigate someone for me, we're trying to clean up corruption. We should listen? Why?

That was when I joined the board...or there abouts. Good thing that this is definitely not EZ-E.

I was referring to by Ukraine. Announcing that during the Sondland hearing where we keep hearing that the investigation didn't happen.

That's some A+ level trolling.

The world is listening to 2 different debates. Both sides are winning their own debate. As it relates to Ukraine interactions, it's hard to argue that what has been put forth hasn't occurred. The right side of the aisle is only discussing Hunter Biden and how what he did was wrong. Given this is a football forum, I'll put it this way. The Democrats are arguing that we're having a losing season (a fact) and that's really bad (an opinion) and that things have to change (a consequence). The Republicans are arguing that Eric Crouch was a better quarterback than Tommy Armstrong (a thing that may or may not be true, but is unrelated to the conversation we're trying to have).

Now on to the important question. Does anyone care? This feels like the "I could shoot someone on Pennsylvania Ave and be fine" defense will be used. I don't think the Rs will throw Rudy under the bus.

I wonder if he's going to go so far as to say that his appointment wasn't on the up and up...assuming it is.

Oh absolutely, I think it's important to highlight these things in meaningful ways though. Our whole protect the party by denying our own eyes and ears thing always gets a little too USSR/1984 for me.

I could be wrong, but on that list of things Nunes said democrats were claiming....weren't a number of them confirmed?

You're absolutely right and that's a very fair concern. I think to kind of bring in what @knapplc has been saying, it feels like there are reasons to believe in the offense. Last season we could see it there and we thought we had *it* with Mo & 2AM. I don't think anyone thought our OL would be the way it is this season or that we would be booting Mo from the team forever/for now. Then we have this game against WI and we're cranking out yards against a good team. So we're optimistic again because we see what could be. More so when you think of the interior of our line having another year of experience and perhaps with players in their natural positions. We'll have some depth at almost every position on the OL, plus we keep all of our play makers pending any surprises. Frankly, I think our Red Zone problems are a function of not having the right sized bodies on the line yet. I don't think we can overstate how weird our OL recruitment was under Riley. We also see hope for our LB play improving, but I think if we did a straw poll, more people would say they worry about our D than O going into next season. It's a wait and see situation, but given the past two seasons and the context surrounding the last two seasons I'm 100% sold on our O. I understand what we're going for and I think we'll get there and soon. With the D, I want to see what we do with the right linebackers.

I don't disagree with you, but I'm not so anti what's been going on. I think essentially there are two forms of defense, in one you force the other team to play perfectly. They grind out a few yards at a time and as long as they play perfectly they could probably drive and score. This is what I associate with teams like Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan State. Not a ton of teams have the discipline and execution to be able to grind it out like that. These are complimented by ball control offenses as you're not going to get a lot of quick strikes, so if you get the lead it's hard for the other team to come back from being down. I think the other type of defense is where you force the other team to make mistakes. You're going to get chunked here and there, but eventually the other team is going to be doing things they don't want to do and it's going to go your way. This is better used by teams with high scoring offenses as it forces teams to utilizes more risky plays. There are without a doubt teams that can be high scoring and still be ball control. Wisconsin a few years ago was like this. There are teams where they are so talented or deep they can do whatever they want. I think OSU this game is a good example of that. I don't agree with your main point, but I 100% see where you're coming from. Given our personnel, I'm really not sure what adjustments we could be making. We dismissed three guys from the team on one side of the ball we thought would be contributing and even if we didn't, the inside of our OL is weak and one of our tackles is playing out of position (even if he is giving it his all). It seems as though we've isolated the bad apples to the D side of the ball (I might be reading into things here), so there's culture issues, we also have LBs who can't execute their assignment or take a good angle with any consistency. It's entirely possible it might be a coaching issue, but it may just be the cards you're dealt. Off suit 2-7 only has so many outs. You wait until you get dealt a new hand and do the best to minimize your losses.

It's true, what's that got to do with what I've said though? It's true across of levels of football. We need to get better at it. Still has nothing to do with what I've said.