kchusker_chris
All-American
They were pathetic early on in the year. Those first 4 games were unlike anything I've seen before. I've never watched DBs play the ball the way they were. I'm still scratching my head over that start. After that though, they settled in and looked promising. UCLA is a decent passing team. Unfortunately they had the 2 big plays early - but without those we hold them to under 200 yards passing. Iowa to 97 (weather factored) is pretty solid. The last 9 games, yards per attempt averaged high 6's which is middle of the pack. We return the core of our secondary, and have some promising freshman that will be in year 2 of the system. I think we see a #40-50 pass defense next year. It will never be Pelini level, but that's because we're set up to stop the run w/ an extra guy in the box, more blitzes, etc. I'd take that in this league over only rushing 4 all game to shut down their passing game. That D was set up for the B12, this D is more geared toward the B1G IMO. #8 ranked rush defense is where we need to be. Banker flipped the script in a good way I think.They were the teams that came to mind.
You don't rank among the worst in the country by facing only a handful of passing teams ranked in the top 25 in passing. We're lucky we played in a B1G conference that couldn't exploit our pass defense more than they already did. We would've been in for an ugly year, as far as the scores to some of our losses are concerned.
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