What's a guy supposed to say? Its nice to hear the coach on local talk radio occasionally. Nice to feel like he wants to be transparent with us. I think he expects to have big success this year, but knows better than to make any wild predictions. I still put the win potential at 7-9 games (incl. bowl) and will measure the teams success in terms of progress.
These are some things to look at when thinking about progress.
- Violent solid tackling.
- Winning the turnover battle 2-1 ratio
- Constant QB pressure (on opponent)
- Excellent QB play (for NU)
- Depth development
- Winning the line of scrimmage late in the game
- Replacing struggling players with effective (and well prepared) ones
- In-game adjustments, fix things that are broke and continue things that are working
- Applying speed. Turning some 3 yard gains into 10 yard gains and 15 yard gains into TDs
- Using the dagger in the 2nd quarter, instead of settling into an NFL style game management program