The sky isn’t falling

[HuskerRedDread]

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This is the difference between people who are respected, and those we openly laugh about during conversations.

There are plenty of posters who really know their stuff when it comes to football, but they gracefully admit they aren’t big on baseball or basketball. They’re the guys I read and listen to. I learn from them, and I admire that they freely admit their expertise is limited to certain topics. Those guys made it pretty clear there wasn’t a great deal of change, so ya, you don’t know what you are talking about.

Additionally, if we want to share our thoughts honestly, there really isn’t a topic that you do give meaningful contributions to. At least beyond padding a post count that I’m sure gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But by all means, keep bangin’ that keyboard, because I’m sure it’s probably a bright spot in your life. Ignorance truly is bliss.

Ooooh, look how emotional a man can get just because someone disagrees with him. I bet you thought you could hurt my feelings with that post huh?....lol. I'm proud of you for finding friends who agree with you and your assessment. Everyone loves having someone on their side.

Regardless of your carefully thought out attack at me and my "worth" to the conversations on this board.....it still doesn't change the fact that you saying "momentum" is the difference between that first half and second half is hilarious. Minor adjustments....maybe, but momentum......I hope we have a coaching staff that can adjust to a "momentum" change.

 

[Middle-aged_Ball_Coach]

how is it that a staff that's getting paid 100s of thousands to millions a dollars aren't able to counter those adjustments.

The O-line improved so much last year as the season progressed that it was clear that Austin (and Verducci, who basically co-coaches the O-line) is quite good at what he does, so I'm not going to throw the coaches under the bus. We have 2 Rsht-Fr starting at Center and Guard, and Jurgens never played O-line in a game until we played South Alabama. Even though he was a 4-star recruit, that was at TE, and now everything that he's learning is new to him. QB is the only position on offense that is tougher to play as a freshman than O-line from a mental perspective because of the fluidity and unpredictability of what the defense is doing. Our coaches can do a spectacular job of coaching fundamentals, breaking down film, correcting mistakes in practice, etc., but there are still lots of things that you just have to learn in a game, probably by doing it wrong a few times and getting burned. Jurgens didn't get the chance to learn by making those mistakes in junior high, so now it's happening on a big stage where all of can see it, criticize it, and break it down endlessly. He's already come an amazingly long way, so be patient, and they'll figure it out. If we have things figured out by Iowa, I'd trade a loss to Colorado for a win over those guys.

He is coaching youth and he said he started running twists with his 6th grade group. Harkening back to when I coached youth, I remember the first time I saw them and it was in our 7th grade state championship game. (Those twists left our line confused and we lost 20-12).

So yes my friend, this is truly junior high stuff. Blocking these stunts should be second nature.

It's fairly common to have special 5-6th grade rules where opposing teams can't blitz unless they roll up everyone on to the Line-of-Scrimmage before the snap, so there's a lot of dropping LBs into coverage after faking blitzes already at that level. We work on 2-on-2 blocking at every level from the earliest ages in pads all the way through professional football, and everybody at every level does D-line twists as a stunt. The thing is, though, it also works at every level because it's one more thing for an O-lineman to have to do when he's often already got his hands full blocking 1-on-1. It's not a big deal in my eyes that we got burned on that because you can watch TV today and see NFL teams that get burned on it. It was how often it was happening that was disconcerting. Fwiw, it isn't happening as much anymore. Our O-line looked as good as last year's in the 2nd half last night.

Fwiw, OSU doesn't do a lot of complicated defensive scheming, but they do love themselves some D-line twists. Let's hope that we've got that figured out by Saturday. Even without it, their DEs are NFL caliber, and they're going to beat us at times even if we do everything right.