John BarleyCorn

Penalties-No, simply put, we got rode hard and put away wet. Martinez injury-No. Not at all. Situations like the one we were put in tonight, required a bit more creativity, and a willingness to try anything to catch lightning in a bottle on a night like tonight, where points were at a premium. WR's not catching-This falls on Gilmore, a member of the offensive staff, which is headed up by Watson. Von Miller-that's where the offensive play selection comes into play. Attack with the shovel pass, run a TRUE option play a la 1990's, mis-direction, toss sweeps. Anything but the zone read, reading off of Miller.

Did we score an offensive touchdown? Or have any consistent productivity? In big games, with Watson as our OC, he is nothing more that "consistently inconsistent."

Exactly. I turned to my brother during the game and said that the personnel grouping going in on 3&7 just gave it away. I'm not the most critical Watson basher. I loved what he did with our offense in 2008, still was impressed for the most part in 09 just for the sheer ability to even remotely dial something up once in a while, given what we had to work with. But enough is enough. I get that the Power I Option attack isn't coming back, but could we at least be able to smash the middle of the D like Wisconsin does? Or hell, like we used to do? He's gotta go, especially, like I said, not developing depth behind Taylor, and predicating most everything off of the zone read. As for Burkhead, I completely agree. The Halfback option pass would have been just what the doctor ordered on that drive, as the gaggies were selling out to stop the run.

Thanks Shawn Watson. Thank you so much for fooling us into believing that we would have an explosive offense this year. Thank you for not developing quality depth behind Taylor. Thanks for predicating every single damn part of your offense off the zone read. Enough shotgun bullsh#t. Line up and maul somebody.

What I'm hearing is Zac broke his wrist.

I don't care what anyone says, I was at that Alamo Bowl as well, and that was awesome.

Sounded like Sharpe and Davison were calling a damn boxing match.

It said Lincoln ****in' Nebraska on the front, and I don't know what it said on the back. Any ideas where these are available? TIA

I played against him in high school, he was hands down the best player I faced while I went to Gretna. He was a fullback, and I was a DT and I hated tackling him. Very happy to see him get some PT in a big game. GBR

NU 34 Okie Lite 24 Rushing: 307 yards Passing: 171

A chance to equal our stride

Let me start this off by saying first, a national championship should be out of the question, but to me, that should never have been the goal to begin with. A North division title, and a Big 12 title are our goals, and those are still very attainable. We're getting to the teeth of the schedule, where it's do or die time. We've got to take care of business in Stillwater and punk Mizzou in Lincoln. By the end of the season, we will be right where we need to be, Pelini has a 9-2 record after Halloween. That's when playing your best football counts the most. This loss sucks, may take a while to get over...but, we will rise up again and take out our aggression on the 'Pokes. Go Big Red and LEAVE NO DOUBT.

he is so old, he still pays his bills with green backs just giving it a shot That's pretty damn good. The good ol' green back dollar.

High-five if you hate Texas

Kevin kinda reminds me of Woody Harrelson as well.

1110 KFAB

My best friend is about to be deployed to Afghanistan on thursday. Huge Husker fan, except his chief is a "diehard" whorns fan.

Sounds about right.

If I'm not mistaken, I think that is a fraternity/sorority football block t-shirt. Damn...thanks anyways man!

Does anyone know where I can find the shirt with the picture of Pelini, kind of like the Barack Obama campaign posters? I believe the caption is "Bolieve" underneath the picture. TIA

Rex Burkhead.

Pat Summitt says "thank you"... I don't say this often, but that woman down right scares me.

Hell no. No more one year hired guns at QB.

The problem there is in the coaching. Playcalling in a sequential based offense like the Option and a non-sequential based offense like the West Coast or Run N Shoot is completely different. All of that beauty you're seeing in those option/wishbone/veer offenses is predicated on a series of plays meshing together. In a non-sequential based offense we're more focused on down and distance and dictating individual matchups. It's a completely different way of playcalling and you see it on the field. You can tell when a coach was taught in a sequential based offense, even if he isn't currently coaching one, by how his plays flow. One of my biggest beefs with most playcallers isn't matching tendencies or down and distance, but in their inability to call a related sequence of plays. We're just far enough out of those sequential offenses being popular that today's coaches just weren't brought up with that knowledge. Paul Johnson does a great job, but he's an endangered species. Sequential based playcalling is a fine art and we're quickly running out of teachers to teach it. I completely and totally disagree. The option has the ability to score from any part of the field, no different than a vertical passing attack. I think the point that the option can suffer when it is behind has been lodged more heavily in Nebraska minds because a few losses to a few certain teams stick out so heavily. The option works better when you aren't limited by time constraints, but so does every other offense. It doesn't matter if you're a vertical passing attack, or one that utilizes a lot of bubble screens......as soon as the game conditions start dictating a course of action, the defense has a distinct advantage. No offense is made to come back from 2 or 3 scores down because all offenses at their core have to be balanced around certain plays, actions, and looks in order to achieve peak efficiency. An option offense may find more 8 and 9 man fronts, and a vertical passing offense may find 6 blitzers in their ear.......the course of action by the defense has may change, but the underlying premise doesn't. It doesn't matter much what offense you run, if you find yourself 2 or 3 scores down against level competition your odds of winning that game dramatically decrease. This argument will play out both for run heavy and pass heavy offenses........."load the box", "pin their ears back"......you've heard it all before. If anything, that's probably what has given so much power to the idea of a "balanced" offense, because it is seen as an offense that is somehow less restricted. But the truth is, any offense is going to struggle in that situation, regardless of pass/run ratio or primary design. If game conditions can take something away from you and start changing how much of the field I as a defense have to cover, then your offense is behind the 8 ball. College Football is a game of super-teams. The NFL is so neutral in nature that you can have teams that can't run the ball, play little defense, but have a great passing attack and still make the Super Bowl. That doesn't happen in college football. Great college teams can't have great offenses and bad defenses. Or the other way around. The talent discrepancy is just too great. To say the option needs a great defense, in my mind, is a specific case of saying all college football offenses need great defenses. Finally, time of possession: I'm sorry I don't have the time this morning to delve into this concept more, because I feel the concept is one that deserves more discussion. It is in large part because the correlation stats are misleading (teams with high offensive time of possession tend to win, but it is generally the case that they have high time of possession figures because they were winning due to the fact a team leading a game will want to decrease scoring opportunities more than one trailing). It is seen as being controlled by the offense, with the idea of defensive time of possession not entering the mainstream and the notion that a team wants to chew up the clock. Not so. You give any team the opportunity to score on one play, and they're going to take it! Sometimes teams find they need to manage the game more because they don't score as efficiently as the other team, and in that sense you can level the playing field a bit by reducing the overall number of possessions, but no team truly 'wants' to "control the clock". Even when the popular offenses involved mostly 2 back/2 Tight sets, you went out and got the biggest, fastest RB you could so that you could score more big plays than the other guy. Big plays win football games. In what form that big play takes may have changed, but that mantra never has. But what happens when you don't have the home-run hitter at I back? That's when you really rely on scoring drives with a short field. 1998 Nebraska is a perfect example. No big time I back, had to rely on just grinding it out down into the redzone. And please, don't bring up the fact about the talent we lost from the year before. Losing talent is just part of the cycle in college football. Yes, the option can score from anywhere, but it was an offense that was designed to grab the lead and not relinquish the lead. Hell, we've iterated and re-iterated the points of the option and the workings of the offensive system, that I really don't know if there is much else to say about this topic, other than it was successful and possibly one day, it could be successful again.

It's always been that way. Teams formulate offenses to defeat the popular defense at the time and then defenses attempt to adjust........kicking off the next popular defensive era. Defensive constructs have typically been more generic and more rigid, and therefore once an offense found a way to defeat one defense they could have success against the popular defensive construct of the era. The idea that an offense has to attack multiple fronts is a relatively new concept in football history. Not only do defenses run so many more fronts these days, but run a lot more games and stunts with a wide range of blitz packages off of those combinations. Defensive innovation is at the forefront, mostly be necessity. The rules have so heavily skewed the advantage to the offense that you have to be more creative than ever. Defending the passing game through physicality just leads to too many hankies......gotta outsmart them now. The side that makes the other side think the most has the advantage in today's game. i agree with your last line of your post. and that's why i believe the option will make a comeback. the defense has to think about keeping quarterback containment, taking care of the dive back, and keeping the pitch man and the relationship between the quarterback and the pitch man strung out horizontally. Not to mention, that element of surprise of the QB dropping back on an option pass. The wishbone is a perfect example of an offense making the defense "think" too much. The flexbone at GT under Johnson is another example of that, showing that the option can work. Now am I saying that GT could win a nat'l title with that offense? No, they simply don't have the horses. They have damn good talent on the offensive side of the football, but what they need is a combination of better defensive coaching and talent. what an option offense needs to compliment it, is a defense that can get the ball back to the them. Now the risk with being an option oriented team, is the fact that your team philosophy has to tie in with each facet of the game. An option team likes to chew clock, give the defense a rest. The defense, in turn has to shut-down the opponents attack, since the option isn't a come from behind offense. And special teams have to be top notch, most notably in the in coverage of kicks and punts to keep the opposing offense at bay, and give your offense a short field with the return game.