When the player for Purdue's winning TD says....

[Dugzilla]

I'm not a Chinander fan! I think Pelinni would have gotten more from this defense, if he was the D Coach.

I was all for Pelini before he began showing less class. Could you imagine Pelini with Bill Moos?

 

[CO4NU]

MABC You say a lot things that are very true. We do lack talent, but we don't have overall less talent than Purdue and Indiana. They both have a more talent at WR and RB than we have though. My problem is that they exploit Nebraska's weaknesses but for what ever reason Nebraska can't seem to exploit any of their weaknesses. I am sure they know the other teams weaknesses. It doesn't translate to the field.

The fact that Nebraska lost both of these games is inexcusable. It is not inexcusable because I can't imagine Nebraska losing to these 2 teams, it is inexcusable because in both games they were up on both teams and folded like a cheap shirt. Nebraska led Indiana 13-3 at one point in the game and Purdue 10-0. I put most the loss for Indiana on the defense. *** posted these numbers in a different thread.


3/6 - 22 yard pass completion
3/6 - 5 yard completion (converted the 4th down on another pass completion)
3/17 - QB run for 12 yards
3/8 - 19 yard pass completion
3/12 - 23 yard pass completion
3/7 - Incomplete pass
3/7 - Incomplete pass
4/7 - 7 yard pass completion
3/7 - 11 yard run

These are Indiana's 3rd down plays of more than 6 yards. That is completely pathetic. They couldn't get off the field. The defense is what it is, it is not very good, but you got to be able to get off the field better than this in long yardage situations. They make them punt a couple of times and they have an excellent chance of winning the game.

I mean your 2 back up QB's complete 80% of their passes and they run for a couple hundred yards, and they can't win the game. I said most of the blame goes on the defense, the rest goes on the offense. You can't turn the ball over in your own territory, you can't fumble the ball as a QB because you are trying to do too much in plus territory. You got to be able to line up properly on the LOS as a WR so you can' pick up a 1st down on the other teams 8 yard line.

I put most of the blame for the Purdue loss on the offense. They should have had 40pts in that game on the conservative end. You get 2 turnovers and 2 blocked punts in plus territory and you can only muster 3 points off of those positives. I think it was something like 11 of Nebraska's 12 offensive series started or made it to plus territory and you only manage 27 points. That's pathetic.

You can't score from the 3 yard line after your NG makes a monumental defensive play because the coach gets cute and his tackle misses a block. I get the play call, I get the reasoning, but I don't like it. Lets try 2 more passes and then kick a FG. The argument that we can't use brute force to score against Purdue doesn't hold water with me, when the other 3 TD's were scored basically with brute force.

You go for it on 4th and 5 and pick it up, great. Then the very next play your QB telegraphs a wheel route pass that a safety tracks all the way and picks off at the goal line. When everyone watching the game can clearly see 2 other receivers wide open.

I put most the blame on the offense, but the defense still gets a little. Again, we can't get off the field, or at least force a FG try. You can't force a FG try when Purdue has it 3rd and 15 on your 25 yard line? Heck no, lets give up a 20 yard underneath crossing rt to the 8 yard line for a 1st down. Then let them run another crossing rt on the very next play and miss two tackles and let them score. Mind you this is a RS freshman backup QB throwing to a freshman TE. Who by the way had a 100 yards receiving in the game.

Finally the cherry on top. Nebraska goes up by 3 with 4 minutes and change on the clock. They then let the back up to the back up a walk on sophomore march right down the field going 6 of 6 passing to score the winning TD. Again they can't get off the field. All they have to do is string 4 good plays together and they win the game, and they can't do it.

I get we are young. I get we are not super talented. These 2 games were winnable and should have been won. Both of those teams wanted to win more than Nebraska did and they went out and executed and won the games.

EXCELLENT post!

 

[KleinTxHusker]

Lol not sure I’d help but when you look at what our offense left on the field, it was easily 21 points. Our defense gave us the ball in the first half a ton and we got 10 points. I get we got diced a bit but I’m way more mad at what’s going on offensively. We have to take our lumps on defense.

I think there is far more unanimity with the frustration of points left on the field than anything else...

And the question as to the lack of availability of Vedral vs Martinez

and that frustration may be mine more than anyone else... but I am running out of interest and time to care...

 

[MadRat]

I think there is far more unanimity with the frustration of points left on the field than anything else...

And the question as to the lack of availability of Vedral vs Martinez

and that frustration may be mine more than anyone else... but I am running out of interest and time to care...

I hope this is not a trend with fans. I could care less about a sell out streak. Win or lose, if for nothing else we should want to watch good football. Michigan fans didn't give up on their guys after a little lull in results. I certainly hope we don't see one with this team.

So what feelings makes you find less interest or time to care?

 

[ShortSideOption]

I don't hate the answer. The reality is that sometimes teams run plays that are well-designed for certain situations. You try to account for the most likely scenarios, and it's probably not feasible to account for everything that could be thrown at you. I think about that double option a few years that Beck ran near the goal line against Michigan (?) with Burkhead pitching the ball... how does a defense plan for that in the red zone?

I am much more disappointed that we couldn't find a way to slow Purdue down on the other plays of the 80+ yard drive.

We basically lined up wrong. Every defense has an edge defender and/or has every player eligible for a pass accounted for. Nebraska doesn't here. We have a couple guys for one gap to the top, but no one for the edge or eligible LT at the bottom. I won't harp too much since it was an unbalanced situation that we probably hadn't seen before, but to start the play, Purdue had 2 eligible players at the bottom, but only one cornerback to account for both of them. The motion WR leaves (and takes the corner with him) so that leaves zero guys for the eligible WR (LT) down low.

In regard to the double option, here's the video, and here's where Michigan screwed up:

Edge player is the OLB up top that would turn the play back into the help. Safety over top of the slot. Once the slot cracks on OLB, now the safety "crack replaces" the OLB and is your edge player (Should have screamed out to take Abdullah). The Martinez keep is taken care of by your 5 guys on the LOS and backside ILB. Playside ILB (25 who sucks in by the time he realizes it is too late) should have been flowing outside when both RBs took off outside and he would have had Burkhead "inside out".


That said, this play is a good example of Michigan never practicing against that (just like Nebraska vs Purdue reverse unbalanced) and screw ups happening. The keys would have made the defense work, but not seeing it before created hesitation and blown assignments.

 

[NUinID]

We basically lined up wrong. Every defense has an edge defender and/or has every player eligible for a pass accounted for. Nebraska doesn't here. We have a couple guys for one gap to the top, but no one for the edge or eligible LT at the bottom. I won't harp too much since it was an unbalanced situation that we probably hadn't seen before, but to start the play, Purdue had 2 eligible players at the bottom, but only one cornerback to account for both of them. The motion WR leaves (and takes the corner with him) so that leaves zero guys for the eligible WR (LT) down low.

In regard to the double option, here's the video, and here's where Michigan screwed up:

Edge player is the OLB up top that would turn the play back into the help. Safety over top of the slot. Once the slot cracks on OLB, now the safety "crack replaces" the OLB and is your edge player (Should have screamed out to take Abdullah). The Martinez keep is taken care of by your 5 guys on the LOS and backside ILB. Playside ILB (25 who sucks in by the time he realizes it is too late) should have been flowing outside when both RBs took off outside and he would have had Burkhead "inside out".


That said, this play is a good example of Michigan never practicing against that (just like Nebraska vs Purdue reverse unbalanced) and screw ups happening. The keys would have made the defense work, but not seeing it before created hesitation and blown assignments.

I like the play against Michigan. It looks like something that Frost and Co. could actually dust off and use once or twice. I like this play a lot better than the shovel pass on the goal line. Don't get me wrong I like the shovel pass, just not at the goal line. I like it on 2nd and 2 at the 45.

As for the game winner by Purdue it was well designed and well executed. I tip my hat to them. The moving ball right down the field with the back up to the back up walk on QB that goes 6 of 6 is more bothersome to me. It was a microcosm of what has been going on with this team. Can't get off the field and can't finish a game. Then when Nebraska gets the ball back our seasoned QB starter goes 1 or 4 for seven yards. Not much of a fight.

 

[AUnhusker]

We have been running a lot of zone defense, but it's not possible to cover the whole field and still defend the run against spread offenses without playing man coverage most of the time on the outside WRs. It's interesting that this is something that people are criticizing because our CBs have mostly done a pretty good job of covering their guys, even though they often have to do so much longer than they should be expected to cover. A simple test for seeing who's winning the Line of Scrimmage on a passing down is the 3-second test: when the ball is snapped, count three seconds and see if the QB has had to move his feet, take his eyes off of downfield WRs, or if there are players in his passing lanes; if so, the defense won; if not, the O-line won. About the only way that Nebraska's defense wins that test is to blitz, but every blitz is a risk and a gamble. If it works, the DC is a genius, but if it doesn't, it's usually a big play for the offense, and now the DC is a moron.

Do you know who can sit and play zone defense all day without it hurting them? Ohio State. Do you know why? They have elite speed at every level, in every position, and in depth. We don't. We have decent speed in our secondary, and that is it. Our LBs are not quick enough to cover in space, except for Jojo Domann, who is really a Safety, and he's too small to stuff the hole against the run against most Big 10 TEs and OTs. There isn't some quick fix to this either. Possibly the most difficult part of Frost and Chinander's coaching job this year has been resisting the urge to panic and play a bunch of freshmen who aren't yet physically ready to play.

My opinion is that our team has underperformed, overall, but not significantly out of line with where we're at due to depth issues, injury issues, etc.

Going back to the quote that you latched onto about Purdue knowing what Chinander was going to do = no development.... There are very few times in very few big games where a defense truly does something new, unexpected, or innovative (Bill Belichick excepted). You don't just beat a defense by guessing what they're going to do. To beat a good defense, you have to be confident that you can execute what you do, despite what they do, and you hope to be able to match up well enough to attack their tendencies. With a weak pass rush and an O-line that struggles to ever impose its will, we're behind the 8-ball almost all of the time in every play and in every game.

What I see in a lot of the comments on these pages is a lot of people who are upset with the coaches (or the players) for failing to live up to their expectations. I'm not saying that there isn't anything to criticize, but generally the people who were the most unrealistic in July are now the ones who are loudest in November about how poorly the coaches are doing: not a coincidence.

There isn't some backup player waiting in the wings who is the silver bullet that is going to save everything. There isn't some troglodyte coach who is holding back the potential of the players who would otherwise excel. When Nick Saban coached Michigan State in 1995, they didn't look very good either. Why? Because their culture sucked, their players lacked talent, and they hadn't really fully integrated (or fully bought into) their new offensive and defensive systems. Osborne repeatedly said that often the difference between a "good" coach and a "bad" coach was better talent. Of our current upperclassmen, I'd guess that LJ is the only one likely to be drafted from the defense, and Darrion Daniels has a decent chance at making a NFL roster: that's it. That's where we are. We'll have no offensive players drafted this year, and some may say, "Well, duh!, none of them are playing," which shows that we can identify the problem while simultaneously expecting Frost and Chinander to overcome it.

Frost is still a great offensive mind, and the proof is right there on your screen if you watch the games in slow motion or rewind frequently to see how close we consistently are to making big plays. We're a couple O-linemen away from being great on offense. We're about 3-4 LBs and 1-2 D-linemen away from being great on defense. That's where we are. Deciding who to blame for that won't change it.

‘Thank you, I’ve been looking for your comments after the Purdue loss. You add great logical perspective in this midst of the intense disappointment that most fans are feeling.

if I read you correctly, you aren’t saying that there are no grounds for criticism, but you are pointing that there are many logical reasons the coaches are doing what they are doing.

 

[CrabHusker]

You’re going to hate this answer, but a reverse in the red zone with that call isn’t accounted for. Blake Lawrence’s napkin is wrong.

I'll add this to the mix... if that safety is responsible for the reverse like the napkin says, that means that our guys following jet sweeps in man are responsible for stopping the jet sweep. Further, the LT is eligible... who is responsible for him?

Watch, one of the 3 teams we play will come back to this formation on us.

Wisconsin. Just to rub our noses in it.

 

[anotherdumbprediction]

That said, this play is a good example of Michigan never practicing against that

It was also a pretty good example of wide receiver blocking.

 

[LurkSker44]

We have been running a lot of zone defense, but it's not possible to cover the whole field and still defend the run against spread offenses without playing man coverage most of the time on the outside WRs. It's interesting that this is something that people are criticizing because our CBs have mostly done a pretty good job of covering their guys, even though they often have to do so much longer than they should be expected to cover. A simple test for seeing who's winning the Line of Scrimmage on a passing down is the 3-second test: when the ball is snapped, count three seconds and see if the QB has had to move his feet, take his eyes off of downfield WRs, or if there are players in his passing lanes; if so, the defense won; if not, the O-line won. About the only way that Nebraska's defense wins that test is to blitz, but every blitz is a risk and a gamble. If it works, the DC is a genius, but if it doesn't, it's usually a big play for the offense, and now the DC is a moron.

Do you know who can sit and play zone defense all day without it hurting them? Ohio State. Do you know why? They have elite speed at every level, in every position, and in depth. We don't. We have decent speed in our secondary, and that is it. Our LBs are not quick enough to cover in space, except for Jojo Domann, who is really a Safety, and he's too small to stuff the hole against the run against most Big 10 TEs and OTs. There isn't some quick fix to this either. Possibly the most difficult part of Frost and Chinander's coaching job this year has been resisting the urge to panic and play a bunch of freshmen who aren't yet physically ready to play.

My opinion is that our team has underperformed, overall, but not significantly out of line with where we're at due to depth issues, injury issues, etc.

Going back to the quote that you latched onto about Purdue knowing what Chinander was going to do = no development.... There are very few times in very few big games where a defense truly does something new, unexpected, or innovative (Bill Belichick excepted). You don't just beat a defense by guessing what they're going to do. To beat a good defense, you have to be confident that you can execute what you do, despite what they do, and you hope to be able to match up well enough to attack their tendencies. With a weak pass rush and an O-line that struggles to ever impose its will, we're behind the 8-ball almost all of the time in every play and in every game.

What I see in a lot of the comments on these pages is a lot of people who are upset with the coaches (or the players) for failing to live up to their expectations. I'm not saying that there isn't anything to criticize, but generally the people who were the most unrealistic in July are now the ones who are loudest in November about how poorly the coaches are doing: not a coincidence.

There isn't some backup player waiting in the wings who is the silver bullet that is going to save everything. There isn't some troglodyte coach who is holding back the potential of the players who would otherwise excel. When Nick Saban coached Michigan State in 1995, they didn't look very good either. Why? Because their culture sucked, their players lacked talent, and they hadn't really fully integrated (or fully bought into) their new offensive and defensive systems. Osborne repeatedly said that often the difference between a "good" coach and a "bad" coach was better talent. Of our current upperclassmen, I'd guess that LJ is the only one likely to be drafted from the defense, and Darrion Daniels has a decent chance at making a NFL roster: that's it. That's where we are. We'll have no offensive players drafted this year, and some may say, "Well, duh!, none of them are playing," which shows that we can identify the problem while simultaneously expecting Frost and Chinander to overcome it.

Frost is still a great offensive mind, and the proof is right there on your screen if you watch the games in slow motion or rewind frequently to see how close we consistently are to making big plays. We're a couple O-linemen away from being great on offense. We're about 3-4 LBs and 1-2 D-linemen away from being great on defense. That's where we are. Deciding who to blame for that won't change it.

Thanks MABC, ***, NUinID and others. This is one of the best, informative threads I’ve read in a while. MABC, I don’t think I’ve seen you post as much lately. Your analysis is always logical and informative, good to see you back!

That Purdue game was one of the most frustrating Husker games I’ve watched, and that’s saying a lot given the last 18 years.

 

[Hooked on Huskers]

Hook, line and sinker ....... #13

 

[Hville]

It certainly looked like they knew what we would do in those last two drives. Of course, I'm not sure how they could know we wouldn't tackle them when we had a chance.

They watched film

 

[Hville]

Exactly this game is on the offense, play calling, and the crappy play by our starting qb.

You get 2 blocked punts and 2 turnovers on the plus side and you get 3 points out of it.

You just pick up a 4th an 5 on their 30 and you throw an int into double coverage at the goal line when other guys are open.

You got the ball on the other teams 3 yard line and you throw the ball 3 straight times and kick a field goal.

Your quarterback constantly throws to covered guys instead of the wide open guy.

He won’t run when he has 10 yards of fresh grass in front of him and instead throws it someone’s feet or or out of bounds.

Have I missed anything? They should have conservatively scored at least 17 more points.

The defense is what it is not very good. But you got to score when you can.

That 3 passes after the int on the 3 pisses me off to no end, but what do we run later in the game and score 2x Qb iso.

Yea you missed throwing a shuffle pass on first and goal from the 2. This is incredibly stupid play for two reasons. One you have the entire defense bunched up inside the ends and they have constantly been beating our line. Just asking for trouble. The second reason is the shuffle pass is designed to catch them off guard and go for a big gain. Why would we waste it for two yards?

 

[Hville]

AM would've scored on the first play had he taken off for the corner. Instead he throws a pathetic shuttle pass.

Stupid play call from SF. Should have never been called on first down.

 

[36Blast]

It was also a pretty good example of wide receiver blocking.

Exactly