ColoradoHusk

Beck and Nick Gates must be going to the same training table.

Come on the camera adds 15 lbs!!!

It will be interesting to see how teams adjust to NU's lack of ability to run the ball. I know Northwestern's strength on D is to stop the run, and their secondary is pretty weak. I am not sure about Minnesota & Iowa. If I were a DC, I would sit back in coverage and focus on stopping the pass, mix up coverages and blitz packages, and almost dare NU to run the ball.

I haven't listened to the podcast yet, but I will. It sounds like Beck didn't have the drive and interest in sports that matched his athletic ability and arm strength. That's not a knock on him, but some people have outside interests that blossom once they reach adulthood.

Dirk had had great interviews in this podcast series. The recent ones have been with a few more obscure sports personalities from the area, but he hit a lot of big names in the first batch of podcasts. The one with Carol Frost was outstanding though.

We can only judge UCF by the teams they have played against and the results against those teams. They have done a very good/great job of going out and winning those games by wide margins (except for Navy, which by 10 is still a good win on the road). Playing at SMU this week will be a good test for UCF.

I would probably say that UCF has good talent for a G5 team, but I don't think UCF should be overly penalized by fans for playing the teams on their schedule. UCF has done a great job of beating down most of those inferior teams. That's what good teams do. UCF has also been able to whip a P5 school on the road. Even if UCF had played (and possibly lost to) Ga Tech, they have had a very good/great season for UCF.

It's definitely a factor. I think a lot of fans (myself included) are bigger college sports and Husker fans over pro sports, because of the lack of a pro team(s).

Chad Johnson was a 1-year player at Oregon State and was recruited by Dennis Erickson out of Junior College. He and TJ Houshmandzadeh were both high profile JUCO recruits that helped Erickson at Oregon State.

The reason I am a Husker fan are: 1. I was born & raised in Omaha, with parents and a family full of Cornhusker fans. Dad was a UNL alum, and had 2 season tickets since early 60s. Going down to Lincoln on gamedays was a big part of my life, and I was able to go to games on occasion as a kid. 2. I attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and am a proud alumni of the school. 3. I am a huge sports fan, so I like following all of the Cornhusker athletic teams.

Damon Benning commented this early in the season, but Riley seems to watch games like an observer, rather than a coach. While he is able to discuss the specific TD play call the next day in his press conference, he wasn't involved in the play call at the time, so he was basically left to being an observer on the play. I understand he's a CEO of a coach, but he takes his hands-off approach to in-game coaching to an extreme.

You can't fear the overall, long-term success of the program based on the short-term fear of losing a few young players and recruits. If the right hire is made at head coach, they will be able to replace those guys and make improvements in the current roster.

Agree that Gates is playing out of position. At this point in the season, Cav and Riley are left to playing musical chairs on the o-line because they can't identify and develop the best linemen.

The difference between Brian Kelly and Mike Riley is that Kelly came in and improved ND right away, including a 12-1 season in 2012. He also had a 10-win season in 2015, before his terrible season last year. Riley hasn't shown that type of improvement at Nebraska.

It's astonishing to see the lack of development on the left side of the line. Foster and Gates were supposed to be the strength of the o-line, but they haven't improved at all in the past 3 years. I know Foster had an injury last year, but the stagnant play from that side of the line is so disturbing.

And we have heard from the first day of training camp that the o-line has struggled with stunts and blitzes.

Wow that play is an absolute mess. The center and left guard have no clue who to block. The right guard and right guard both release to the LB. The TE is slow to trap on the DE, and has 2 guys to block, and doesn't get either one.

I get that all offenses use deception to fool the opposing defenses, but it seems like Riley's/Langsdorf's offense "relies" on deception to be effective. That deception causes over-complication in blocking schemes, and it takes away the "brunt force" nature of successful offensive lines.

Severe tweeted out another play that is basically the same play as above, but it's the run. I am terrible at imbedding tweets or media. It's blocked terribly (no surprise).

Like I said, I have a very basic understanding, so you are probably right. I saw a tweet from Severe that #88 is supposed to kick out the DE.

I haven't done a detailed look of Lee's effectiveness in the red zone. I think his number do take a big dip, but he does need help from his receivers in the red zone. DPE dropped a sure TD pass on a quick read and pass by Lee against Purdue.

From my basic understanding, the concept of this blocking scheme is to simulate an inside zone read, hence the TE "pulling" down the LOS. The goal is that the LB's will read the TE and get sucked up on the play fake. It seems like a pretty complicated play design, but it's a good way to run play action. Of course, that requires the linemen and TE to get blocks, and there are about 4 missed blocks on this one play.

I always tell my kids “don’t try, do!!!”

Purdue loading up the box to stop the run and being burned by play action passes isn’t having the pass game set up the run game. It’s having the run game set up the pass game. What New England (and other spread teams) does is spread out the defense and creates space for their running backs. Now, yes their effective pass game does force defenses to choose to “play the pass” or “play the run”, but their offensive line still has to do well blocking the defense to allow the running backs to get yardage.