Chatelain: Offensive Clunker Dooms NU Again

[zoogs]

Hercules if you don't want to try to get into the coaches heads regarding QB decisions, why get into their heads regarding playcalling? By the same measure, we saw Cody not go in and should be able to question that when Taylor was clearly not hacking it. Or we have heard that there wasn't a backup plan for Taylor for this game which is why Cody was not ready, which you can disregard, but it comes from usually reliable sources. I think this should all be fair game to be discussed and questioned, and we can wonder what coaches are thinking here; at least, if we are going to start characterizing Watson as seeming to calling random plays to satisfy his own curiosity now.

 

If you want to ask the coaches themselves whether they had a backup plan, that's fine. But getting it from someone who posts on this board is about as reliable as the "Taylor has quit the team" rumors. That's why I don't see any point in discussing it. The QB controversy ended months ago, that's the end of the story. Taylor is the best we've got. Anybody who thinks that Green should have gone into this game is deluding himself into thinking Cody's performance against Colorado actually meant something. You can question QB decisions, but there's nothing to discuss - we don't have any real evidence we can argue about, as Cody has never shown that he could do any better than Taylor did against that kind of defense. Do you switch QBs on a whim? Maybe, but that's all it is for us message board posters. The coaches obviously had more confidence in Taylor, so why not just move on to other issues?

 

Because it's an important one, and it's one where it is extremely hard to agree with the confidence shown in Taylor - including throughout the game. It's a decision that while we don't know what went on behind the scenes, I guess, we know what decision was made, at least wrt to the starter. And I think the coaches should be taken to task for that.

 

I respect that you are very level-headed about the rumors, and probably a lot more reasonable than me in terms of believing them or not. But the information about the backup plan is not any less reliable than other stuff that has come out of the same 'rumor mill', like Taylor's tremendous scrimmage in August that endeared Bo to him, the performance of some of the assistant coaches like Gilmore and Cotton, Lee's injury situation, Niles' injury situation, Taylor's injury situation, Kellogg's spot on the depth chart, Taylor's rise to the depth chart in August, and so on and so forth.

 

It's probably not pleasant to allow this one as possibility, but I am just saying it should be considered one, and not dismissed. It seems to be dismissed on little other ground than it would not be pleasant as a possibility. Lee's injury was not pleasant as a possibility either, but it was also the case, and at least open to being talked about. These same folks are the ones who said told us Kellogg was 2nd string for one of the games (Kansas I think?), and later there was an article about Kellogg working with the 2nd string "alongside Lee, who was banged up so Kellogg really got the snaps" the following week. When information like that comes out, it's fine. But this isn't even information that is critical of the coaches, only the conclusion is. This time they are saying the plan was for Taylor to be the #1 QB this week, and he got all the preparation for the game. It's OK to be skeptical, but when I think it's also OK to give it the light of day.

 

As far as questioning playcalling - there we have some evidence. We all watched the game unfold, we knew what was working and what wasn't. Watson will go away from what's working in order to avoid being "one-dimensional." Like HuskerfaninOkieland said, that's where I lost it with Watson. The Wildcat is working, then you throw the ball on 2nd and 8 and put your freshman QB in a 3rd and long situation which he couldn't handle all game. That was a bad decision, from a 51-year old coach who gets paid several hundred grand a year. The next series we came in and didn't even show the wildcat. Taylor Martinez is going to learn from his mistakes and get better. Is Shawn Watson?

 

But we don't necessarily have knowledge about how playcalling works (me especially). We will see a good play and think "We should just run this until it is stopped." Like I said in I think another thread, a game like this has the OC and DC scheming around each other and trying to keep one step ahead of the other. I don't give a lot of credence to the "The power running game was working at the start of the game, and then we went to the zone read which wasn't. No more zone read." And then later "The wildcat is now working, and we went away from that." First, the power running game was working? I saw OU loading up to stop it many times, so I'm glad we went a different way. Second, why did the Wildcat come in and work all of a sudden in the middle of the game? Because it was a changeup at the right time from the other stuff we were doing. Everything is connected like that, but if Watson operated on the stubbornly-stick-with-something-til-it-fails philosophy, does the Wildcat ever see the light of day until we take some lumps? And when we do go to it as a purely reactionary measure, it is as effective? Honest questions.

 

I will not argue at all about the 2nd and 8, and even more so about the 3rd and 8 that followed there at the end of the game. The last two drives were BAD playcalling IMO, no matter how bad the situation we were in. We could have had a better fighting chance if things had gone differently. I do ask though, who OK'd and wanted to keep Taylor throwing: Bo, or Watson. I think it's a legitimate question, and there is a lot of assumption that Watson is some lone horse operating here and making those decisions. Given the amount of involvement Bo has with the offense, it might not totally be the case.

 

Your last sentence - you don't know that Taylor will learn and get better just as you don't know that Shawn won't. If anything I would say Taylor is less likely to. Given that it's the same mistakes we have seen all year, while Shawn did some things more aggressively and differently than usual last night, and hopefully he goes back to his conservative ways that put us in a better chance to win.

[zoogs]

Here is an interesting thing I found from browsing Dirk's twitter about this article, which should place it in the author's intended context.

 

RT @dirkchatelain: Here's my take on why last nite's Husker debacle was, above all, Bo Pelini's fault: http://tinyurl.com/23rhty4

 

-- He should, of course, use bit.ly instead of tinyurl

 

I guess there is some interesting stuff on twitter (honestly had no idea)