Nebraska Football 2018-2019

[huskerbaseball13]

29 minutes ago, hskr4life said:

 

Improvements don't always translate to wins.  I think the team has improved so far this year.  Teams we have played however, have gotten better and are improving as well.

Maybe. But we are still one of the most sloppiest undisciplined teams in CFB.  Maybe it was delusional to think Frost to get that cleaned up by this point. I don’t know. I do know we should not be 0-6 though. 

[Norm Peterson]

14 hours ago, huskerbaseball13 said:

Maybe. But we are still one of the most sloppiest undisciplined teams in CFB.  Maybe it was delusional to think Frost to get that cleaned up by this point. I don’t know. I do know we should not be 0-6 though. 

 

See, this is what happens so much among fans.

 

Someone might take a superficial look rather than a deep dive and say we should be better than 0-6.  Which means fire the coach, because it's his job to recruit, develop, strategize, plan, prepare, etc.  And if the Win/Loss record isn't what you think it should be, then the coach should be gone.

 

But if you take that deeper dive and say, well, hold on here, there are some good things going on and some near misses and some issues beyond the coach's control, etc., then you hear "you're just making excuses."

 

To this day, there are people over on the Rivals board bashing hoops supporters over EVERY BIT OF GOOD NEWS THAT COMES DOWN THE PIPE: "No excuses this year;" "Can't wait to hear the excuses this year;" etc. as though they expect something bad will happen even though no games have even been played yet.  I read those comments and it just blows my mind.

 

As of this moment, it seems like the people who have been on the side of giving Miles additional time have been vindicated in their position.  Can you imagine where we'd be if we'd have canned him at the end of the last year or the year before that and started over with a new coaching staff?  We'd have someone else at the helm starting from the bottom on the old 6 year plan.  We sure as hell wouldn't have national analysts picking us among the top 20 teams in the country.  

 

So, Frost, let me make some excuses, OK?

 

1.  He doesn't control weather.  No one can say it's his fault we didn't play against Akron.  Play that Akron game and your guys get some game reps against a team we almost certainly would have beaten.  But the experience would have been invaluable.  Play that game and we start out 1-0.

 

2.  We were beating Colorado until Martinez got hurt in the 4th quarter.  True freshman playing his first game in quite some time (due to HS injury -- did he miss all of his senior year?).  That was the most obvious attempt to injure an opposing QB I've ever seen in a college game, by the way.  If EITHER we have a warm-up game against Akron OR Martinez doesn't get injured, I think we win that CU game and get a little momentum going.  That puts us at 2-0.

 

3.  Sophomore walk-on QB starting his first game against Troy.  We spotted Troy a 17-point lead and lost by 5.  Does that happen if we have Martinez playing?  Who knows? It's at least arguable that Martinez makes the difference in that game.  And Troy was supposed to be one of our toughest home foes going into the season according to realtimerpi.com.  Get the winning started against Akron, we probably walk off that field 3-0.

 

4.  Michigan is a buzzsaw and now you have negative momentum going against you.  Frustration leads to people doing stupid things they wouldn't otherwise do.  And that leads you to …

 

5.  Purdue.  Martinez was 25 of 42 for 323 yards and 2 TDs.  Good numbers.  Especially for a true freshman QB in his 4th game.  We got on the scoreboard first.  We outgained Purdue in total yardage.  We hung 28 points on them.  Defense just couldn't stop them when we needed to.  And, as HB pointed out above, we kinda have a shortage of impact players on the defensive side of the ball.

 

6.  Northwestern.  It was just their day.  Did anyone think we were going to win after they picked up 2 4th-and-tens in their penultimate drive?

 

I think if we'd gotten that first game in, we're probably 4-2 right now.  Maybe 3-3 at worst.

 

But, with losing, the frustration builds.  And it takes its toll.  It's that negative momentum.  If you've never experienced it, you maybe don't understand it.  When you're losing, you start forcing things and trying to do too much in some cases.  And losing can reveal the bad character of some players that winning would conceal.  You maybe find out who some of the quitters are or which players have bad attitudes.

 

So, games upcoming that we would otherwise win, we're more likely to lose just because we've been losing more than we wanted to or ever thought we would leading up to this point.  That's just a fact.  Argue it if you want, but any coach in that situation is going to face a challenge.

 

I think it happened to the hoops team a couple of years ago when some players just plain quit on the team down the stretch.  You could see it happening if you knew where to look.

 

So, anyway, half a season is not nearly enough time to give the coach to see whether he's going to be able to succeed here or not.  

 

 

[49r]

32 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

That was the most obvious attempt to injure an opposing QB I've ever seen in a college game, by the way.

 

The best part of that is karma has come back to them in some small way on this:

 

https://www.ralphiereport.com/2018/10/6/17946156/colorado-buffaloes-linebacker-jacob-callier-out-for-the-season

[49r]

36 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

To this day, there are people over on the Rivals board bashing hoops supporters over EVERY BIT OF GOOD NEWS THAT COMES DOWN THE PIPE: "No excuses this year;" "Can't wait to hear the excuses this year;" etc. as though they expect something bad will happen even though no games have even been played yet.  I read those comments and it just blows my mind.

 

This also baffles me.  The folks on HuskerBoard (and I know there are several of them who lurk/post over here too) are infinitely frustrating when it comes to this.

 

There is nothing they want more than to get rid of coach Miles.  Nothing.  He could take these guys to the Final Four and it would only piss them off because it would mean we wouldn't be firing him.  They would rather this team go 0-30 than 30-0, just because it would mean getting rid of Miles, and that is absolutely not stretching the truth in any way.

[Silverbacked1]

1 hour ago, 49r said:

 

This also baffles me.  The folks on HuskerBoard (and I know there are several of them who lurk/post over here too) are infinitely frustrating when it comes to this.

 

There is nothing they want more than to get rid of coach Miles.  Nothing.  He could take these guys to the Final Four and it would only piss them off because it would mean we wouldn't be firing him.  They would rather this team go 0-30 than 30-0, just because it would mean getting rid of Miles, and that is absolutely not stretching the truth in any way.

 

I. think in this day and age of all of us having a say in everything we are starting to think we are all much more important than we are.. We it was just like maybe 5 or 6 setting around a table at the coffee shop or being a rail bird down at the local watering hole, then your friends can tell you to shut your pie hole, think again or that you are right because they know you and how you think.

 

On here we kind of get an idea and we are usually close to knowing each other, but we still aren't as close as if we were all in the same room.. This keyboard makes us very brave and willing to say many things that we most  likely wouldn't in the "real world"..  And then we can always count on trolls.

[HuskerFever]

1 hour ago, Norm Peterson said:

 

See, this is what happens so much among fans.

 

Someone might take a superficial look rather than a deep dive and say we should be better than 0-6.  Which means fire the coach, because it's his job to recruit, develop, strategize, plan, prepare, etc.  And if the Win/Loss record isn't what you think it should be, then the coach should be gone.

 

But if you take that deeper dive and say, well, hold on here, there are some good things going on and some near misses and some issues beyond the coach's control, etc., then you hear "you're just making excuses."

 

To this day, there are people over on the Rivals board bashing hoops supporters over EVERY BIT OF GOOD NEWS THAT COMES DOWN THE PIPE: "No excuses this year;" "Can't wait to hear the excuses this year;" etc. as though they expect something bad will happen even though no games have even been played yet.  I read those comments and it just blows my mind.

 

As of this moment, it seems like the people who have been on the side of giving Miles additional time have been vindicated in their position.  Can you imagine where we'd be if we'd have canned him at the end of the last year or the year before that and started over with a new coaching staff?  We'd have someone else at the helm starting from the bottom on the old 6 year plan.  We sure as hell wouldn't have national analysts picking us among the top 20 teams in the country.  

 

So, Frost, let me make some excuses, OK?

 

1.  He doesn't control weather.  No one can say it's his fault we didn't play against Akron.  Play that Akron game and your guys get some game reps against a team we almost certainly would have beaten.  But the experience would have been invaluable.  Play that game and we start out 1-0.

 

2.  We were beating Colorado until Martinez got hurt in the 4th quarter.  True freshman playing his first game in quite some time (due to HS injury -- did he miss all of his senior year?).  That was the most obvious attempt to injure an opposing QB I've ever seen in a college game, by the way.  If EITHER we have a warm-up game against Akron OR Martinez doesn't get injured, I think we win that CU game and get a little momentum going.  That puts us at 2-0.

 

3.  Sophomore walk-on QB starting his first game against Troy.  We spotted Troy a 17-point lead and lost by 5.  Does that happen if we have Martinez playing?  Who knows? It's at least arguable that Martinez makes the difference in that game.  And Troy was supposed to be one of our toughest home foes going into the season according to realtimerpi.com.  Get the winning started against Akron, we probably walk off that field 3-0.

 

4.  Michigan is a buzzsaw and now you have negative momentum going against you.  Frustration leads to people doing stupid things they wouldn't otherwise do.  And that leads you to …

 

5.  Purdue.  Martinez was 25 of 42 for 323 yards and 2 TDs.  Good numbers.  Especially for a true freshman QB in his 4th game.  We got on the scoreboard first.  We outgained Purdue in total yardage.  We hung 28 points on them.  Defense just couldn't stop them when we needed to.  And, as HB pointed out above, we kinda have a shortage of impact players on the defensive side of the ball.

 

6.  Northwestern.  It was just their day.  Did anyone think we were going to win after they picked up 2 4th-and-tens in their penultimate drive?

 

I think if we'd gotten that first game in, we're probably 4-2 right now.  Maybe 3-3 at worst.

 

But, with losing, the frustration builds.  And it takes its toll.  It's that negative momentum.  If you've never experienced it, you maybe don't understand it.  When you're losing, you start forcing things and trying to do too much in some cases.  And losing can reveal the bad character of some players that winning would conceal.  You maybe find out who some of the quitters are or which players have bad attitudes.

 

So, games upcoming that we would otherwise win, we're more likely to lose just because we've been losing more than we wanted to or ever thought we would leading up to this point.  That's just a fact.  Argue it if you want, but any coach in that situation is going to face a challenge.

 

I think it happened to the hoops team a couple of years ago when some players just plain quit on the team down the stretch.  You could see it happening if you knew where to look.

 

So, anyway, half a season is not nearly enough time to give the coach to see whether he's going to be able to succeed here or not.  

 

The three main things that come to mind for me are:

 

1. I would argue that Colorado would be better prepared against us if we played the Akron game. They were going off of blind intuition to set a game plan. So that one is still a toss-up to me.

 

2. If Martinez doesn't get injured, we have a chance to get 1 or 2 wins just from this alone.

 

3. If we did play that Akron game and we did win it, I have a feeling Frost kicks the field goal in overtime rather than going for the win. That monkey is very much on our backs and he was taking some risks just to pull out the win.

[brfrad]

23 hours ago, HB said:

 

No, we don't have 7 win talent against this schedule.  Our talent sucks.  Our fans don't want to admit how phony the recruiting schtick was with HHH.   Look at the defense, for Christ's sake.  There isn't a great player on it.  Not one.  Not one quality pass rusher.  Bad linebackers. Bad secondary.  So instead of your take, it is players, players, players.  And we have to get some.  This was rock bottom after the worst 3 years of coaching and recruiting in college football history.   So many of our fans are in denial of the extent of the problem.   We have to recruit our way out of this, and i think we will.   But it ain't a quick fix.  

So, you are trying to convince me that these teams have more talent than us:

 

Akron

Colorado

Troy

Purdue

Northwestern

Minnesota

Illinois

 

I could maybe give you Colorado.

 

The team flat out quit last year, which caused them to go 4 - 8.  Before the Northwestern loss, they could have/should have beaten NW, Minnesota, and Iowa to finish 7 - 5.

 

Actually, Mo Barry and Luke Gifford could probably start for most teams in the Big 10.  Secondary is not good, but the DL has decent players.  The reason some coaches use the 3 - 4 defense, is because the offense never knows where the rushers are coming from.  I noticed that we don't disguise the pass rushers very well.  One critique I would have with Chinander.  I think doing that would help the secondary.

 

Imagine the chaos if Bo started 0 - 6 in 2008, or Riley started in 0 - 6 in 2015.  So, I am sorry I don't bow down to Frost, and just have blind faith in him.  A lot of fans are going through the fact that Riley was the Devil, and St. Frost is here to fix everything.

 

I am not asking for Frost to be fired.  I think he needs at a very minimum 4 years to get this thing turned around.  I just think fans have to be okay with other fans criticizing the coaches who are in charge now.

[HB]

1 minute ago, brfrad said:

So, you are trying to convince me that these teams have more talent than us:

 

Akron

Colorado

Troy

Purdue

Northwestern

Minnesota

Illinois

 

I could maybe give you Colorado.

 

The team flat out quit last year, which caused them to go 4 - 8.  Before the Northwestern loss, they could have/should have beaten NW, Minnesota, and Iowa to finish 7 - 5.

 

Actually, Mo Barry and Luke Gifford could probably start for most teams in the Big 10.  Secondary is not good, but the DL has decent players.  The reason some coaches use the 3 - 4 defense, is because the offense never knows where the rushers are coming from.  I noticed that we don't disguise the pass rushers very well.  One critique I would have with Chinander.  I think doing that would help the secondary.

 

Imagine the chaos if Bo started 0 - 6 in 2008, or Riley started in 0 - 6 in 2015.  So, I am sorry I don't bow down to Frost, and just have blind faith in him.  A lot of fans are going through the fact that Riley was the Devil, and St. Frost is here to fix everything.

 

I am not asking for Frost to be fired.  I think he needs at a very minimum 4 years to get this thing turned around.  I just think fans have to be okay with other fans criticizing the coaches who are in charge now.

 

No, we don't have to be OK with arm-chair, knee-jerk, impatient critics.    It makes no sense to say someone needs 4 years, but after 4 months of practice and games I"m going to criticize the hell out of them.  

 

New flash, we were terrible last year for a lot more reasons than quitting.   And those decent Dline players you were talking about barely got a hand on the QB despite 64 pass attempts and 37 straight.   

[49r]

1 hour ago, Silverbacked1 said:

 

I. think in this day and age of all of us having a say in everything we are starting to think we are all much more important than we are.. We it was just like maybe 5 or 6 setting around a table at the coffee shop or being a rail bird down at the local watering hole, then your friends can tell you to shut your pie hole, think again or that you are right because they know you and how you think.

 

On here we kind of get an idea and we are usually close to knowing each other, but we still aren't as close as if we were all in the same room.. This keyboard makes us very brave and willing to say many things that we most  likely wouldn't in the "real world"..  And then we can always count on trolls.

 

Yeah the internet has radically changed civil discourse, that's true.

[brfrad]

39 minutes ago, HB said:

 

No, we don't have to be OK with arm-chair, knee-jerk, impatient critics.    It makes no sense to say someone needs 4 years, but after 4 months of practice and games I"m going to criticize the hell out of them.  

 

New flash, we were terrible last year for a lot more reasons than quitting.   And those decent Dline players you were talking about barely got a hand on the QB despite 64 pass attempts and 37 straight.   

So, how come the coaches don't deserve some blame? Either, they are not teaching the players proper technique or they can't design something to get to the QB.

 

We were 3 - 3 through 6 games last year.  We beat the same Purdue team on the road that we lost to at home this year by 14.  Northwestern took us to OT both years.

 

So, we are not suppose to be frustrated with the coaches when we are 0 - 6 for the only time in 129 years?

[HB]

14 minutes ago, brfrad said:

So, how come the coaches don't deserve some blame? Either, they are not teaching the players proper technique or they can't design something to get to the QB.

 

We were 3 - 3 through 6 games last year.  We beat the same Purdue team on the road that we lost to at home this year by 14.  Northwestern took us to OT both years.

 

So, we are not suppose to be frustrated with the coaches when we are 0 - 6 for the only time in 129 years?

 

You're frustrated with the wrong coaches.   

[khoock]

Mike Riley is currently 19-25 as Nebraska HC

[HuskerFever]

2 hours ago, brfrad said:

We were 3 - 3 through 6 games last year.  We beat the same Purdue team on the road that we lost to at home this year by 14.  Northwestern took us to OT both years.

 

And if you recall, we barely won that Purdue game in the final minutes. Had we lost that game, we're already more than 365 days without a win.

 

A few games could have flipped last season, and this season is no different. I'd argue Colorado, Troy, and Northwestern could have flipped this season (Purdue and Wisconsin is a bigger stretch, with Michigan no even part of the conversation). Unfortunately they all ended up on the 'L' side so far.

[Norm Peterson]

1 hour ago, khoock said:

Mike Riley is currently 19-25 as Nebraska HC

 

No. He was 19-19.  But he left behind a mess.  Just like Doc inherited a huge mess from Barry Collier.  And just like Miles inherited a mess from Doc.  Those are still losses hung on the coach at the helm at the time, but this is where we get into people calling reasons "excuses."

[Norm Peterson]

I'd be curious if one of the armchair head coaches could explain to me what you do to coach around Aaron Williams, Sr. DB from Atlanta.

 

He was thrown at 10 times, gave up 10 catches, committed 4 penalties of which 2 were declined.  One because they scored a TD on the play in spite of his holding the receiver.

 

I'll hang up and listen.

[hskr4life]

In my mind, year one for any coach that took over a struggling team is going to be a bust more times than not.  Frost's "Guys" are Freshman and any Juco players he has brought in.  Arguably our core (Washington, Martinez, Pickering) are Freshman as well.  I also think that Fever brought up really good points about "toss up" games as well.  They just haven't fallen in our favor this year which stinks but is part of the game.

 

I think that in itself is why Norm says reasons and not excuses.

[khoock]

10 minutes ago, Norm Peterson said:

 

No. He was 19-19.  But he left behind a mess.  Just like Doc inherited a huge mess from Barry Collier.  And just like Miles inherited a mess from Doc.  Those are still losses hung on the coach at the helm at the time, but this is where we get into people calling reasons "excuses."

Im just poking fun.

 

Frost inherited a mess. But hes also a very young coach with a young staff (sometimes i think the 13-0 season make ppl forget this is only his THIRD season as a HC) who have made some mistakes that have cost us a win, maybe two. 

 

The promising thing is that I believe Scott will get the right guys in here and i think he is a humble enough guy that he will reflect and improve upon himself as well.

[Bugeaters1]

1 hour ago, Norm Peterson said:

I'd be curious if one of the armchair head coaches could explain to me what you do to coach around Aaron Williams, Sr. DB from Atlanta.

 

He was thrown at 10 times, gave up 10 catches, committed 4 penalties of which 2 were declined.  One because they scored a TD on the play in spite of his holding the receiver.

 

I'll hang up and listen.

Crickets!!

 

[Dead Dog Alley]

4 hours ago, Norm Peterson said:

 

No. He was 19-19.  But he left behind a mess.  Just like Doc inherited a huge mess from Barry Collier.  And just like Miles inherited a mess from Doc.  Those are still losses hung on the coach at the helm at the time, but this is where we get into people calling reasons "excuses."

 

Gary Andersen was a very promising coach once.  In his fourth year at Utah State he got them into the top 20 - they hadn't ended up in the ratings since 1961 - then went 20-7 at Wisconsin.

 

Then he goes to Oregon State to replace Riley and now he might not ever coach again.

[HuskerFever]

It's going to take some time to get over the old school mentality and move into a culture of discipline and winning.

 

https://www.omaha.com/huskers/football/a-northwestern-player-couldn-t-believe-nebraska-is--/article_0aacf3a5-5f94-5644-8aff-67a43d6d3360.html

 

“Last year when things went bad, we weren’t trying to win football games; we were just trying to get through the quarters,” Bootle said. “This year things are going bad and we’re still fighting.”

[Huskerpapa]

Maybe comparing apples to oranges a bit, but in Saben's first year at Alabama, they went 6-6 in the regular season.  He patched together a team with former HC Mike Shula's players.  The shelf wasn't exactly bare, but it did not have the type of players (mentally/physically) that Saben wanted or needed.  The rest --- is history.

 

 

[Norm Peterson]

8 hours ago, HuskerFever said:

It's going to take some time to get over the old school mentality and move into a culture of discipline and winning.

 

https://www.omaha.com/huskers/football/a-northwestern-player-couldn-t-believe-nebraska-is--/article_0aacf3a5-5f94-5644-8aff-67a43d6d3360.html

 

“Last year when things went bad, we weren’t trying to win football games; we were just trying to get through the quarters,” Bootle said. “This year things are going bad and we’re still fighting.”

 

That's a refreshing quote from a player's perspective.  Hope it's accurate.

[huskerbaseball13]

13 hours ago, Bugeaters1 said:

Crickets!!

 

I’ll start out with saying I’ve never been to a Nebraska practice. And, that I feel Travis Fisher will end up being a very good coach for us.  But, we decided to put our under sized slow safety to cover Northwesterns slot man and best WR.  Despite getting abused over and over Williams was still asked to cover him down the stretch. Maybe he was our best option. But I would have liked to see Cam Taylor on Nagel. 

[brfrad]

On 10/15/2018 at 5:59 PM, Norm Peterson said:

I'd be curious if one of the armchair head coaches could explain to me what you do to coach around Aaron Williams, Sr. DB from Atlanta.

 

He was thrown at 10 times, gave up 10 catches, committed 4 penalties of which 2 were declined.  One because they scored a TD on the play in spite of his holding the receiver.

 

I'll hang up and listen.

You could match-up Bootle on him.  Then, have Lee and Jackson on the outside WR's, but I have no inside info to know if they tried that in practice.  Probably not the time to try it in a game situation.   But, maybe it was worth the risk.

[Huskerpapa]

1 hour ago, brfrad said:

You could match-up Bootle on him.  Then, have Lee and Jackson on the outside WR's, but I have no inside info to know if they tried that in practice.  Probably not the time to try it in a game situation.   But, maybe it was worth the risk.

I don't believe Lee even played against Northwestern.  If he did, it was on a very limited basis.  Bottom line, our depth in the defensive backfield was widely discussed prior to the season.  So there are not a lot of places to reach at this moment, to find significant talent.