Defense already good, not getting better!

[It'sNotAFakeID]

Cook is the best passer we'll face all season. This is the chance for our secondary and LBs to step up and shut down the middle of the field, as Cook doesn't throw towards the sidelines as well as he does down the middle of the field.

[Treand3]

Cook is the best passer we'll face all season. This is the chance for our secondary and LBs to step up and shut down the middle of the field, as Cook doesn't throw towards the sidelines as well as he does down the middle of the field.

Bingo. You'll rarely see him attack deep sideline boundaries. He makes his living over the middle.

[It'sNotAFakeID]

To be perfectly honest, I'll be fine seeing our team lose if we make Cook pass it down the sidelines, and he does it well.

[Treand3]

To be perfectly honest, I'll be fine seeing our team lose if we make Cook pass it down the sidelines, and he does it well.

Me too. He defaults to the short/intermediate stuff over the middle, likes sideline hitches too. I think he has the arm to beat us there but that would require him to hold the ball longer, as he's a 3 step drop specialist. His deep throws are usually deep posts. Not sure their receivers are vertical threats, great at yac yards though.

[NebraskaShellback]

Tippet comes to mind as WR - a threat for the MSU

[NUance]

 

About 30% of the points we've given up are on the first drive of the game. After we settle in, we've been pretty good.

I don't know why people are comfortable with this. This is really, really unnerving. If there is a slugfest with an actually good team, giving up a free TD on the opening drive might be very crippling. I honestly don't understand what's going on. On that opening drive against Illinois, there were holes that were 10 yards wide. It was completely bizarre! I am willing to accept that these have been virtually unrelated flukes in the first few games (meaning that there were just different, unrelated mistakes in the first few games that had similar results) and that it's an "easy" fix, but if it's just something that the D is going to do, it could end up hanging a millstone around the team's neck for the entire game. I'm sure the staff and team are studying film to figure out what's happening. I hope it's all sorted out soon!

 

 

Right now NU has the #27 scoring defense in the nation giving up 19.0 points per game. LINK If we DIDN'T give up that initial touchdown every game, instead holding opponents to 12.0 points per game, we'd be sitting in 5th place in the nation in scoring defense. Then again, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas.

[Treand3]

Tippet comes to mind as WR - a threat for the MSU

Lippett is really good at getting open and is physical doing it. He's the main threat in going deep when they do. Maybe Kings Jr.

[Glendower]

 

 

About 30% of the points we've given up are on the first drive of the game. After we settle in, we've been pretty good.

I don't know why people are comfortable with this. This is really, really unnerving. If there is a slugfest with an actually good team, giving up a free TD on the opening drive might be very crippling. I honestly don't understand what's going on. On that opening drive against Illinois, there were holes that were 10 yards wide. It was completely bizarre! I am willing to accept that these have been virtually unrelated flukes in the first few games (meaning that there were just different, unrelated mistakes in the first few games that had similar results) and that it's an "easy" fix, but if it's just something that the D is going to do, it could end up hanging a millstone around the team's neck for the entire game. I'm sure the staff and team are studying film to figure out what's happening. I hope it's all sorted out soon!

 

 

Right now NU has the #27 scoring defense in the nation giving up 19.0 points per game. LINK If we DIDN'T give up that initial touchdown every game, instead holding opponents to 12.0 points per game, we'd be sitting in 5th place in the nation in scoring defense. Then again, if ifs and buts were candy and nuts we'd all have a merry Christmas.

 

I started kicking something around (but I don't care enough to do all of the data entry for it )-- how close (or far) do defenses keep teams relative to their averages? I worked it out for Nebraska-- Fresno St. and Miami were pretty close to their averages (I removed the Nebraska game from their averages so it wouldn't skew the data): Fresno was within a point and Miami was within 1.75 (over and under, respectively. That's probably within a margin of error-- unless you win or lose by a point ). THe remainder of the schedule has been kept well under their average:

FAU -12.25

McNeese -30.5 (though we only have 2 other data points for them, and since they're not even in our division, they should be way off... but still.)

Illinois -18.75

 

I really thought that I'd have to do the same thing for the Spartans; the Spartans have, with the exception of Jackson State who were 34 points below their average, kept all teams within roughly 3 points of their averages (Oregon 3.33, Eastern Michigan was +2.66, and Wyoming was -2.75).

 

What I would really love to do is get way more data points and see if anything real can be derived. There are all sorts of confounding variables out there (players swapped out during a blow out, just to name one), but... I don't know. It looks like teams do as well against Sparty as they do against anyone, while NU keeps teams significantly below their average... on average

 

MSU scores an average of 50 points and NU has an average of 45.4. If the Huskers are held to their average by a team that seems to hold teams to roughly their average and holds MSU to below their average... hmm... tie?

 

I have always thought that the way that the way that scoring defenses are ranked is a little specious if the teams on the schedule normally don't score very much. I mean, Easter Michigan scores 11.33 points on average and put 14 on MSU; Wyoming, 16.75, and had 14 against MSU. However, Nebraska held most of their teams to at least 2 TDs below their average!

Again, this is probably some Homerism math, but maybe it could be a valuable way to look at defenses-- do they make their opponents play significantly worse than normal?