I've trash talked the coaching staff so..,.

[NebraskaShellback]

Rutnuts are really not that good

Either is Purdue

Wait till the next time we play them.............................

 

[74Hunter]

I See what you did there. That was a nice way to tweak the stats for your point. Now why don't you include the yards gained scrambling out of the pocket on PASS plays that were counted as RUN plays.

Because a quarterback that scrambles didn't pass for positive yards, he ran for positive yards. A scramble is a run play that occurs after it is obvious that the pass play has failed. A sack is a pass play that fails before the quarterback realizes it failed and has a chance to turn it into a running play.
The best I can give you is adding another passing attempt for each scramble and give it ZERO yards.

Don't have any hard facts...

No you don't.

A scramble is a result of a pass play - just as a sack is a result of a pass play. Can't have it both ways. Nice effort thou.....

The NFL disagrees, but carry on.

Do you have a link on this. I don't know anyone that would not agree that scrambles and sacks are a result of a pass play being called.

Yes, it's called any NFL game in which a QB either scrambles or gets sacked. Scrambles count towards rushing yardage, sacks count against passing yards.

 

[jsneb83]

I See what you did there. That was a nice way to tweak the stats for your point. Now why don't you include the yards gained scrambling out of the pocket on PASS plays that were counted as RUN plays.

Because a quarterback that scrambles didn't pass for positive yards, he ran for positive yards. A scramble is a run play that occurs after it is obvious that the pass play has failed. A sack is a pass play that fails before the quarterback realizes it failed and has a chance to turn it into a running play.

The best I can give you is adding another passing attempt for each scramble and give it ZERO yards.

Don't have any hard facts...

No you don't.

What if the QB waits too long and gets sacked instead of scrambling and getting something out of it.

 

[Enhance]

Look, you have a great player in Tommy. I love the guy. However, he is not particularly successful passing the ball.

You have a coaching staff that comes in and can look at the stats. Here is a starting QB who had a completion percentage of around .53 from last season...just over fifty percent. When you throw an incomplete pass the net is zero yards gained.

So, you increase his attempted passes by 33.3%? That means that 33.3% more of your plays have a 47% chance of failure? That just doesn't seem like it makes good sense. I never said pull Tommy from the game. Anyone who knows me knows I will criticize the coaches pretty harshly, but not the players. My only objection here is that having Tommy throw the ball THAT MUCH plays to his weaknesses, not to his strengths and the coaches should recognize that.

I have not been thrilled about the number of pass plays we've called at times this year; however, your argument is partially revisionist. It's easy in week 11 to point at his 2014 completion percentage of ~53% and use this as a basis for why he shouldn't be throwing much. But, he started the season completing 60% through four games. I don't think the coaches expected him to be back down at 53.7% with a 1.6 TD/INT ratio at this point in the season.

I agree with your argument in principle, that perhaps TA has not been used to the best of his abilities, but I don't entirely agree with the formula you used to get there.

 

[California Husker]

Look, you have a great player in Tommy. I love the guy. However, he is not particularly successful passing the ball.

You have a coaching staff that comes in and can look at the stats. Here is a starting QB who had a completion percentage of around .53 from last season...just over fifty percent. When you throw an incomplete pass the net is zero yards gained.

So, you increase his attempted passes by 33.3%? That means that 33.3% more of your plays have a 47% chance of failure? That just doesn't seem like it makes good sense. I never said pull Tommy from the game. Anyone who knows me knows I will criticize the coaches pretty harshly, but not the players. My only objection here is that having Tommy throw the ball THAT MUCH plays to his weaknesses, not to his strengths and the coaches should recognize that.

I have not been thrilled about the number of pass plays we've called at times this year; however, your argument is partially revisionist. It's easy in week 11 to point at his 2014 completion percentage of ~53% and use this as a basis for why he shouldn't be throwing much. But, he started the season completing 60% through four games. I don't think the coaches expected him to be back down at 53.7% with a 1.6 TD/INT ratio at this point in the season.

I agree with your argument in principle, that perhaps TA has not been used to the best of his abilities, but I don't entirely agree with the formula you used to get there.

Well you may be right, but usually a QB's long term completion percentage isn't going to change much. It may have been higher earlier in the season, but it's back to normal for Tommy. I'm sure there are exceptions, but obviously Tommy is not that exception. In three seasons now he has hovered a little over 50% completion percentage.

Soooo.... what? Were these coaches hoping Tommy's completion percentage would just magically get up to around 65% or so? It just doesn't seem very smart. This offense has Tommy throwing the ball nearly 34% more times a game than he did last season. How many GOOD coaches would look at their personnel and say "hey, we have this guy who throws incomplete passes nearly half the time so we're going to have him throw it 33% more times a game" ... really? I just want to know who thinks that is a good game plan? Now if all the other people here think there is nothing wrong with that logic, then okay. But I just think it shows that the Huskers have a group of coaches that don't really care about the personnel, they are just going to stubbornly go with their system regardless of the abilities of the players.

...speaking of stats that don't seem to change much...Riley's career winning percentage as a head coach has hovered around .500 and here we are...with a win over Iowa the Huskers can pull to an even .500

damn statistics.

 

[Landlord]

Well you may be right, but usually a QB's long term completion percentage isn't going to change much. It may have been higher earlier in the season, but it's back to normal for Tommy. I'm sure there are exceptions, but obviously Tommy is not that exception. In three seasons now he has hovered a little over 50% completion percentage.

It's not like it's at all unreasonable to think that a quarterback making the jump from sophomore to junior years, with better QB coaching (since who here EVER thought Beck was a good QB coach?) would make a jump in ability.

Eric Crouch jumped from 48% to 55% his junior to senior years.

Zac Taylor jumped from 55% to 59% his junior to senior years.

Taylor Martinez jumped from 56% to 62% his sophomore to junior years.

That's not exactly an anomalous trend, I don't think.

 

[Enhance]

I for one thought, and predicted, TA's completion percentage would go up by about 3-4% this season, given his experience and a new staff deemed to be pretty good QB coaches. Completion percentages don't exponentially change, yes, but it's pretty common for those percentages to go up anywhere from 4-8 percent in a college career. I find this to be especially true for QB's that start as freshman/sophomores and play through their senior seasons.

So, that's where I'm coming from when I'm talking about revisionism. I believe it was fair, and reasonable, to expect improvement from TA this year and he hasn't shown it for a multitude of reasons.

I do actually agree with your point, though. I've always felt TA needs to be a 25 throw a game type of guy. But, for that to work, that means the running game has to be there and so does the defense. He has not had that at times this season for a variety of reasons which do not all fall on his shoulders.

 

[NUance]

Thread title: "I've trash talked the coaching staff so..."

Good job these last two games. Please keep it up.

This is just a great thread to give the team and staff some well deserved props for beating undefeated #7 Michigan State. And then avoid the hangover game by putting away Rutgers in a workmanlike manner.

What sort of a Husker fan wouldn't buy into this, anyway?

:

 

[California Husker]

I for one thought, and predicted, TA's completion percentage would go up by about 3-4% this season, given his experience and a new staff deemed to be pretty good QB coaches. Completion percentages don't exponentially change, yes, but it's pretty common for those percentages to go up anywhere from 4-8 percent in a college career. I find this to be especially true for QB's that start as freshman/sophomores and play through their senior seasons.

So, that's where I'm coming from when I'm talking about revisionism. I believe it was fair, and reasonable, to expect improvement from TA this year and he hasn't shown it for a multitude of reasons.

I do actually agree with your point, though. I've always felt TA needs to be a 25 throw a game type of guy. But, for that to work, that means the running game has to be there and so does the defense. He has not had that at times this season for a variety of reasons which do not all fall on his shoulders.

The only problem is, if his percentage went up 3-4% from last year that still would only have put him at 56-57%. If the Huskers qualify for a bowl, they are on pace to pass over 450-470 times this season. If you look at the colleges with top QBs around college football (and you need a top QB if you are going to be throwing it 470 times), those QBs are all well up into the mid to high 60% completion percentages with a few of them over 70%. I don't think even the most optimistic coach could have expected that from Tommy.

So I guess we agree more than not.

 

[Landlord]

I believe it was fair, and reasonable, to expect improvement from TA this year and he hasn't shown it for a multitude of reasons.

I do too, but I think the numbers bely Tommy's improvement.

I don't think anyone can say that Tommy isn't a notably better quarterback than he was last year. The Illinois and Wisconsin games drag his percentages down a big way, and no mistake, he played awful in those games, but overall he has improved quite a bit.

Tommy's had games with 70%, 65.7%, 69.2%, and 66.7% this season.

Last year he had one game better than any of those, and that 69.2% against Miami, where he only threw 13 times.

 

[Bowfin]

What if the QB waits too long and gets sacked instead of scrambling and getting something out of it.

Then that means a running play should have been called.

 

[Elf]

They have averaged 7.6 yards per passing attempt, and 4.7 yards per rushing attempt.

Have sacks been factored in as runs or passes in this math?

Because if one takes the 24 sacks with the -162 yards and count them as pass plays instead of running plays, it looks like 6.22 yards per rushing attempt and 6.77 yards per passing attempt.

That's very true. Nebraska's running game is actually better than the 4.7 number would imply, because it shouldn't be responsible for the sack total.

Nebraska is running the ball pretty well. The Huskers are also passing the ball pretty well. The argument remains the same.

And a Tommy Armstrong who completes 55% of his passes would be the Big 10 Offensive Player of the Year if he could cut his interceptions in half. He will probably receive votes as it stands. Hell, he was Big 10 Player of the Week with two interceptions against MSU.

If that's a square peg in a round hole, a lot of teams would live with it. If Nebraska had merely a Top 50 defense, this same Tommy Armstrong might be undefeated right now.

I'm all for second-guessing coaches. It's what fans do. But I haven't heard a legitimate argument for a better gameplan beyond wishful thinking and nostalgia.

This is so true. You shouldn't have to worry about losing many games when your offense is scoring 30+ per game. If you are losing a lot of games, maybe the defense needs a good hard look?

 

[TheSker]

Last year he had one game better than any of those, and that 69.2% against Miami, where he only threw 13 times.

There might be a lesson to be taken from this stat......

 

[TheSker]

But the notion that Nebraska can declare its intention to pound the rock and defenses will bend to our will needs to be retired. Also, that reasonably balanced offense is pretty exciting and puts up enough points to win on teams with better defenses. Not sure why it makes so many fans so grumpy.

Strong running teams win championships. "Balanced" teams have "balanced" W/L records.

 

[I AM FOOT FOOT]

what???