ColoradoHusk

3 minutes ago, knapplc said:

 

The best formula for Nebraska moving forward is to focus on what we do best, not what the opponent does worst. We are not going to morph into a team that can take advantage of an opponent's weakness at this point. 

 

Even if they know we're going to run, we're far more likely to be successful doing that than slinging it around. 

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”. 

21 minutes ago, Red Five said:

 

We threw the ball 15 times in the 1st half (plus probably a handful of other attempts not showing up due to sacks/scrambles).  We threw the ball 11 times all game vs Purdue and 17 times all game vs Northwestern.

 

Here are the down and distances of those pass plays up to our last drive of the 1st half which was affected by time left in the half and penalties. 

 

2nd and 4 for -3 yards

3rd and 7 incomplete

1st and 10 for 5 yards

1st and 10 incomplete

1st and 10 sack

2nd and 15 for -4 yards

3rd and 19 interception

3rd and 4 for 27 yards

1st and 10 incomplete

1st and 10 for 22 yards

1st and 10 incomplete

3rd and 11 incomplete

 

We tried to throw 12 passes, with 6 of those on 1st downs (out of 11 1st and 10s) and 3 on 3rd and longs.  2 of those 3rd and longs were caused by losing yards on 2nd down passes and one due to an incomplete 1st down pass.

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. 

1 minute ago, TGHusker said:

So I wonder how The Rhule motivates this week.  I didn't hear if we had a Sunday practice??   Devastating turnovers can affect the O and take the steam out of the D.  

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”

1 minute ago, Mavric said:

I thought the Minnesota one was actually a TD.

 

 

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

Just now, knapplc said:

For as bad as we bash the O Line, through nine games we're still leading the Big Ten in rushing. 

 

I don't think they're as bad as we make them out to be. I just think we need to be passing less than 28 times a game (a season high), especially against a team in the bottom half of rush defense in the conference.

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. 

1 minute ago, teachercd said:

Perhaps he was a mess because HH has gotten all the practice time?  

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.  

10 minutes ago, teachercd said:

What I don't get is we have almost no sample size for sims and we have a huge sample size for HH.

 

But it seems like HH can fumble, drop snaps, throw to the other team like it is his job and it is no big deal.

 

 

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. 

1 hour ago, admo said:

My bad, that's probably Conti because she does look like Sauer from the Big Ten.  But yeah, weird to be handsy by Deion.  Although I have seen in games when the male referees not get bothered by it from him.  Probably because he's a big celeb/former super bowl champion and icon.  Would be hard to not be his buddy if he's cool with you lol

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. 

3 minutes ago, admo said:

Yeah he needs to keep his hands off the refs, regardless if he likes to do that, but especially to a lady official in the pic above.  

 

She does many big ten games, including the Huskers.  Story on her was that she was once married to a guy, divorced him, and moved on to a lady partner.  Which is fine.  I think she might have married her, I forget.  But anyway, Deion gets enough celebrity calls from the refs that he doesn't need to put his hands on them.  

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. 

30 minutes ago, Mavric said:

 

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. 

11 hours ago, Undone said:

Wisconsin keeps having these games where they actually put up a decent amount of yards but really don't walk away with that many points. They had 344 yards of offense in their 20-14 loss to Indiana today (who racked up 261 on offense).

 

Obviously being -2 in the turnover margin was probably the difference maker.

 

Really surprised they lost to Indiana and Iowa.

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.

7 minutes ago, Wistrom Disciple said:

The defense was ok yesterday, but did give up some frustrating big plays to a Michigan State team that does not have a lot going for it right now. Going into the season, pocket pressure was the key after abysmal results in that regard the past several years. Now that we are finding success with that on occasion, and improved our tackling, the next logical step is building on that to force turnovers consistently. 

 

That said, they were not the reason we lost. 

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.

19 minutes ago, DefenderAO said:

If we played like today in October, we lose at least one of those prior games. 
 

We caused zero turnovers, played our worst defensive game since Michigan, and our QB and OLine play was awful. 
 

Haarberg should not see a snap next year. Sartterfield should be on notice. And Raiola needs to go. 

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.

37 minutes ago, knapplc said:

Aside from the bad officiating, which hurt both teams at different times, this game mostly looks like Michigan State did their homework and figured out a few things.

 

They kept a safety deep in center field for that play-action bomb we've been hitting on. Picked it off, on a play that would have been the game-winning touchdown if Haarberg had just thrown it to his receiver. Re-watching that play, Bullock fakes to the center of the field and then cuts back, creating some really good separation. Just as he fakes, Haarberg throws - to the center of the field. He bit on the WR's fake.

 

Hutmacher was not double-teamed the entire game. He was pretty much contained by their Center one-on-one. Robinson wasn't wreaking havoc like he has the last three games, either. The entire front seven seemed uninspired. For a defense going up against  a banged-up O Line, we should have had a lot more pressure on their QB. I don't know if Polar Bear and Robinson are slowed by injuries, but they have drastically dropped in production the last two games.

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.

1 hour ago, admo said:

Earlier in the year, Colorado State would have won if they didn't play prevent defense on a 95 yard drive.  

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.

Just now, HuskerInLostWages said:

So fair catching at the 5 and 7 is now "safe"?  I think I would chance it because either way you're QB is in the end zone if he has to throw.  Going with common sense here because the ball will bounce into the end zone, to either side or gain us yards, a chance I would take 100/100 times.

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. 

27 minutes ago, Gage County said:

Kudos to CU for scoring 5 points! WTF?

They are now up to 12!

2 minutes ago, gossamorharpy said:

It sounds like you woke up today expecting a for sure win and finally learned we don’t have an offense. If you’ve paid attention at all, you wouldn’t be shocked- our offense has been garbage all year and has largely been boosted by our defense and timely turnovers. 
 

I get it, we lost, but you’re being ridiculous looking forward to next year. Schedule isn’t even that bad, outside of Ohio state there isn’t a game we’re a for sure loss in and that includes usc. 

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

4 minutes ago, GSG said:

 

I like the part where Deion, the DC, and 4 other coaches screamed at the CB after the play for a few minutes. 

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. 

4 minutes ago, Undone said:

 

I was thinking about this. Putting up 17 points on the road on offense at least isn't terrible. Our defense holding them to 20 points is also not terrible.

 

Our pass blocking at times was pretty bad and Haarberg was missing throws. For me this one was on the offense; gotta be able to average like 6 points per quarter at least.

 

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. 

1 minute ago, Packerhuskerfan said:

Our defense is the best part of this team, but also overhyped.  They've lucked out from bad drops in some previous games and they just don't create enough turnovers.

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. 

11 minutes ago, huskerfan74 said:

Everyone looks beatable until we play them and suddenly they become world beaters or we make them look like world beaters. That is our super power since Bo was fired.

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.