B1G Week 12
- Thread starter Mavric
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Excel
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Northwestern is a smart, scrappy, extremely well coached team. Give credit where it’s due.
That wasn't a dig at Northwestern. Though I'd disagree with your "extremely well coached" comment.
The point is you didn't have to include "talented" in your description. Nor should you have.
Excel
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Compared to the rest of the division, the conference, and Northwestern teams of the past I would say they are extremely well coached, I'd put them as tied with Iowa and Michigan State as far as best coaching of players and just one step below Wisconsin...and that's in a conference with four programs that are noted for that. Across the country I'm not sure of too many schools that can do that; K-State, pre-Big XII TCU, Mississippi St before maybe 5 years ago, and the service academies. That's all that comes to mind. I'm not talking gameday coaching, in that arena they're average.
You're right that they don't have the talent but that is only a fraction of the game. Nebraska has the talent advantage in the West but look what a difference coaching makes. Both Michigan and Ohio State had huge talent advantages on Michigan State and Iowa but it's a similar story. Raw talent only gets you so far.
The all caps thing did kind of come off as an unfair dig to me because, while Northwestern may never be a powerhouse, they routinely play West teams hard and close and are good for at least one upset a year. We (fans of other decent B1G programs) need to stop perpetuating the idea that they're some kind of garbage team, if only so it hurts less when they play us close or beat us.
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IMO, Fitz gets more credit than he deserves because he's in a win-win situation. If he posts a losing record - as he's done four times - he gets a pass because "it's tough to win at Northwestern. If he gets to 10 wins - which he's done three times - it's lauded as nigh on a miracle. I think both of those have elements of truth to them but they're exaggerated because people like to say nice things about coaches and make excuses for them, a la Mike Riley.
So far he's only been able to finish better than third in the weakest Power 5 division one time. Probably will get a second 2nd place finish this year but that's thanks in no small part to coming out on the right side of three straight coin flip games, having two first-year coaches to compete against (Minnesota and Purdue) and two dumpster fires (Nebraska and Illinois) in the division.
They are a poor-man's Wisconsin. They play smart, don't beat themselves and get a lot out of limited talent. But they (their coaches) do a lot of stupid stuff during games.
I guess you're focusing more on their preparation and I look more at the actual in-game choices. To each his own. But I think it's a bit much to call someone an "extremely well coached team" and then a couple sentences later say they're "average."
I'm not the one who called them a garbage team. That was your term.
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Excel
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Fitz is easily NU's best coach in the modern era and the most consistent. Modern era coaches are below in blue. Winning three OT games in a row is not just a "coin flip", there's something there.
You implied that they were garbage or somehow unworthy with the all caps. "Just that it's NORTHWESTERN." How else can that be taken?
In the past few years this Northwestern team has beaten Nebraska twice and Penn State once (albeit in down years), and beaten ranked Wisconsin, Stanford, Michigan State, and Pittsburgh teams. They also held top 10 Wisconsin and Ohio State teams to single digit leads in losses in that period. Northwestern is real. They will win the West eventually if Fitz stays there and continue to knock someone off every year. If Nebraska continues to think it's "Just" NU you'll continue to struggle with them no matter who your coach is.
I remain comfortable calling them extremely well-coached. The way they recruit, develop players, scheme, and practice is all better than most, if not the vast majority of programs. They're not the best with managing time outs, and important play-calls but that'll only improve with time. Overall they're extremely well coached.
You take what Fitz is doing and plug him in to Nebraska and you'll win the West half the time.
You implied that they were garbage or somehow unworthy with the all caps. "Just that it's NORTHWESTERN." How else can that be taken?
In the past few years this Northwestern team has beaten Nebraska twice and Penn State once (albeit in down years), and beaten ranked Wisconsin, Stanford, Michigan State, and Pittsburgh teams. They also held top 10 Wisconsin and Ohio State teams to single digit leads in losses in that period. Northwestern is real. They will win the West eventually if Fitz stays there and continue to knock someone off every year. If Nebraska continues to think it's "Just" NU you'll continue to struggle with them no matter who your coach is.
I remain comfortable calling them extremely well-coached. The way they recruit, develop players, scheme, and practice is all better than most, if not the vast majority of programs. They're not the best with managing time outs, and important play-calls but that'll only improve with time. Overall they're extremely well coached.
You take what Fitz is doing and plug him in to Nebraska and you'll win the West half the time.
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Being their best coach in generation is not the same thing as being a great coach.
I didn't imply that. That's what you read into it.
Like I said, they're a solid team. But they're not much above average. My "coin flip" comment wasn't meant to take anything away from them. Just that those games could easily have gone the other way - obviously both teams were even for the games to go into overtime - so it would have taken very little for them to have a couple more losses than they do without changing anything about how "good" their team is.
Your last sentence is my point. Northwestern is able to put together a very competitive - second-place team - in the West with below-average talent and questionable in-game coaching. It's not that hard to win in the West. We're just making it significantly hard on ourselves.
Excel
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I guess it all comes down to opinion then. I think that Fitz is much like Snyder...he's a great coach who is reaching the limits of what his program can achieve, you disagree and that's fine. Reasonable people can hold differing opinions on something like that.
"We're just making it significantly hard on ourselves."
From the outside looking in it's pretty clear what's going on...the fans', and by extension probably the movers and shakers in the program, expectations don't match reality. I see it every time I venture in to the Husker Football forum. Fans seem to get hung up way too much on recruiting the best guys and stacking up your class rankings vs. opponents. Many fans seem to feel entitled to wins just because the Huskers are taking the field, I really don't understand it. It annoyed me when UNL first entered the conference and it's only diminished slightly in the last six years. Some fans think Nebraska is still just "one good coach" away from being Miami or Alabama but Nebraska will never have the advantages Texas, USC, LSU, or the Florida and Alabama teams have in weather, fertile recruiting grounds, attractive locations, etc. UNL don't even have the population advantages PSU, OSU, and UM have. The Texas pipeline is dead.
The future of the program, if you want to win, is the Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan State model. It shouldn't be that foreign as you helped build parts of it, as did Hayden Fry, as did Barry Alvarez. Fans need to quit thinking they're entitled to anything because of something their parent's generation did, it clearly permeates to the team. I don't know enough about Frost's philosophy to tell if he'll make that happen but from a cursory glance at his record he does scare me so maybe that's a good thing for you all.
"We're just making it significantly hard on ourselves."
From the outside looking in it's pretty clear what's going on...the fans', and by extension probably the movers and shakers in the program, expectations don't match reality. I see it every time I venture in to the Husker Football forum. Fans seem to get hung up way too much on recruiting the best guys and stacking up your class rankings vs. opponents. Many fans seem to feel entitled to wins just because the Huskers are taking the field, I really don't understand it. It annoyed me when UNL first entered the conference and it's only diminished slightly in the last six years. Some fans think Nebraska is still just "one good coach" away from being Miami or Alabama but Nebraska will never have the advantages Texas, USC, LSU, or the Florida and Alabama teams have in weather, fertile recruiting grounds, attractive locations, etc. UNL don't even have the population advantages PSU, OSU, and UM have. The Texas pipeline is dead.
The future of the program, if you want to win, is the Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan State model. It shouldn't be that foreign as you helped build parts of it, as did Hayden Fry, as did Barry Alvarez. Fans need to quit thinking they're entitled to anything because of something their parent's generation did, it clearly permeates to the team. I don't know enough about Frost's philosophy to tell if he'll make that happen but from a cursory glance at his record he does scare me so maybe that's a good thing for you all.
He's somewhat similar to Snyder. Big difference is that Snyder has had ACTUAL success, not just "that's a good season for where he's at" success. Won his division several times. Won the conference twice. Appeared in several New Year's Six bowls. Fitz is nowhere close to that - obviously hasn't been around as long but he's not really trending that way either.
It appears that you're just making a lot of assumptions and generalizations. Only the most fringe dreamers are looking for Alabama-like success. Most have repeatedly said that we should be able to compete for the West every year but even winning the conference will take noticeable improvement. I think we CAN win the conference because we should be able to win our division with some regularity - which were doing in the not-too-distant past - and you never know what could happen in the CCG.
Speaking specifically of Northwestern, we have generally DOMINATED them everywhere but the scoreboard. The reason the games have been close is because we have done a lot more to hurt ourselves than they have to stop us.
Here is the total yardage from our games against them:
2011: NU - 411; NW - 468
2012: NU - 543; NW - 301
2013: NU - 472; NW - 326
2014: NU - 471; NW - 290
2015: NU - 373; NW - 333
2016: NU - 556; NW - 388
2017: NU - 337; NW - 475
So this year they beat us soundly yet the game still went to overtime - with maybe our worst team in 60 years.. The first year they had a slight advantage. Other than that, we have totally dominated that stat, often by nearly 200 yards. But we shoot ourselves in the foot a lot. I contend that is evidence that we have a significant talent advantage but they play cleaner than we do which evens things out. If we can clean up ourselves, we should be able to beat them regularly. We have a much better chance to clean up our play than they do to increase their talent level.
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rdg25
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Good discussion and analysis. Needless to say, Northwestern has recruiting challenges with academics, small undergraduate pool, private status. So it is crucial to play smart, overachieve, synergize. Despite blowing out Minnesota last week, with a lot of turnovers and challenging weather hurting MN, typically the Wildcats will do just enough to beat you. And that's ok against teams with much better raw talent and numbers.
Swiv3D
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I'll say. When my sister was being recruited for volleyball Northwestern called, they asked her what her ACT score was, she told them 28, and they politely told her to work on it and get back to them.