ColoradoHusk

Very fair points, and I agree with you for the most part. Satt did try a G-belly option pass which worked great for 2 big plays the previous 2 weeks, and it didn’t work against Michigan Statw. I honestly don’t know if we are good enough running the ball to do “only that”.

Thanks for those details on the first half. The argument could be made that Satt was too pass happy, but a lot of “experts” thought the best way to attack Michigan State was passing. The trouble with that is NU isn’t good enough passing to take advantage of that. NU did come out running the ball well in the 2nd half, but stopped itself after Bullock dropped a pass which would have gained an important first down. MSU then went ahead by three the next drive, and NU struggled to move the ball in the 3rd quarter and early 4th, especially running the ball.

Can really only do the hard Sunday night practice once a year. I think Rhule can approach the team with “we won 3 games with great energy, and then you didn’t bring that energy against Michigan State. Let’s get back to the energy we had in October, in front of our home crowd, and be the physical team we want to be”

So did I. Unless, they went to the conference for clarification after the fact.

Yeah, NU passed 28 times, with a number of other pass plays negated due to sacks or QB scrambles. However, that number is inflated due to being down 2 scores for most of the 4th quarter. Also, NU was finding themselves in a number of 3rd and longs, which generally requires more passing. I do think Satterfield went away from successful running plays too soon, trying to mix in a play action pass or a screen, but they didn’t work. Satt is trying to generate big plays to score, and while it worked afainst NW and Purdue, it didn’t work against Michigan State.

That’s probably true, but Haarberg hadn’t done anything in the previous weeks to lose his starting job, because NU was winning. Yes, NU may have been winning despite him, but HH was gaining the trust and leadership from his teammates. Now, if they pull HH, it could be considered a knee-jerk reaction to one loss. The QB situation is a complete mess, but I don’t think anything can be done unless Haarberg gets injured or NU is losing so bad in a game that a backup comes in and plays well.

But Sims came into the Purdue game and was a complete mess. I don’t think Sims can be trusted to play at all. Another thing is that with Haarberg keeping the #1 job “until he lost” he’s been getting most of the reps in practice and they have been working their game plan around HH, and doing what they think they can do to attack the defense with HH. If the coaches were going to make a change to Sims or Purdy, they would need to do it at the beginning of the week, so that new QB gets the bulk of the reps in practice.

All good, dude. You more know about these individual refs than I will never know. I’m sure Deion knows he can try to be buddy-buddy with the refs to potentially get some calls go his way. The whole end of the game was weird. Deion calling a timeout with 2 seconds left, and then approaching the side judge like that.

Interesting story about that referee, but I thought referees work for a conference, so how would she do a lot of Big Ten games. Yes, there are times when the 2 conferences play against each other where they will use one conference crew or another (usually the visiting conference). Is that what you are referring to? Either way, I thought it was weird how handsy Deion was being last night with the ref, regardless of the ref being a woman.

Watching GameDay yesterday, they were all speculating that CU was going to run the ball more under the new play caller. I know CU was trailing by 2 scores the entire 2nd half, but Schurmer had only 11 runs to their running backs, while having over 40 pass plays. @teachercd said that Lewis wanted to run the ball more, but Deion said no, because Deion wanted to pad Shedeur’s stats. Either way, it could be unraveling in Boulder pretty quickly.

Wisconsin's starting QB got injured midway through the Iowa game and has been out the past 2 games. I think Braelon Allen was also out vs. Indiana, and seems to go off the field a lot during games with some type of "injury". This is a very average Wisconsin team.

The commentators in last night's game seemed like they were a Pro-Colorado crew, but they also had very good points in that CU never tried to give their o-line help against the pass rush. It's basically like Deion wants to run his team like a 7 on 7 team, with his son as the QB throwing the ball around to a bunch of stud athletes. Yes, CU does have Hunter and some other very good receivers, but that's not enough to be a consistently good offense.

After each of the prior 3 games, most of the fans said "the defense won those games, despite the offense". However, many of those same people thought "the defense is going to have a game where they aren't as sharp, will the offense be able to do enough to win that game". The good but not great defensive game came yesterday, and the offense didn't have enough to make up for it.

For the most part, Nebraska played very similarly against Michigan State to how they did against the teams in October. The key differences against Michigan State were: Secondary didn't play as sharp as they have earlier in the season, and let up a few big plays Credit Michigan State's QB and WR's for making some big throw and catches which Illinois, Northwestern, and Purdue didn't Michigan State added a couple of trick plays to play off NU"s tendencies to be aggressive to the ball, especially from the secondary, One of those worked, and one of them was broken up by a big play from Sanford Michigan State scouted the G-Belly option pass and regularly kept a safety deep. Against NW and Purdue, NU got a WR wide open behind the defense by the design of the play, and that didn't happen against Michigan State. Finally, this game was on the road, where there wasn't a home crowd to boost the energy of the players. Yes, Illinois was on the road, too, but that game was a week after Rhule laid down the gauntlet after playing so poorly against Michigan. While that extra hard week of practice worked against Illinois, it's not something the coaches can do every week. In these games against evenly matched teams, which the bulk of these middle to bottom half of the Big Ten are, the games come down to a handful of plays to determine the winner. NU made (or the opponent didn't) those plays in October, and they didn't do that against Michigan State.

Hutmacher may be just wearing down from a full year of playing a lot of snaps. I know he played some last year, but he wasn't getting as many snaps as he is this year. That NT takes a beating every game, so it's natural to wear down some.

Colorado State also played safe and didn't go for a 4th and 1 from CU's 40 when a first down would have won them the game. CSU lost that game as much as CU won that game. Although I do give credit to Shedeur for driving CU down for that tying TD against CSU. Local media in Denver is starting to realize that Deion may not be all that and is giving him criticism today.

I’m just saying it’s done a lot more common than you think. Fair catches at the 7 are very common. Heck, Washington did one tonight at the USC. I do agree with @Mavric in that a couple of the punts fielded by Kemp weren’t the high, hanging, nose down-style. However, the thought that fair catches inside the 10 aren’t done elsewhere is not correct. What was the 10, is now the 5.

They are now up to 12!

The dude is a grump no matter what is going on with NU.

DJ Ugalalala (spelling?) shows glimpses of being so good and so bad from play to play. The dude is big with a huge arm, but he also makes terrible plays. Other teams have figured out what to do against CU, especially against CU’s offense.

The Pat Schurmer experiment isn’t working well. 58 total yards in the first half tonight. Plus, CU threw 2 passes from their own 4-yard line after getting the ball back with seconds left in the 2nd quarter CU punts, gives up a good punt return, and Oregon State scores a TD on their first play. Say what you want about Coach Prime, but that is not a well coached team.

The magic number for me and this offense is 20 points. At 20 or more, I feel good about NU winning. Anything less, that’s a big ask for the defense. Plus, the field position the D needs to defend is impacted by special teams, which struggled today.

I’ve learned that fans still think the “rule” for punt returners to never field a punt inside the 10. This changed about 5-10 years ago when punters became too good at turning the nose over and not having the punt bounce into the end zone. With Kemp not being any threat to run at all, I think he probably could have let some of those try to bounce in the end zone, but catching a punt at the 7 or 8 is pretty typical now.

It’s a good/very good defense. There is still room for improvement, plus it’s hard for them to be asked to win every game on their own.

Three weeks ago, Rhule said “every game in the 2nd half of the season is winnable, and every game is losable.” He wasn’t wrong, and NU is 2-1 so far in that stretch. It’s not realistic to win every 50-50 game. In fact, I would say that every NU has had 6 “50-50” games so far this season and NU has gone 3-3 in them. The long-term goal for Rhule is to improve NU so there aren’t so many 50-50 games.