Pre-Season Pressers

[Hilltop]

8 minutes ago, Husker in WI said:

 

He seemed kinda pissed off in general. I get working some snark into answers what you consider dumb questions, but he was a little less forgiving than usual IMO. Hopefully not a bad sign for the start of the season. 

It would be challenging to have patience right now imo.  He just lost his dad.  He is dealing with Covid football.  Reporters are doing their best to get the best tidbit they can to earn clicks from poor saps like us.  Meanwhile he is trying to prepare his team to play a national championship caliber team 1st game out of the gate.  He gets a pass from me if he is " a little less forgiving".  

[Ulty]

15 minutes ago, Hilltop said:

It would be challenging to have patience right now imo.  He just lost his dad.  He is dealing with Covid football.  Reporters are doing their best to get the best tidbit they can to earn clicks from poor saps like us.  Meanwhile he is trying to prepare his team to play a national championship caliber team 1st game out of the gate.  He gets a pass from me if he is " a little less forgiving".  

I agree. Plus, with how they came out flat in the first game last year, and starting the winless streak to start his first year, the pressure is on to be sharp out of the gate this time.

[Husker in WI]

Good points, and I didn't mean it was a disappointment to me or anything. I just think there has been a correlation between him being unhappy in pressers and the team playing poorly - you can sometimes tell how practice went by his attitude in the pressers. Glad it's not a game week, and as you pointed out there's a lot of non-football stuff on him and then adding dumb questions wouldn't be fun.

 

And actually on the rewatch, I probably read way too much into it and it seemed pretty normal. So I don't really know where I got that from anyway. Did seem frustrated by injuries for sure though. The most pissed off he looked was talking about artificial crowd noise. 

[BIG ERN]

I've seen Frost say good week of practice and we look like Rutgers so hopefully this is a good thing

[Undone]

2 hours ago, Toe said:

"hope"

 

 

 

Way, way better than "he actually just left the team yesterday."

 

Really would love to understand what the deal is there, but we probably won't ever know.

[krc1995]

1 hour ago, Undone said:

 

Way, way better than "he actually just left the team yesterday."

 

Really would love to understand what the deal is there, but we probably won't ever know.

I thought he had Covid or was exposed?  That was last weekish. Not sure if I saw that on Reddit or somewhere else. 

[krc1995]

3 hours ago, Hilltop said:

It would be challenging to have patience right now imo.  He just lost his dad.  He is dealing with Covid football.  Reporters are doing their best to get the best tidbit they can to earn clicks from poor saps like us.  Meanwhile he is trying to prepare his team to play a national championship caliber team 1st game out of the gate.  He gets a pass from me if he is " a little less forgiving".  

I know he’s human, but he hasn’t learned to use the media yet. He’s either too honest and seems to sell out guys that he’s frustrated with, probably making a bigger wedge in overall player dissatisfaction or obviously trying to manipulate opinions by playing on emotion. 
 

he doesn’t get a pass from me. That’s life. 

[BigRedBuster]

 

[krc1995]

What’s the board’s consensus if we get to actually have a game?  I see that Covid numbers are rising across the state. I’m not sure how much emotion to put into this if the rugs going to be pulled again. 

[BigRedBuster]

14 minutes ago, krc1995 said:

What’s the board’s consensus if we get to actually have a game?  I see that Covid numbers are rising across the state. I’m not sure how much emotion to put into this if the rugs going to be pulled again. 

I think it's a very high percentage that we have a game.  I think it will boil down to if OSU or Nebraska has an outbreak within the program.

 

Actually, what I'm hearing is that the team had it go through them over the summer so, if their's any heard immunity reality, I think the team is in good shape to stay healthy.

[SECHusker]

Reading between the lines of the interviews, we don't have a WR that has truly emerged outside of Werner, Brown, and Robinson. For those guys, 50/50 balls aren't there thing. With that in mind, thinking the strength of the offense will be to rely on the running game, short/intermediate passes, and TEs. I think we'll look more like JT Barrett's Ohio State, or Malzahn's Auburn. Even though I'm a Martinez guy, the person best suited for that offense is McCaffrey. McCaffrey is no where near the arm talent of Martinez, but if we play to the strength of our offense he won't have to be. McCaffrey is definitely the more willing/effective runner. I hope the taller 50/50 receivers make strides as I believe it gives our offense a higher ceiling, but for right now we are what we are, and won't be surprised if McCaffrey starts vs OSU.

[Undone]

25 minutes ago, SECHusker said:

Reading between the lines of the interviews, we don't have a WR that has truly emerged outside of Werner, Brown, and Robinson. For those guys, 50/50 balls aren't there thing. With that in mind, thinking the strength of the offense will be to rely on the running game, short/intermediate passes, and TEs. I think we'll look more like JT Barrett's Ohio State, or Malzahn's Auburn. Even though I'm a Martinez guy, the person best suited for that offense is McCaffrey. McCaffrey is no where near the arm talent of Martinez, but if we play to the strength of our offense he won't have to be. McCaffrey is definitely the more willing/effective runner. I hope the taller 50/50 receivers make strides as I believe it gives our offense a higher ceiling, but for right now we are what we are, and won't be surprised if McCaffrey starts vs OSU.

 

This was a great post, by the way.

 

I also have no real dog in the fight of the conversation on whether McCaffrey is somehow our QB1, other than an inclination that Martinez is the better all-around guy (as you point out). My only observation from last year is that when McCaffrey was in, teams cheated the line of scrimmage and blitzed because their DCs didn't believe he could throw.

 

In one game, we basically leveraged that as a sort of trick play (and I remember a ton of disagreement on this board on whether it was or wasn't a trick play, ha).

 

One thing that isn't proven yet with McCaffrey is if his relatively slight frame (and notice I said "relatively") could actually take a lot of hits yet. My gut instinct is "yes," but on paper I'm not so sure. That's another element in and of itself. I get it; he's a McCaffrey and he's tough as nails...but still.

 

Anyway, your analysis on looking like the JT Barrett Ohio State offense or Auburn's zone read is interesting! Just hope we play enough games to get to find out.   

[ScarletRevival]

3 hours ago, BigRedBuster said:

I think it's a very high percentage that we have a game.  I think it will boil down to if OSU or Nebraska has an outbreak within the program.

 

Actually, what I'm hearing is that the team had it go through them over the summer so, if their's any heard immunity reality, I think the team is in good shape to stay healthy.

 

Isn't there a "community positive rate" that we have to worry about? If so, is the "community" the overall athletic department or the municipality in which the university is located in?

 

I hope that as a team they have herd immunity, it's probably the best way to fend off this virus.

[WyoHusker56]

1 hour ago, SECHusker said:

Reading between the lines of the interviews, we don't have a WR that has truly emerged outside of Werner, Brown, and Robinson. For those guys, 50/50 balls aren't there thing. With that in mind, thinking the strength of the offense will be to rely on the running game, short/intermediate passes, and TEs. I think we'll look more like JT Barrett's Ohio State, or Malzahn's Auburn. Even though I'm a Martinez guy, the person best suited for that offense is McCaffrey. McCaffrey is no where near the arm talent of Martinez, but if we play to the strength of our offense he won't have to be. McCaffrey is definitely the more willing/effective runner. I hope the taller 50/50 receivers make strides as I believe it gives our offense a higher ceiling, but for right now we are what we are, and won't be surprised if McCaffrey starts vs OSU.

 

I've seen some of the media guys mention Hickman as having a good camp and he seems to be at WR permanently now. I don't know if he emerges in the season or not yet, but he was praised for his blocking last year and if he turns into a pass catching threat there is 50/50 guy assuming Betts and Manning don't play much. Oh and don't forget Levi Falck. His name has come up and he is 6'2" so we may have a 50/50 threat emerge.

[GBRFAN]

I feel like the biggest knock on Martinez may be his lack of quick and multiple sequence thinking.  When we lacked depth it was only a slight factor because we couldn't play fast with the limited players getting tired.  If depth is close to equal for the 2 deep a quick thinker and reactor becomes a better option at QB.