**** What did we learn - Sparty edition ****

[JTrain]

Two play calls in the first quarter that I felt were monumentally bad and swung the momentum.

1. Punting from the MSU 31 yard line. Terrible call. If the wind was too much to try a field goal, go for it. The potential reward is huge and the risk minimal. Punting inside the 35 is playing not to lose and cringe-inducingly Ferentzesque.

2. (On the first TD) Cover zero with your fourth or fifth best cornerback (Rose) in tight man coverage with their star WR (Lippett). Three really serious problems with this call that it doesn't take an Xs and Os mastermind to spot: First, cover zero is generally a bad idea unless they're in the red zone or you are supremely confident in the man coverage skills of every DB on the field. Second, Mitchell needed to be switched over to Lippett (they made this correction only after they were burned). And third, if you're going to stick Rose on Lippett in any circumstance, he should be playing 6-8 yards off. I wonder if Jim Bollman felt guilty taking candy from a baby.

 

[JTrain]

Ill say one thing, I'm surprised by the Spartan fans, that stadium was a quarter empty for most of the game and half empty towards the end.

It's a primetime game on ABC, ranked opponent, built up as the Big 10 game of the year going in, and they couldn't manage to get the students and other fans to fill up a stadium that isnt terribly big to begin with?

Your team is the defending Big 10 and Rose bowl champions, how pathetic is that?

You know what? It took everything in my power not to say, "F*** you, fans! F*** all you." F*** 'em. What a bunch of f***in' literally fair-weather f***in...

Our guys showed some guts tonight.

 

[JTrain]

I think we learned that we have been simply stretched too thin to compete with big time programs with this many injuries.

Mike Rose

Davis Santos
Charles Jackson
Avery Moss
Leroy Alexande
Cethan Carter
Kenny Bell
Jamal Turner
Sam Burtch
Brandon Reily
Marcus Newby
Adam Taylor

These guys not on the field was what broke us tonight. With this defense, I think we will be in Indy at the end of the year... I just hope we get another shot at Sparty.

And yet, frighteningly, our most glaring weakness was the offensive line, which none of the above are members of.

 

[JTrain]

 

[germanforbigred]

Offense was bad. TA is not a good quarterback. It is going to be TM all over again. People are going to wait for him to make progress but it's not gonna happen. He is locked on receivers, his short passes are awful and he is not even much of a running threat like TM used to be.

Also the only reason this game was not a blow out starting the 4th quarter was because MSU playing bad on offense itself. The Westerkamp catch in the 4th should a been a pick6, we got lucky and momentum switched. And since MSU had taken the foot off the gas we had the chance to climb back because they couldn't get back into the "lights out" mode fast enough. But frankly, this game did not look much better than the other prime time games we played in recently.

 

[Husker66]

I think we learned that we have been simply stretched too thin to compete with big time programs with this many injuries.

Mike Rose

Davis Santos
Charles Jackson
Avery Moss
Leroy Alexande
Cethan Carter
Kenny Bell
Jamal Turner
Sam Burtch
Brandon Reily
Marcus Newby
Adam Taylor

These guys not on the field was what broke us tonight. With this defense, I think we will be in Indy at the end of the year... I just hope we get another shot at Sparty.

this reminds me of last year...s & c ??

 

[Saunders]

I learned that even though we were within an inch (or a finger) of winning a game that 30 days ago pretty much everyone thought we would lose, that we suck.

Or something.

 

[Bigred_inSD]

1. Our defense is ridiculous good. They had to play perfect and gave up big plays because of it.

2. Thr jury is still out on Tommy

3. The oline should be embarrassed

4. No-one will understand beck

5. The saddest statement. Ameer deserves better

 

[HuskerinSunDiego]

I think if you know how to fix a car, ill listen. If you can perform surgery, ill listen. But if your some random dude on a chat board who knows more about a team than the coaches who have direct contact with it, you are the delusional one my friend.

I read these "if you know how to perform surgery, I'll listen" posts back in the Callahan days. Football is not surgery. It is not something that is beyond the grasp of the average fan, certainly not Husker fans. If we end up with three losses, I'd give Pelini one more year.

 

[HuskerinSunDiego]

Beck does not trust his quarterback making reads in the passing game in big games. This is partially justified because we don't have very good passing quarterbacks. But on the the other hand, you have to take chances to beat very good teams.

This has happened before with Beck. He comes out nervous and only calls short passes, usually to the sidelines and usually with few if any reads. In some ways this seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the quarterback surely realizes his OC has no faith in him, causing him to play tight and lose confidence.

Then, when we fall behind by 3 or 4 scores and become desperate, Beck figures there is nothing to lose, loosens up and starts opening up the passing game. Voila! It actually works to some degree and we make some nice plays downfield. But unfortunately it's too little too late. And then we have to ponder, what if he just came out with that attitude to begin with? What if he fires down the middle of the field to Westy or Moore right after the turnover and goes up 7-0 with a confident QB? Sure, he risks Tommy not seeing a safety and throwing an interception. But looking at the alternative... it's a risk worth taking.

Dude, you are one of my favorite posters on this board. I really like your insights. Not the typical "safe" observations that most people make so the rest of the people on the board won't scream at them. Having said that, however, I have to disagree with you on this one. There were plenty of pass opportunities for Tommy. How many times can you miss a swing pass to a back by 7 yards when nobody is guarding him? Tommie was just atrocious in his throws last night. There were 5-10 throws he easily should have had for completions last night. I'm no huge Beck fan, but I think this one's on Tommy, not Beck.

 

[Amac3309]

TA is young, needs to improve mid and short throw accuracy

He also needs to take off and run instead of forcing balls

It's tough to get to your 2nd or 3rd read wih less than 2 seconds to throw

The o line is not good

Beck stayed committed to the run but didn't try anything to throw them off

We don't have recievers that can win many one on one battles

The d line is stout

52 shouldn't play once santos gets back

Our corners need to learn to turn and look for the ball

Oddly enough all things we already knew

Looking at the schedule most guesses were 11-1 to 9-3, I bet in almost all cases this game was penciled as a loss for most of us. We are where most of us thought we would be and still have a chance to do special things this year, as long as we don't have the bo fart game.

This team does seem different from a leadership standpoint, I like it

 

[gobiggergoredder]

Offense -

• Get ready TA because team are no going to try to make you beat them. He's going to have to take what the teams will give him and make the throws (especially the short one's).
• Offense really put the defense in poor field position for the majority of the game.
• Obviously the O-Line look pretty bad (Sterup looked like he had cement shoes on), but the O in general never capitalized on anything that would have loosened the D up.

Defense -

• The defense played well enough for this to be a victory.
• Josh Kalu is the real deal.
• Trevor Roach is the best LB we have. He played really well. Bo and the crew better be looking for the best Juco LB in the country right now because this defense is young and has a ton of potential, but the LB cupboard is bare.

[*]I tried not to just automatically buy into the Gregory hype, but he had some beast plays yesterday.

Special Teams

• DPE is special returning punts.

Overall

• Lot of heart shown by the team.
• If TA can calm down and make the play when he needs to, that will loosen up the inside. I think he can do that and he's going to have to because everyone is going to try and do the same thing. Sparty's D really played well but opportunities were there.

 

[suh_fan93]

Basically Polo is right, this game was not surprising if you aren't blinded by the red goggles, it was not nearly as close as the score indicated, we were embarrassed for 3.5 quarters in a big game yet again. If you aren't nervous about traveling to Wisconsin you're deluded. "All our goals are still ahead of us yadayadayada" ...look, we're shaping up to have the same season we've had the past 6 years. Wake me up when it ends.

Nailed it.

 

[The Nebraskan Assassin]

...that the O-line is a group of 300-plus pound marshmallows.

But still, the biggest mystery to me through everything is why Johnny Stanton has become the invisible man. From blue-chipper to 3rd stringer behind two ordinary QBs just makes no sense at all.

 

[Hayseed]

Beck does not trust his quarterback making reads in the passing game in big games. This is partially justified because we don't have very good passing quarterbacks. But on the the other hand, you have to take chances to beat very good teams.

This has happened before with Beck. He comes out nervous and only calls short passes, usually to the sidelines and usually with few if any reads. In some ways this seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the quarterback surely realizes his OC has no faith in him, causing him to play tight and lose confidence.

Then, when we fall behind by 3 or 4 scores and become desperate, Beck figures there is nothing to lose, loosens up and starts opening up the passing game. Voila! It actually works to some degree and we make some nice plays downfield. But unfortunately it's too little too late. And then we have to ponder, what if he just came out with that attitude to begin with? What if he fires down the middle of the field to Westy or Moore right after the turnover and goes up 7-0 with a confident QB? Sure, he risks Tommy not seeing a safety and throwing an interception. But looking at the alternative... it's a risk worth taking.

Dude, you are one of my favorite posters on this board. I really like your insights. Not the typical "safe" observations that most people make so the rest of the people on the board won't scream at them. Having said that, however, I have to disagree with you on this one. There were plenty of pass opportunities for Tommy. How many times can you miss a swing pass to a back by 7 yards when nobody is guarding him? Tommie was just atrocious in his throws last night. There were 5-10 throws he easily should have had for completions last night. I'm no huge Beck fan, but I think this one's on Tommy, not Beck.

Add to that the angry message board mob with torches and pitchforks that would've been after Beck had he "thrown it beyond the linebackers" at the beginning of the game instead of "sticking with the run" and Tommy's throw went into the hands of an MSU safety. Our losing had a heck of a lot more to do with the Jimmies than it did with any clever strategy.