Purdue - what did we learn?

Great win.  A win is a win and much needed.

For all the grief I give Chin and the D, they are shaping up to pretty salty.  As others mentioned, play more press coverage, don't start the safety blitz from 20 yards out.

I don't mind the trash talking.  It gets in guys heads.  Clean up the targeting stuff.

JoJo/CTB/Stille had a great game.

AM 3.0 is starting to look like 1.0.  And that's a good thing.

Still need to shore up our KO coverage and punting.  Great to see we can hit FG's.

Unsure who called the offensive plays.  Didn't appear to be a Frost only game.  Just my opinion.

Purdue needs to be made to fix their field....Hope Farmer's injury was not terribly serious.  

I am still unsure about this team, BUT this was the most complete game they played.

Mills falls a lot on his own.  Not the back I thought he would be (I know he has been injured).  Held needs to get guys coached up. 

We have talent.  A few DUDES are emerging.  Just need to continue to coach them and recruit them.  Development is key.  

-2 yards rushing is solid. Regardless of the team....

I really miss the quote button......

 
@ColoradoHuskgood point. Purdue has very good offensive weapons. Defense, nor so much. And I’m glad that Adrian had his day yesterday, but I take it with a grain of salt too. 
 

We don’t know if yesterday was the game we will play this year. Glad AM gets to potentially end feeling good. Kid deserves it. 

 
I wasn't thinking Frost gave up play calling duties, but it looked like he was maybe making some adjustments - whether that was due to Frost getting more creative, more useful input from Lubick, better execution from the offense (particularly Martinez), or some combination, I'm not sure.

Purdue is a bad team.  But, it was good that Nebraska managed to get a lead, not completely squander it, and close out the win without it going down to the final play.    In the world of crawl-walk-run this was at least a "speedy" crawl, with moments of walking.  Coupled with a decent effort against Iowa the week before, there are signs of the team starting to come together.  Certainly not something I was expecting to see after the Illinois fiasco.

It looked like they were going to find a way to lose after the 90 yard TD, but they did a good job of coming out, maintaining their composure, and finishing off the game.  That is something they haven't done on a regular basis for a long time.

Of course, over the last several years whenever we think they've started to figure it out, it seems like they go out and are completely embarrassed the next game. Hopefully the Minnesota game will be the start of breaking that up.   Minnesota is another pretty mediocre team, so it is certainly doable.

 
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hunter49,

Like most on here, I've found the Red Zone offense to really suck most of the time.  However, yesterday they scored all 6 times in the red zone (20 yard in), 4 of them being TDs.  Yeah, you'd like at least one of the FGs to have been a TD, but for a team that has struggled, I'd say a 100% scoring and 67% TD rate is not sucking, but instead is improvement toward competence.  Now can they sustain that?  Recent history says no, but maybe something started to click.

They had a couple of other drives stall right outside the red zone, one where Culp hit the 49 yard FG, the other one on downs when they were trying to close out the game.

Is it perfection?  Of course not.  But, I think it is an improvement over recent history.  How long has it been since Nebraska scored 4 red zone TDs in one game?

As far as the non-scoring drives - that was not good.  They had 3 three-and-outs, not counting the game ending kneel down series.  The 3 three-and-outs occurred over a stretch of 4 possessions (which included, ironically, what was probably their best drive of the game at the start of the 3rd Quarter).  At least they didn't have the 3 three-an-outs in a row, but they have to get better at having at least productive field flipping drives. On those three drives they gave Purdue a shorter field, and Purdue scored 10 pts.  The defense did a good job on the other series, and stopped Purdue on downs.  What sucked is right after the defense does this the offense has a terrible series, gets the punt blocked and ends up giving Purdue the ball in FG range.  The defense at least stopped the TD, but that was a horrible sequence for the offense.

Edit: So it looks like they scored 5 red zone TDs last year against Illinois.  Much more recently than I remember, but it certainly hasn't been much the last few years where they get 4+ red zone TDs.

Granted if you can score them from 30, 40, 50 yards out that is fine, but something about grinding down a team and just overwhelming them inside the 20 really seems to break an opponent.

 
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Year 3 with Frost and whether we like it or not I have to say he is committed to the offense and defense we were sold he’d bring.  We seem like we are a year behind though with an offense that gets stuck, plays sloppy, or shoots self in foot with penalties. 
 

There are just some pieces missing on offense with lack of deep threat and weapons we thought we’d have by now.  Loss of Spielman was a killer.  No break out RB yet.  TE’s involved much more now which bodes well for Fidone being big in our future offense.  Wandale is the stud we were promised in the offense.  AMart played well.  It’s just this offense is supposed to score 40+ per game so we wouldn’t care as much about a defense giving up 30.  The drives where we go three and out or start drives with a loss are still too frequent and don’t take time off the clock we need right now to win.
 

The defense passes the eye test that they are better despite the 4 losses.  We play with a better intensity on defense, tackling is improved, guys like Honas, Williams, Dismuke, and Rogers seem improved.  CTB and Stille are bonafide quality defenders.  Still need way more pressure on the QB but some improvement.  We don’t have enough to hold down good offenses yet but I did suspect we’d win some shootout type games by now and again offense is not there yet.  
 

I feel like we should be 4-2 instead of 2-4.  The offense just sorely lacks deep threat and consistent running game.  QB play up and down as well.

It’s a work in progress but if we put quality guys in positions to succeed in the offense like we have with Robinson then our future looks bright despite being obviously behind schedule.

 
I feel about this win roughly the same I've felt about several wins in the last couple of seasons - it feels good in the moment, but it doesn't necessarily mean a corner has been turned or that the team is finding better overall consistency. They played well against Penn St. and then set a dumpster fire the following weekend. I'm more confident that bad snaps, unopen receivers and poor QB accuracy will resurface next week than I am that they'll put together a performance similar to the game vs. Purdue.

Admittedly pessimistic, but all that said, I was really encouraged by the defense's overall performance. They gave up some big plays but any time you can hold a team to those kinds of poor rushing yards... that's a really good thing.

I was also really impressed with the passing game this weekend. Receivers were getting open. AM was seeing the field pretty well. That's the kind of offense we should be seeing more of.

 
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CTB is a stud.  Honas is starting to play like I thought he was capable of.  We are one good long threat WR, one consistent RB from being a very good O.  I'll give the OL the benefit of the doubt this week - The improved snaps helped.  I am hoping this 'practice' season will help our OL to jell for better more consistent play next year.

 
@Enhance  I feel about this win roughly the same I've felt about several wins in the last couple of seasons - it feels good in the moment, but it doesn't necessarily mean a corner has been turned

I know exactly what you mean. We just waiting to put a win streak together to show that something is going upwards.  And then we build off of that streak.

Winning once in awhile feels nice, and that's all we got RN.

 
I'm Ok with the trash talk.  It means they actually have some fight in them.  As long as they are smart about it and say s#!t that will get the other team to respond in a negative fashion.  There is an art to trash talk.  Also Betts needs to be on the field more.  He also needs to lift more weights.  Doesn't look like he can break a tackle.

 
1. Adrian Martinez doesn't have to be Heisman material to be effective at QB. If he can avoid turnovers and be fairly efficient, our Offense has a chance to do some good things.

2. It was good having Mills back to give us a more physical run threat, especially on inside zone stuff.

3. WIlliams is a dumbass at times, but our DBs can hang in man coverage against some decent wide receivers

4. Yes, it is possible for our opponents to get called for holding...

5. Winning is sure is better than losing.......  :)

 
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