Nebraska walks Wisconsin

[BigAppleBucky]

. . . If their QB gets to 200 yards passing the way we play defense, we will not win. . . .

If Phillips gets to 200 yards passing it will be because Nebraska successfully sold out to stop the run. Phillips is anything but a great passer. Phillips needs to convert a couple of third and longs and pass for 125 or 150 along with an effective running game for the Badgers to win.

I'd be cautious believing Bielema and any injury report he makes. Before the Penn State game he said Borland just had cramps. It looked to me like Abbrederis took a pretty solid helmet to helmet hit in the fourth quarter against Penn State. Those are tricky.

As the article said, Shelton Johnson (SS) and Brendan Kelly (DE) will both play. IIRC, we were missing DE, Pat Muldoon, for that game.

Game should be close. Obviously if the Rose Bowl officials had their way Nebraska would win, but those folks have no say.

 

[zoobadger]

How can anybody feel that we will smack down any team we play after this season of games. We have 2 linemen down and we proved we are weak against the run all season. Hello Wisconsin runs the ball with the best of them.

Being down two DL would probably matter less against some spread team where you're going to have extra guys in for pass coverage constatnly. Against Wisconsin, you'll be stacking the middle of the field and if one or two interior guys is getting beat all day, it's a huge advantage for the Badgers. But, Wisconsin has only one receiver who can catch and get open, our QB is inexperienced and that's a charitable assessment, and our placekicker sucks.

So, for the Badgers to win, you'll need to be weaker against the rush than OSU, MSU, and PSU who pretty much stuffed us in the 2nd half. The bad news, though, is you'll only need to be *a little* weaker since all three of those were overtime losses. One or two plays where Montee or James White gets loose in the secondary and those are wins. Actually, those would have been wins if we had a kicking game, too

All in all though, Wisconsin has proven it can't win close games. The Huskers have hung on to win several nail biters so the smart money is obviously on the boys from Lincoln.

 

[zoobadger]

It's key that their offensive line has improved during the second half of the season. And we still struggle against the run. I'm not worried about Curt Phillips and their receivers, we did a good job covering them last time and we'll do a great job covering them this time, its the run that will be problematic.

Defensively they really haven't changed, you can still run against them and you can still throw against them, you just can't afford to turn the ball over to them. That will be key for the Husker offense, time of possession and limiting turnovers.

Curt Philips is a gamer. He's a tough kid whose battled a lot of injuries (3 ACL's on the same knee) but at this point, he's not a quality B1G QB. To make matters worse, we've really only got one guy who's a threat to get open and catch the ball. I, personally, think our TE (Pederson) would be a bigger part of the offense if we had a more capable QB, but Abrederis is really our only consistent threat at WR. This, plus our sh**ty kicker, accounts for the 7 - 5 record. If our kicker unaccountably got better (the game is indoors, that might help) and if we can possibly get Pedersen more involved in the passing game, that could make a big difference.

I'd rather be you guys going into this game than us, but Wisconsin's not Indiana, Purdue, or Iowa, either. You can't make a lot of mistakes on top of being dinged up and expect to win this one easily. Wisconsin is healthy for a change, too, particularly on the DL where we've had to substitute a lot.