Dear Shawn Watson,

[Hercules]

As far as Taylor goes, I agree with zoogies (SHOCKING!!!). The kid played hard tonight, he gave it his all with turf toe and a bad ankle, and the people saying he should go back to California should screw off. Those are probably the same fans who booed Scott Frost. Taylor is a freshman, and he looked like a freshman. He's got lots of time to grow, and he will.

 

I thought the defense played well, but they fell asleep on top of a big lead in the second quarter, which is what they've done all year. It was just another example of our poor discipline coming back to bite us.

 

I think the decision to start Taylor was the right one. He looked healthier than he had been since Mizzou, and he's our starter. That's all there is to it. You could talk about Green or Lee but we don't see the practices, and the last time they went up against OU's d, they didn't look too good either.

 

As far as Watson goes, I thought it was a middling night for him. He had his moments, but he got cute when he shouldn't have (wildcat pass to Taylor), and he was undisciplined in leaving what was working (the Wildcat). Rex was picking the defense apart with the zone read, and we didn't take advantage of that in the booth like we should have. Furthermore, when Taylor is struggling like he was tonight, you do everything you can to get him out of those situations. Roll him out or SOMETHING to get him in space feeling more comfortable.

[Ratt Mhule]

Count me on the fire Watson bandwagon. I have tried to stay out of it for the entire season, but this game was the last straw. His offense absolutely sucks against any team with a remotely decent defense. Let me repeat that, IT SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!! Why would you go away from the wildcat? Why? Why would you pass it to Taylor Martinez on 2nd and 8 in field goal range? Why? Why would you even have Taylor Martinez in at wr, he can't block? Why, Watson, Why? Bc your imcompetent, thats why. I tried to stay out of the debate but your offense sucks! 0 points in the 2nd half, seriously and all you need to do is basically get us to the 50 and Alex can kick a freaking 65 yard field goal for all I care. Your offense can't even do that. You should not be at NU next year by any means. Go to Oregon and learn how to run a real offense.

 

P.S. Prince, you got schooled the whole night, but the one Im gonna remember the most was the 3rd and 24. Instead of making a clean tackle, you try and strip the ball and the receiver got 5 extra yards making it a 4th and 1. Of course OU is going to go for it. Make the tackle and its 4th and 6.

[Micheal]

All on Watson, things must change.

[zoogs]

Consider the following:

 

With four minutes or so left in the game, we trail by three points.

 

We have a placekicker in Alex Henery who can make it 60 yards. 50-55 is no sweat.

 

We have the ball roughly around Oklahoma's 40 yard line.

 

It's 3rd and 4.

 

We got where we are on this drive by letting Burkhead keep it out of the Wildcat. He's been eating up yards. Particularly on this drive.

 

A run up the middle eats clock and probably gets us a first down. Even if it doesn't, it's a 55-or-so yard field goal. With Henery, that's a lock.

 

Almost every single time our quarterback has gone back to pass he's been sacked.

 

Why not let Burkhead carry it out of the Wildcat? I want to know what Coach Watson's line of thinking was with that play call. He needs to be held accountable for such a ridiculous play call at such a crucial point in the game. There are a lot of reasons we deserved to lose this game, but it came down to this one. The right play call on 3rd and 4 at least gives us overtime. Instead he hung his quarterback out to dry on a call that hadn't worked since the first quarter.

 

 

Papersun, I agree with you EXCEPT it was 3rd and 8.

 

I reviewed the play by play on this and didn't realize where we were on the field. We were on the OU39.

 

Easy call. Run. Pick up 0 or positive yardage and let Alex have at it.

 

Instead we call a pass that gets Taylor sacked.

 

This isn't as bad as the following drive because you can argue we really wanted 5-6 yards here to get Alex a better shot at it instead of putting him behind the 8-ball again 57-yard kick. Just because he made one against CU 2 years ago doesn't mean that's a situation you want your kicker in. But with Taylor the risk wasn't worth it. 50% Taylor on this one, he should know he absolutely can NOT take the sack, and 50% Watson for that call. More on Taylor maybe, because it isn't a totally awful playcall when you are in a bad situation to begin with, given the tools at your disposal.

 

Was this the one where Taylor threw the ball into the dirt as he was going down? Isn't it incomplete, or would that have been grounding?

[hskerprid]

My views, feel free to disagree...

 

1) The vitriol directed at Taylor is over the top. Cut his scholarship fund? Taylor sucks? Freshman had a rough game, but that's unmerited IMO. Another example of hype becoming a player's downfall. More moderate voices since the beginning of the year nailed the situation for what it is: Taylor is an athlete at QB, who brings explosion and the big play to the offense while being completely raw as a passer, and prone to cold spells, and extreme cases of nerves. I felt Taylor should not have started, and that's why. But Taylor doesn't suck either...and attitude or not, shouldn't deserve the kind of hate he is all of a sudden getting. I guess I did become a fan of the guy over the games, even while acknowledging that he's a potential bomb waiting to explode and implode the team. Which is a separate issue.

 

2) Defense: you got owned. 17 of Oklahoma's 23 points at least were directly caused by three huge plays given up by the secondary. Cassidy, Hagg, and pretty much everyone (I guess it was Dennard's man). These are good players in a very good defensive system. But these three plays are more costly than I could even begin talking about. There was a lot of good defense today, and a lot of sharpness from Jones with his pinpoint passes. But there was also some giving up big runs up the middle (DL?...) and those three ugly, inexcusable plays. You cannot expect to go against a quality offensive team and make THREE miscues like that, and still expect to win. FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY FIVE YARDS today by the Sooners. I will not call for anyone's heads though. But just think about that. 4-5-5.

 

3) Starting Taylor. Watson called a great game early. The fourth down playaction was ballsy and masterful. Then Taylor loses his cool and doesn't regain it for the rest of the game. Taylor was not prepared to play today IMO. I don't know what to say since we are so thin at QB and Green was even more scary of an option. But this decision to start Taylor, which is Bo's as well as Watson's, should be something to be talked about.

 

4) Watson and the Last Drive. We scored 20 points in the first half and looked on track to do more than our fair share against the Sooners. Indeed, probably most felt if we could put this number up on Oklahoma, we'd win (but see #2: defense). At some point you got to commit to Burkhead/grinding it out. Why am I so defensive of Watson in spite of 2009? Because I loved and embrace the 2009 philosophy, which Bo directed. Shut it down on offense, grab a lead and hang the heck onto it. Keep it out of the realm of killer mistakes, and I don't care if we average 3 yards a carry as long as we are chewing clock and getting a field goal here or there.

 

So WHY, when the game is on the line, we have the ball thanks to Rex on our own 40, with just 20 yards at minimum to go, and nearly 2 minutes on the clock to get there, do we not run it? Rex had success in the Wildcat and we have enough time to average 3 yards a clip and still get to field goal range with a break or two. So we throw a quickslant on first down, fine. But on 2nd and medium, after seeing how Taylor has reacted to pressure ALL DAY, and really, Taylor's dancing around into linemen in the pocket has been a chronic occurence all freaking year. When we can rely on any of our multiple ways to attack the defense on the ground to put us in third and short, why do we call something that has ANY chance at all of putting us into 3rd and 16? There's no criticism on the two plays after that because we were desperate anyways. It's these first two plays that killed us.

 

There, now I know what it's like to play armchair OC. I don't think Watson should be fired, for the usual reasons. Just like I don't think the defensive coaches should be fired. But I think this is fair criticism of a couple of very costly decisions.

5) Bo. This goes right with the above. I loved 2009 because of the conservative approach. Why did Bo go away from that today? It was especially evident on the last game, unless Watson went rogue on Bo, which I doubt, because it was evident on Bo's approach through the day. He did go balls out on this one, which is to his credit, but honestly there were some very dangerous decisions there that could have cost us the game at multiple times. The 4th and 1 was surprising, but it worked. That doesn't mean it wasn't hella dangerous. The fake punt - also surprising, and I'm sad I didn't get to see it. But also EXTREMELY dangerous. We are talking Les Miles dangerous or CU 2008 dangerous if we don't make those 4 yards, late in the game and down 3 in our own territory. And of course the end of the game.

 

Since when did Bo have little faith in our defense? I suppose this game gave him no reason to have faith. Still, I really believe going away from the 2009 approach when the chips were down was a questionable decision. Using it opened up Watson to a ton of unfair criticism, but using it the way it was used in the 2nd half of this game opens up Watson to a lot of valid criticism.

 

6) Misc things on playcalling...the zone read was fine IMO. Not with Taylor, though, after the first few drives. But with Rex out of the Wildcat. All those Wildcat plays were pretty good. Although I would say the throws were very dangerous. Rex should have thrown the second one away (or sooner), and the first one was off target. Good to give them something to think about though. The one that failed was Mike Caputo's bad snap that resulted in a fumble. Throwing the ball with Taylor quickly became a completely untenable option, and yet we stuck with it. I like showing faith to your players, I think it enables them to succeed. But this is a situation where no faith was deserved.

I disagree whole heartedly on the above bolded area. That drive was not the wtf drive. The one prior where we were on the OU 37 in field goal range. Watson puts Martinez back in the gun and he takes a sack which puts NU out of field goal range. Rex was popping the wildcat for 5-6 yds a pop why not run one more to the middle of the field and let Alex tie it? NOOOO put a dancing Taylor in the shotgun and roll the dice. THAT was the drive that made absolutely no sense.Why not show some FAITH in Rex and let him get us to the middle of the field for the tie?

 

Just one example of why Watson needs to go and Bo needs to reevaluate why he let that sequence occur.

[Lincolnite]

1) Taylor played poorly. He looked rattled. But unlike past games, he also looked visibly upset at the end of the game. I liked that. It showed he cares about winning. Hopefully he learns from this game and continues to grow as a player.

 

2) Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice (and again... and again... and again), shame on me. Goodbye Shawn Watson. You're inability to adjust mid-game pisses me off. You're refusal to call what works pisses me off even more. I'll cheer you when you come back, but I'll be cheering even louder when I hear you're leaving.

 

3) Bo, this loss is on you too. Why didn't you take out Taylor? Why didn't you go up into Watson's suite and kill him? This is your team, and until you get rid of the dead weight the majority of the blame will be on your shoulders, period.

[Blackshirtsguru]

I'm so damn tired of Watson running his pop warner play book! The wildcat was working and we go away from it when we had the ball on their 40 yard line! As long as we have Watson at the helm of the offense, we WILL CONTINUE to be a mediocre (and I am being generous!) team on offense.

[irishhusker]

Tmart is a talent at some level. But he is not a team player and I dont think he did us one thing to win the game. Give me a break. We were up 17 0 there are no excuses. He choked plain and simple. Its almost like he tried to make us lose he played so bad. I wont be sad if I never see him in red again.

[fsaddlejr]

Hey, i'm new here but i'm just wondering, why don't we run a spread offense? A ton of other programs use it very efficiently and it worked so well with Joe Ganz a couple years ago.

[bdubb75]

I agree and disagree. I personally think the D deserves some huge credit as we pretty much locked them down on 3rd down all night not to mention on 4th down too. Sure, they gave up 455 yards but OU also had 4 bonus possessions with the turnovers. I blame the offense and the play calling personally. Our offense is looking more and more like Florida's offense. Run the zone option that's easy defended when the D has speed or a good front 4. We run the spread option and our backs for the most part have to run to the sidelines just to try and get the corner because the QB was ZERO threat to run the ball because of injuries. Without a QB that can run the offense, it's not effective (see Florida with a passing QB trying to run the dive/zone/read option). I personally feel like the offense let the team down again. This is a 2 year running thing for the most part as we have almost always had inconsistent QB play over the past 2 seasons. We play close because of our defense. If the offense puts any drive together in the 2nd half, we either tie and go to OT or we win but that didn't happen. Taylor was rolling around into linemen and then getting sacked after holding the ball for about 6 seconds. Sometimes you just have to tuck it and run or throw it away but I really feel like he was out there on guts and wasn't even close to 100% although he didn't limp like he has in past games.

 

Side note: I can't stand the offense we run. We have to very good running backs that can carry the rock and for the most part, both do well with the read option but I would love for a more pro style offense with a fullback and some lead blocking. With a defense like we have, a very Alabama like offense or USC offense would suit us. Of course, these are my opinions but in the games we lost this year, ALL 3 I feel that the offense let us down.

[zoogs]

Roll him out or SOMETHING to get him in space feeling more comfortable.

 

Quick comment here, Hercules. Just because people having been calling for roll-outs from Taylor all season, when his footwork is so poor even when he is healthy and in the pocket - throwing on the run is not really an option with him. I don't know if there's anything to have done to get him to feel more comfortable. Taylor's just Taylor...I do think there is an argument to have not started him, because he's been out for a while, and served a suspension supposedly last game. We could have built around Green. But personally, I did have more confidence in Taylor than Green. It was just disappointing but I don't know if I would argue against the decision as an uninformed fan. It's a push to me right now. If Lee were healthy that's a different story but he hasn't been for a while.

 

I would disagree with the defense getting owned. This is one of the most talented offenses in the league and some mistakes are going to made. Roy Finch and Kenny Stills are going to be beast, and Murray is a damn good RB. I don't place blame on the D.

 

The O never, ever gets a pass for struggling when they play a good defense, though. I'm not really calling for changes but I am noting that they got blasted today and those mistakes hurt us big, even if the OU offense is talented. I guess we've also grown used to our D shutting down any amount of talent on O after last year. It's true, our D this year is not quite as good and maybe that's why we couldn't be as conservative as last year. I guess the alternative is there's nobody to blame, when the situation is as bad as it is. There's just no easy answers then.

 

But we just lost the last Big 12 CCG ever and I'm in a bit of a blaming mood

 

By the way I'll qualify my blame on everything and the D in particular by saying I'm picking at the bad plays and ignoring the good ones they made. They made some baller stops and played a lot of terrific D today. It's just that it will never excuse the one, two, three huge miscues that really swing the difference in a game. Like a QB can play lights out for an entire game in a shoot out, but if he makes one horrible gaffe that results in a pick 6 at the end, that play should get picked apart. Which is also why as much as I have and still support SW, and respect the difficult situation he was in this game, I still view a few of the *crucial* time playcalls with skepticism.

[Jason Sitoke]

2) Defense: you got owned.

 

 

We Husker fans actually EXPECT the defense to win the game for us because we know the offense can't. And when they don't completely dominate an opponent, they got owned?

 

Ridiculous.

[gobiggergoredder]

I want to first say that I am extremely glad that we have the coaching staff that we do and I hope they are here for a long time.

 

I also believe that husker_99 is on to something. I don't claim to be an expert or an insider, but I do have an opinion.

 

I think Bo and the staff are flat out getting out coached right now. They are surviving on Big Offensive plays and those alone are hiding the problems with the rest of team. I think they are getting beat by special teams, field position, penalties, turnovers and an inability to adjust. Players drop passes and are responsible for penalties. It is the coaches responsibility to determine if these players are hurting their team.

 

Special Teams

-Kickoff team is suspect. The only thing that doesn't make everyone hold their breath is that Adi puts in through a good chunk of the time.

-Punt Return. Not only can they consistently not field a punt, they get very little yardage when they do happen to get their hand on it. It took half a year to remove Niles from punt return. Obviously dropped passes were huge against Texas, but punt return absolutely killed the Huskers as well. The Rugby punted 3 times before adjustments were made.

-Punting. We have a great punter. We give up a lot of yards on punt returns. Watch how many huskers are around the ball when the punt it caught vs when we get the ball.

-Punt and kick off teams have been a big factor in the horrible field position the huskers have battled in close games.

 

Offense

-Dependent on big plays. K-State & Missouri. Watch the long runs....backs and qb's aren't even touched. Kyler Reed has been a big play receiver.

-Penalties and drops at the worst times.

-With the exception of the big plays noted earlier, don't appear to making adjustments to what is working. (Using Cody Green to run read option over and over again, going away from Rex running the offense, not throwing on first down against Texas).

-Takes too long to get a play in.

-At times they look unprepared. Can't run a two minute offense.

 

Defense

-Players with a knee on the ground when the ball is snapped.

-No pass rush.

-Blitz doesn't seem to be effective.

-Much like the offense it seems to take a long time to get the play in.

-A mobile qb will destroy this defense. Once a running back or qb gets past the d line they're good for 10 yards.

-Without Lavonte David, they are in serious trouble.

-Great call to change safeties because of poor tackling.

-Defense does a great job when they have 80 yards to play with, but because of bad field position they are giving up points.

 

I would change almost nothing that I wrote 1 month ago. My concern is that they are losing an enormous amount of talent on defense next year. It will be much more difficult for the defense to carry the team.

 

Whether Taylor transfers or not, I believe the QB spot is now wide open. It is amazing to me that the best quarterback on the team is the back up running back. He's a leader and he leaves it on the field. At this point, I don't believe this offense is really much better than 2009.

[blackshirts5115]

there are a lot of things to question in this game, but here's what made me pretty angry. 3 minutes to go, ball at the 50 yard line (which it shouldn't have been because Martinez should have thrown it away). Oklahoma gets called for being off sides so now we are at the 45. it may seem ridiculous, but why not kick the 62 yard field goal? Alex made the 53 yarder by a mile. i'm all for trusting the defense to get a 3 and out with 3 minutes left, which they did. but did the coaches really think the offense would push us back into field goal range? i say put the ball in the hands (or on the foot) of the teams MVP Alex Henery and let him show the world that he is the best kicker in NCAA history.

[miamihrrcns2001]

Leading the league in fumbles means losing close games. It's a proven theory, and in losing to texas, texas a&m, and to oklahoma we lost at least one fumble in each game... on our side of the 50!! That's HUGE.

 

Taylor's adam's apple grew to the size of a football and caused a severe case of the chokes every time his pocket (lol, he was passing from the pocket?) broke down, and most of the time, his first reaction was to go BACKWARDS???!!!

 

In the fourth quarter, we should have had Green already warmed up and ready to go so he could finish the game. He has 10 times better pocket presence and all we needed was a 5 yard slant throw and catch. With Green, I feel we get that first down and at the very least have a chance to tie the game.

 

Shawn Watson makes the worst adjustments of any coach in the history of football (going all the way back to the days of the vikings... the european ones that is). How we can be up 17-0, get the ball like 3 or 4 more times on their side of the 50 and come up with 3 points is beyond me.

 

The offensive play calling was about as attractive as Holly Rowe... what ever happened to the roll out passes to take advantage of the dual-threat quarterback? What happened to anything that resembled a vertical passing game? Why does the only guy who hasn't dropped a pass this year (Broekemeier) not run routes that arent 3 yards deep? What happened to pitches and types of runs like draws QB keepers that dont involve reads? What happened to T-Freshman actually keeping the ball on the zone read?? And finally WHAT HAPPENED TO ROY HELU IN THE SECOND HALF???

 

K... Im done.

 

EDIT: Im am now in the "fire watson" buggy as well. The things that made him a great coordinator two years ago, he has abandoned. We do not use roll-out passes, we dont do pitches, we dont have vertical passes, we dont have any set runs outside of the i-formation, we rarely do play action, and we have zero variety and take very little use of a MOBILE (not a pocket passer!!!) quarterback.

 

How can we have a successful offense with a 2* QB with mediocre speed, and an average arm, but not have any success with a QB that fits almost the exact same skillset as Ganz, just upgraded speed and arm strength, and to some extent, accuracy? Any team can defend themselves against 5 total plays, and that exactly what they did tonight

 

1. Zone Read (always goes to RB)

2. I-formation run

3. short slant pass, or button hook

4. wildcat run

5. wildcat pass

6. SCREEN PASS (although not used tonight)