badgerman27

I could probably post 15 pictures of Nebraska OL holding our DL if I looked hard enough. Our DE Nzegwu was held the entire game. Everyone holds, and they do it on every play. If you think your team doesn't, you are completely delusional. They can't call every penalty. I thought the PI on NU against our TE was a terrible call. As to the punch by Ball, as someone else said the play was over for about 2 sec, and a defender was still pulling on his leg trying to tackle him. I don't like seeing a punch in that situation(no place for it at all), but I can understand trying to get the guy to let go.

Washington is a team that struggled to beat E Wash and Hawaii, both at home. I think they would be a lower-level(7th - 9th place) Big 10 team.

Yes, but you have to defend our offense differently than you would any team in the Big 12. Is there a team in the conference that didn't run some version of a spread offense?

There will be big screens at the Buckyville location, at Union South at the corner of W Dayton and Randall, and I think they also have one at the Stadium Bar, across the street from Camp Randall.

Soooo, are you suggesting we have a new TuffTiger on board???? Is that someone who came over and posted trying to make Mizzou fans look bad? If so, I would say yes.

You can't seriously compare OSU last year to this year's team? Night and day difference in talent. QB much worse, missing players on offense to suspensions, lost several impact players on defense.

Not sure who the knucklehead OP is, but have a hard time believing he isn't a poser. I could see NU struggling, if the conference as a whole wasn't as down as it is now. They might struggle against OSU, PSU, Michigan and Iowa if they were as strong as they usually are, but all of them are down. UW and NU are clearly the top 2 teams in the conference at the moment.

The conference as a whole is the worst it's been in 5-6 years. The QB play at PSU & OSU has been dreadful. They have enough talent to be competitive everywhere else, but the QB play has just killed both schools. Little to no threat in the passing game makes them sitting ducks against teams with good defenses. Michigan being down is bad for the conference. R Rod thought he was still in the Big Least. A 3-3-5 defense in a physical conference like the Big 10? They can't stop anyone from running the football. Last year, we ran the ball against them on 35-36 consecutive plays in the 2nd half. Their passing game consists of 30 yd Hail Mary's. They'll be back to competitive in a couple of years, but as of now they are a middle of the pack team. MSU is a Jekyll & Hyde team. Always have been. They lost 2 great LBs last year, and the replacements haven't been as good. Cousins hasn't been nearly as good this year. Their OL has had injuries. Dangerous team, but not at all what they were last season as of yet. Illinois is much improved over the last couple of years. They are actually playing defense. They're committed to running the football, and their OL has played well. Iowa is way down. Their losses at WR(DJK), and on defense have hit them hard. QB play isn't nearly as good, no matter what the stats might suggest. The kid they have isn't nearly as good as Stanzi was. The talent level at Purdue is way down from a few years ago. So many injuries. Northwestern is a dangerous team at home. They can beat anyone, but then lose to Army. Getting Persa back will help them. Indiana and Minnesota are two of the worst teams in D1. Both with losses to 1-AA schools. UW has some issues on defense. JJ Watt was a big loss. Our front seven just hasn't been as good as we hoped. Still good, but not good enough to be dominant. They have lost gap contain too many times. I think that will be a huge emphasis in practice this week. The back end has been surprisingly good. Much better than expected. The offense has been great. Not many worries there. As a whole, I think the conference has been hurt by teams switching to spread/read option offenses. It has really hurt the passing game. OSU, PSU, and Mich have been impacted more than anyone. In recruiting kids to run a zone read, they have become unable to find players who can throw the football. It may be 2-3 years before those schools are back to a level their fans consider acceptable. Illinois and Northwestern have been able to make it work for them. Iowa and MSU are close. Good enough that they can trip you up if you make mistakes. Indiana, Minnesota, and Purdue are so far from competing for a conference title that they are hardly worth mentioning.

What's strange is putting Denard Robinson as the #1 QB. If Mich was going to remain a read option offense, I could see it. As a QB in a pro style offense? No way at all.

I'd be very surprised if you lost to Michigan. They just don't play defense, their guys aren't physical. We ran the ball on them last year on something like 35 straight plays in the 2nd half of our game last fall. Didn't come close to forcing a punt or stopping a drive. I wish we had them again this year.

I think we are likely to see some QB draws in the right down and distance situations, I expect to see some waggle/bootleg plays to the TEs & FBs in play action. Our OC has really been able to change/tweak his scheme and play calls to take advantage of his players' abilities, and minimize their weaknesses.

Too many people here are looking at his stats from his time at NC St, and are trying to use them as a predictor for what he'll do at UW. What he was asked to do at NC St, and what he'll be asked to do for UW will be 2 entirely different things. For NC St, he spent his time in a shotgun offense, throwing 40+ times per game. At UW, I would guess 70% of our pass game is out of play action, because of our strong run game. Our QBs typically have a lot of easy throws - lots of TE & WR motion, lots of guys crossing the field off play action, lots of clearing routes. That's why we usually have a high completion &, and a low number of Ints. It's a function of the offense's design. He won't have to make play after play with his arm. He'll have to complete the easy throws, and move the chains. He will give us one thing Tolzien could not - the ability to escape pressure when the pocket breaks down, and get some yards with his legs. For those questioning the rest of the team, the OL really isn't a worry at all. We're moving the RT to LT. Kid has been a rock for us at RT, and has the athletic ability to play LT. The starting LG will be a kid who started at C as a true freshman, before a high ankle sprain ended his year. He redshrited last year, due to our OL depth. Bielema often said he was the best OL in practice last fall. Kid is 6-3 330. Just a mauler. C & RG will be the same. RT will be either Josh Oglesby, a 2 year starter who redshirted last fall with a knee injury, or else likely Rob Havenstein, a 6-7 340 RS Fr. LB was mentioned earlier. We get Chris Borland back, moving from WLB to MLB. He redshirted last year with a broken arm. Kid is the best football player on the team. We could play him at RB, TE, FB, DE, LB, S, or K - he would be an impact player wherever he was. At SLB, Mike Taylor has fully recovered from an ACL 2 years ago, that had him playing at half speed last year. We will have a new WLB this fall. At S, we lose Jay Valai. Great attitude, great leader, great locker room guy, but a lousy tackler and cover man. Was a huge hitter, but tried to make every tackle at full speed, and often overran the ball carrier or whiffed completely because he simply refused to break down and make a tackle under control. What we lose in leadership, we make a huge gain in actual playmaking ability. Outside of QB, our real worry was finding a DE who could replace the impact we got from JJ Watt. We have a lot of good, young DEs, just no one who has shown he can be that guy. We have a couple of outstanding athletes at DE, but so far their production hasn't matched their ability. I'm hoping our S&C guy can flip one of their switches, and get one of the guys to play to their ability. He did it 2 years ago with O'Brien Schofield, and did it last year with JJ. He has a way of really reaching guys and getting them to seize the opportunity before them. DE, WR, & CB will be a concern for me, until I actually see guys making plays. Everywhere else, we have above average depth, and at some positions we're deeper than we've ever been - RB, TE, OL, DT, LB. That's why getting Wilson was such a big deal. We could run a QB out there that we could win with, but he wouldn't have the game experience that Wilson is going to bring.

I heard great things about Nebraska fans, and I've heard the complete opposite. Guess what impression blasted_imposter gives you guys? When Penn St joined the Big 10, they thought they were going to dominate the league as well. They've been to 2 Rose Bowls in 16 years. The league is tougher than you think it is.

Feel free to disagree, but yes, that's my opinion. I think wisconsin is a joke. Trying to stop the blitzkrieg with the polish cavalry. I think they will be exposed horribly, and lose by 3 or 4 touchdowns, and probably not score....say 24 - 0 Huskers, or thereabouts. Wisconsin has to beat you in one particular way, which matches up really poorly with Nebraska's team D and other team strengths this year. PSU is late in the season, away game, probably the toughest away environment being furthest from Lincoln and a really huge stadium, lots of pride and tradition. PSU also has a lock on the top talent in their home state year in and year out. I believe the PSU away game will regularly be the toughest game for Nebrasaka, at least until michigan gets on their feet. How about 17-16 PSU? OSU does have the talent to match up with Nebraska, but not enough to overcome the "1st game back" issues for pryor and etc., plus its in Lincoln. Say, 23-10 Huskers. Nebraska wins the division and vs. wisconsin or PSU for the inaugural B1G title. Rematches are tough. Pick 'em. You're entitled to think what you want, but we're capable of beating teams more than one way. We use a strong run game to overpower teams, not because we have to, but because we can. We're usually capable of beating teams throwing the ball as well. Ideally, we want to run the ball around 40 times, and throw maybe 20, many of them play action. That's where we get most of our big plays in the passing game. Our first 3 WRs will be as good as anyone in the conference, and our TE group should be the best. We're not going to have as potent an offense this year, at least early on, due to inexperience at QB. We'll have to rely on the run game the first 3-4 weeks, while our new QB gets his legs under him. While we lost a lot of guys to the draft, we still return a lot of experience. We had pretty good depth last year, and were able to play 2-3 spots down the depth chart in several games, at several different position. We expect the defense to be very good this year. Probably better than last year. One starting LB is fully recovered from a knee injury suffered 2 years ago, and has all of his explosion back. Another missed 10 games plus the bowl last year, and he's our best defensive player. Alvarez has been quoted as saying he's the best pure football player he's ever seen.

That was a great game. Being a triple option QB in high school, I was a HUGE OU fan at the time. I'll never forget watching Tillman vault his way into the end zone. Simply amazing.