What did we learn???

[Fuzzy]

I am willing to bet that Martinez is not our QB at the end the year. I know Carnes looked like the true Freshman he is, but TMart's passing is never going to get any better.

 

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look good." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

[agibson95]

My biggest concern was the dropped passes and the return game. Why cant we get WRs that can catch the darn ball? As for the return game, at times we looked confused.

 

I liked our defense for the most part.

[Hercules]

I am willing to bet that Martinez is not our QB at the end the year. I know Carnes looked like the true Freshman he is, but TMart's passing is never going to get any better.

 

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look better." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

 

Wow. I don't know if it's possible to misinterpret those two statements any more than you just did.

[Fuzzy]

I am willing to bet that Martinez is not our QB at the end the year. I know Carnes looked like the true Freshman he is, but TMart's passing is never going to get any better.

 

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look better." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

 

Wow. I don't know if it's possible to misinterpret those two statements any more than you just did.

How did i misinterpret it?

 

Martinez clearly doesnt think there is anything wrong with his passing and Beck admitted to something stupid. As an offensive coordinator i would think you run the same play over and over until the defense stops it, not until it works.

[krc1995]

I just see anything new/different/better from Tmart in this first game. Exactly what is his upside? Did he magically become a better leader and passer over the summer? I do recall one play that he took sack rather then forcing it, so that was good. Due to storming, the t.v. was on and off, but I assume that all the players around Carnes were equally young/inexperienced? One or two of the options plays that Carnes pitched were scarey bad. But two drives hardly are indicative of his capability as a QB.

 

You don't see an upside? His upside is when he takes two steps and blazes past everybody for a touchdown run of arbitrary yardage. His upside is being able to work with much more open receivers downfield because defenses are so worried about stopping the run.

 

I think Taylor has improved from last year. It is awful hard to tell after one game, but there is no reason to start Carnes this year - barring as others have said, some sort of disaster from Taylor. We don't want to be going through freshman mistakes with Carnes especially when it would also mean thrusting him into a controversial spotlight. Ask Taylor how that went last year.

 

Taylor has the same strengths running the ball he's always had. That is what we are riding on with him, has been since the beginning and probably always will be. You can't really say yet that it won't work. We'll see where this year takes us. I suspect that if a QB battle is upcoming, Carnes will need to handle being the backup away from the spotlight well this year, and challenge in the Spring. Also, Taylor would need to have a bad year

 

let me ask you, do you see Tmart leading us to a NC? Or even composing a 4th quarter comeback? I really don't. Yes, he's blazing fast, and every once in a while it produces a TD. It's just not enough, IMO. He has so many things to work on that I just don't see him as a starting QB of a top 10 team. I must be wrong, because our highly paid coaching staff thinks he's our #1.

[zoogs]

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look better." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

 

Beck obviously was being vanilla.

 

And I think Taylor was trying to complement his receivers. Giving them the credit for making the hard catches, instead of himself the credit for making the throws (with the catches being understood). But I can see why that would get misinterpreted, because it's usually the kind of deflection of praise that you hear after a QB has a very good game passing. Wasn't exactly that today.

 

I agree with Hercules. Taylor's comment had me at first, but I am guessing that my explanation, or something similar, is what it was about. There are so many things I could criticize about Taylor's game, but the fan reaction after our first game of the year has tended to the side of harsh overreaction - same thing with Kinnie. Not to worry, though, guys. I'm still a Taylor hater.

 

--

let me ask you, do you see Tmart leading us to a NC? Or even composing a 4th quarter comebac

 

krc, No. I don't. One of the biggest tests will be to see how Taylor leads this team back from adversity. When we put behind the 8-ball in a game, what will he do? But I equally don't see Brion taking over this year. Well, allow me to correct myself. I don't *want* to see Brion taking over this year, because that will necessarily mean Taylor went down in flames, along with our season.

 

I am a huge Brion fan, but not at the expense of a Husker season!

 

I agree with you that we need more out of the QB spot than just being blazing fast. But that is what Taylor's biggest strength is and what we have been playing off of. The results have not been clearly bad either, with a lot of good last year and then an injury.

 

I want to emphasize that I do agree with you as far as the evaluation of what's needed for a starting QB goes, but this year's situation with TM and BC...got to go with TM. JMO. If we did not have an incumbent QB that was a freshman phenom, who lit it up last season, etc, etc...then it would be a solid situation for a RFr like Brion to step in and lead the offense. But we did have that, and ergo, the incumbent will need to lose his spot.

[Hercules]

I am willing to bet that Martinez is not our QB at the end the year. I know Carnes looked like the true Freshman he is, but TMart's passing is never going to get any better.

 

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look better." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

 

Wow. I don't know if it's possible to misinterpret those two statements any more than you just did.

How did i misinterpret it?

 

Martinez clearly doesnt think there is anything wrong with his passing and Beck admitted to something stupid. As an offensive coordinator i would think you run the same play over and over until the defense stops it, not until it works.

 

 

Martinez was complimenting the receivers for their play when he answered the question. You completely misquoted him too, he actually said, "All the receivers are doing a great job right now, and hopefully they keep it up, keep on catching balls and keep on trying to make me look good." He was asked about the receivers, and he heaped praise on them, and you think that's cocky? Stop trolling.

 

You also misquoted Beck: he didn't say, "I ran the same play over and over until it worked." He said, "I did some dumb things through the course of the game, pounding my head against the wall, saying, 'We're going to work on a certain play.' I just kept running it. It probably wasn't very smart on my part, but I'm stubborn sometimes." It had nothing to do with his philosophy in how to score points or win games, it has to do with his philosophy of teaching. We had a 30 point lead and one of the best defenses in the country, so he wanted to get his players to actually execute the play that he called, even if it took several reps. It was practice.

[AFhusker]

The Good:

Stafford is our new Gomes.

Maher is a nice kicker...how do you follow up Henery but this kid did well.

Camstache!

Crick played pretty good.

Abdullah looks like a good returner.

Enunwa caught some balls.

Cooper a potential new stud on ST.

 

The Bad:

Offense looks like has same issues as last year. Expect it to be locked down by good opponents.

TMart staring down receivers. Still has trouble in the passing game.

Miss Dennard. Green got picked on.

Coverage not very good today.

Kinnie a non-factor.

Why is Turner not on the field more?

We are going to get a helluva game from Fresno St.

The Ugly:

Plenty of miscues from opening KO throughout game. Per Bo we play "sloppy".

Our option is ugly. If another team ran it this poorly we'd be laughing them out of the stadium. Hope we were getting in practice because if we rely on it this much we are in trouble.

 

I thought the same thing too until I watched Cal's DL destroy FSU's offense. If Cal's DL/Defense can dominate them, we should have no trouble beating them next week. They are very young and will take a lot of lumps this year. The good news is that we can play as bad as we did on offense next week and still win. Let's just hope that we don't and our OL and TMart show some improvement so we can get the backups some good playing time.

[jsneb83]

I am willing to bet that Martinez is not our QB at the end the year. I know Carnes looked like the true Freshman he is, but TMart's passing is never going to get any better.

 

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look better." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

 

Wow. I don't know if it's possible to misinterpret those two statements any more than you just did.

How did i misinterpret it?

 

Martinez clearly doesnt think there is anything wrong with his passing and Beck admitted to something stupid. As an offensive coordinator i would think you run the same play over and over until the defense stops it, not until it works.

What do you do in practice, when the team doesn't run a play right? You keep doing it until it is done right. I'm sure Beck was just using this game as another practice, or scrimmage at least.

[Fuzzy]

I am willing to bet that Martinez is not our QB at the end the year. I know Carnes looked like the true Freshman he is, but TMart's passing is never going to get any better.

 

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look better." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

 

Wow. I don't know if it's possible to misinterpret those two statements any more than you just did.

How did i misinterpret it?

 

Martinez clearly doesnt think there is anything wrong with his passing and Beck admitted to something stupid. As an offensive coordinator i would think you run the same play over and over until the defense stops it, not until it works.

 

 

Martinez was complimenting the receivers for their play when he answered the question. You completely misquoted him too, he actually said, "All the receivers are doing a great job right now, and hopefully they keep it up, keep on catching balls and keep on trying to make me look good." He was asked about the receivers, and he heaped praise on them, and you think that's cocky? Stop trolling.

 

You also misquoted Beck: he didn't say, "I ran the same play over and over until it worked." He said, "I did some dumb things through the course of the game, pounding my head against the wall, saying, 'We're going to work on a certain play.' I just kept running it. It probably wasn't very smart on my part, but I'm stubborn sometimes." It had nothing to do with his philosophy in how to score points or win games, it has to do with his philosophy of teaching. We had a 30 point lead and one of the best defenses in the country, so he wanted to get his players to actually execute the play that he called, even if it took several reps. It was practice.

Sorry for thinking that we had a game against UTC and not a practice.

[Hercules]

I am willing to bet that Martinez is not our QB at the end the year. I know Carnes looked like the true Freshman he is, but TMart's passing is never going to get any better.

 

Don't tell Martinez that, his post-game quote was "Hopefully the receivers will continue working on catching the ball to make me look better." Wow, if that ain't cocky i don't know what is.

 

Beck's quote "I ran the same play over and over until it worked."

 

If this keeps up, our offense is in trouble.

 

Wow. I don't know if it's possible to misinterpret those two statements any more than you just did.

How did i misinterpret it?

 

Martinez clearly doesnt think there is anything wrong with his passing and Beck admitted to something stupid. As an offensive coordinator i would think you run the same play over and over until the defense stops it, not until it works.

 

 

Martinez was complimenting the receivers for their play when he answered the question. You completely misquoted him too, he actually said, "All the receivers are doing a great job right now, and hopefully they keep it up, keep on catching balls and keep on trying to make me look good." He was asked about the receivers, and he heaped praise on them, and you think that's cocky? Stop trolling.

 

You also misquoted Beck: he didn't say, "I ran the same play over and over until it worked." He said, "I did some dumb things through the course of the game, pounding my head against the wall, saying, 'We're going to work on a certain play.' I just kept running it. It probably wasn't very smart on my part, but I'm stubborn sometimes." It had nothing to do with his philosophy in how to score points or win games, it has to do with his philosophy of teaching. We had a 30 point lead and one of the best defenses in the country, so he wanted to get his players to actually execute the play that he called, even if it took several reps. It was practice.

Sorry for thinking that we had a game against UTC and not a practice.

 

The entire 4th quarter was practice. Tim Beck isn't dumb enough to call a bunch of option plays for Brion Carnes against Wisconsin with the game on the line if Carnes doesn't know how to run them. If we're up by 30 points though, which we were, and Carnes can't execute a simple option play, why not drill it? There's no need to run up the score, there's only a need to get better, and that's what Beck was trying to do. Whether it was productive is completely up for debate, since Carnes didn't get better at it in that amount of time, and since Beck himself said it was dumb, but there were without questions points in this game that the coaches were treating as practice, not as a live game. That's ok by me, that's how you get better.

 

You don't get better by doing what you already can do. You get better by working on what you can't do.

[zoogs]

Well, it wasn't much of a game...

 

Beck's just being harder on himself than he needs to be. A little self-effacing, if you will.

 

We obviously had some kinks to work out today. We could afford to work them out, or try to, via brute force during a live fire game. That is much more valuable than running plays over and over in practice would be. I have no problem with doing that; in fact, it's a smart way to utilize these first few games. All we are trying to do is get to a high level of execution with this team, and not for the playcaller to pull out at the stops, you know? The more live snaps we get in on these plays now, the better we are at running them vs Wisconsin.

 

I only have an issue if Beck is talking about the options he kept running that kept getting stuffed. ZR = good. Options not having the ZR...they were very ugly. We did get Rex's big run off of one, but we do not look nearly ready enough to have that be any more than a minor, gadget part of the offense at any point in this season.

 

I'd say go ahead, work on it, iron those things out...if we didn't have a lot of other things to iron out.

 

Just scale those options back, Mr. Beck!

[jsneb83]

Well, it wasn't much of a game...

 

Beck's just being harder on himself than he needs to be. A little self-effacing, if you will.

 

We obviously had some kinks to work out today. We could afford to work them out, or try to, via brute force during a live fire game. That is much more valuable than running plays over and over in practice would be. I have no problem with doing that; in fact, it's a smart way to utilize these first few games. All we are trying to do is get to a high level of execution with this team, and not for the playcaller to pull out at the stops, you know? The more live snaps we get in on these plays now, the better we are at running them vs Wisconsin.

 

I only have an issue if Beck is talking about the options he kept running that kept getting stuffed. ZR = good. Options not having the ZR...they were very ugly. We did get Rex's big run off of one, but we do not look nearly ready enough to have that be any more than a minor, gadget part of the offense at any point in this season.

 

I'd say go ahead, work on it, iron those things out...if we didn't have a lot of other things to iron out.

 

Just scale those options back, Mr. Beck!

I am fairly certain that the power option was one of the plays that he wanted the team to practice in live game situations.

[74Hunter]

1. People need to calm down about the offense. This is week one, game one. There were some issues, some confusion, but we have a few weeks to get it cleaned up. As long as the offense IMPROVES––which was never a feature under Watson––we'll be okay. Practice, practice, practice.

 

2. D-line got good pressure and we've got some physical guys at all levels.

 

3. 3 penalties. Much better. Keep that up and it'll be huge.

I hope that you are correct, but if the last two years are any indication, I am very skeptical that things will improve for the offense.

[Hercules]

Well, it wasn't much of a game...

 

Beck's just being harder on himself than he needs to be. A little self-effacing, if you will.

 

We obviously had some kinks to work out today. We could afford to work them out, or try to, via brute force during a live fire game. That is much more valuable than running plays over and over in practice would be. I have no problem with doing that; in fact, it's a smart way to utilize these first few games. All we are trying to do is get to a high level of execution with this team, and not for the playcaller to pull out at the stops, you know? The more live snaps we get in on these plays now, the better we are at running them vs Wisconsin.

 

I only have an issue if Beck is talking about the options he kept running that kept getting stuffed. ZR = good. Options not having the ZR...they were very ugly. We did get Rex's big run off of one, but we do not look nearly ready enough to have that be any more than a minor, gadget part of the offense at any point in this season.

 

I'd say go ahead, work on it, iron those things out...if we didn't have a lot of other things to iron out.

 

Just scale those options back, Mr. Beck!

 

Actually, all three of our big runs were on "lateral" options, and 3 of our 4 TDs were on "lateral options."

 

1. Burkhead's 52 yarder

 

2. Martinez's 7 yard TD

 

3. Martinez's long TD on 4th and 1 (that was a speed option that Martinez audibled to, but Burkhead went the wrong way).

 

4. Martinez's other long TD run (that was the triple option, where Martinez kept on the zone read and then kept when the LB or DB committed to Turner, the pitchman).

 

I think that the lateral option worked relatively well today, and I think there were times when Beck called it over and over looking for better execution even though it wasn't the best play to run given what the defense was doing. Martinez runs it pretty well, there are just a few kinks with the timing, blocking, and gap distance to be worked out, but those aren't too big a deal, and I think they'll be better next week.

 

For Martinez to go to the next level with the option game, he just needs to learn when to cut his losses. The biggest difference right now between Frazier/Crouch and Martinez, when it comes to running the option, is that those guys knew when they were beat. If the defense has the QB and the pitchman covered, there's nothing you can do. Frazier and Crouch in that situation would just lower their shoulder and cut upfield for a short or no gain. Martinez was trying to stretch it out forever and then sometimes even make a pitch at the end when it was well defended, and that's either going to be a loss or a turnover. If he can just learn to cut his losses and live to fight another day, it'll take a lot of the risk out of the play.