Love what we are seeing. Big plays are still there but not as much as the first 3 games. We've been dictating momentum on defense which is awesome, something we haven't seen. Gregory is an animal hands down game changer. Bo and company need to keep them from having a big head. We've played great defense the last two weeks, but against lesser opponents. When we face NW that is a totally different monster from Illi,Purdue, and Minnesota.
I'm loving the growth of our players especially our line. We may have something special brewing, but I won't get my hopes up until an equal opponent.
Speaking of which, time to recap and see how we did in comparison to season averages.
Purdue came into this game averaging about 4.5 yards per play. That's not a fantastic number, and Purdue was probably the worst offense we'll see all year (they can compete with Southern Miss for that title). They only turned 11% of the plays they ran into big plays, which accounted for about 48.5% of their total offense. If they weren't converting a big play, they were moving the ball at a rate of 2.61 yards per play.
Here are the numbers from the game today:
216 yards, 7 points, 61 plays = 3.54 YPP | Big Plays = 6 (9.83%), 169 yards (78.2%) = 28.17 YPP | Adjusted = 55 plays, 47 yards = 0.85 YPP
Purdue converted their season average of plays into big plays, but their big plays accounted for a higher percentage of their total yards. But a key thing to remember when assessing that is that
they didn't have a lot of yards in the first place. I'll include this in here but I know it will have it's detractors; football is a 60 minute game, and you
have to play the full 60 minutes, so that last play has to count. But to be partial, here's how the numbers would have looked had Purdue's one touchdown play NOT happened:
150 yards, 0 points, 60 plays = 2.50 YPP | Big Plays = 5 (8.33%), 113 yards (75.3%) = 22.6 YPP | Adjusted = 55 plays, 37 yards = 0.67 YPP
Comparatively, here is how Wisconsin did against Purdue:
180 yards, 10 points, 58 plays = 3.10 YPP | Big Plays = 6 (10.34%), 83 yards (46.11%) = 13.83 YPP | Adjusted = 52 plays, 97 yards = 1.86 YPP
I think a lot of us regard Wisconsin's defense as being very good. In comparison, a lot of people feel like Nebraska's D isn't where it should be and a good ways away from the defense of the Badgers. But the numbers are fairly similar, Nebraska's defense forced a lot more short yardage or negative plays out of the Boilermakers than Wisconsin. Wisconsin limited the yardage on the big plays. Today's performance on defense was really good, despite Purdue's offensive woes. Couple that with the way the defense played against a much better Illinois offense and the outlook is promising as the young Husker D heads into a tough November schedule.
