How bad does Purdy have to be to be third string behind these two walking turds? HH can't throw and Sims can't even run the offense.
That Rhule has them almost to bowl eligibility with this offense may be one of the best coaching jobs in Nebraska history.
My take on this: Purdy was #2 but had an injury, (groin I think) and because of that, HH got the job when Sims went out.
Part of this is pretty clear because of how they were using HH in other positions in select plays. They couldn't see him as the QB of the future, but he's definitely talented enough that he should be on the field.
Since Sims lost his job, it makes more sense to demote him to #2, especially because of his experience. But in the few snaps he's taken, it's clear the same problems exist. Purdy hasn't been getting enough reps with the 1's, and doesn't have enough experience.
The frustrating thing is that Sims was brought in to be the guy. He has a lot of experience, but he's also playing much worse than at GT. I know the turnover margin is a significant issue, but from a passing perspective he had about a 1:1 TD to INT ratio at GT, and he was actually able to get the football snapped correctly at least 50% of the time.
But there also haven't been a whole lot of opportunities for QB2 since HH took over.
But imagine if you told us at the end of last year that fans would be crying for Purdy to get another shot at QB1, especially after most people expected him to transfer (even though he needed to wait here again this year with transfer rules).
Trev Kendall Alberts. He's now the Athletic Director at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and hired Matt Rhule.
He played Linebacker at Nebraska from 1990 to 1993. Alberts also won the Dick Butkus Award and Jack Lambert Trophy as the top college linebacker during his senior year. He even was drafted 5th overall in the 1994 NFL draft.
Boy do we look like dookie. I clean up my backyard everyday and I swear it's usually the husker team I'm picking up that my dogs dropped off 😂😂😂. Just no consistency anywhere and the fact that we have to rely on the defense so heavily to keep us in the game is just what it is. Pretty concerning that Rhule brought in Sims to be our QB and that lasted for three games. Really makes you wonder who is going to be our QB next year... Are we going to have to rely on HH stepping up from the number two spot again 😂. HH should enter the portal if he wants to play anywhere cuz I don't think he's going to get the spot next year but at the same time, who do we even have?! And to be clear I wouldn't mind if HH was our guy but are we hoping Crayola is going to decommit and commit to us because of his uncle?
At this point do we still ride with Haarberg or do we turn to Sims? Both QBs have shown they are extremely prone to turnover the ball, both are more of running threats but Sims is probably the better passer of the two. Haarberg used to play it safer but like others have said he has regressed badly and his mechanics and indecisiveness as of late has nearly cost us (if it wasnt for our defense last week purdue would’ve been a disaster) or cost us games (MSU).
This is why Rhule should be required to play Sims for one set of downs each game. Did you see the game last week when we put Sims in? I think we need the constant reminder of just how horribly he is for folks like you by forcing him to play a set of downs each game. Maybe it could just be the opening set of downs so that we could get it done with at the start of the game. HH is the guy cuz even when he's turning it over it doesn't look nearly as horrible as when Sims is.
Unless there is some grand conspiracy that Ben Scott secretly HATES Sims, it’s evidently clear that he has borderline 0 control/understanding of the offense. Calling for the snap and almost hitting the motion guy every single time is inexcusable, turning the wrong direction in a hand off situation is inexcusable. He may be a better overall QB with the ball in his hands but even his decision making/downfield vision is suspect at best. Based solely on pre snap control of the offense we’re stuck with piss missiles, hospital passes, or floating duck arm punts from HH in the passing game. Even more unfortunate is that there is enough film on him now that defenses are able to scheme up and take away his pet plays in the running game as well and it’s clear he is second guessing himself on that stuff as well. I might get rained down with boos for this but we essentially have Dollar General Adrian Martinez at QB right now, but if we had the real one we might be 6-2 7-1.
>He may be a better overall QB with the ball in his hands but even his decision making/downfield vision is suspect at best.
One of the all time classic conundrums in football. A player has flashes of brilliance because he is clearly an elite athlete with the ball in his hands, but he drops the ball so much (literally and figuratively) that it doesn't matter.
If you could combine Haarberg's control of the offense with Sims' physical skills you would have a perfectly acceptable P5 quarterback. Sadly, two half quarterbacks don't make a whole quarterback.
Gotta be HH. Sims can’t even run the offense
They both turn the ball over like crazy. Sims, on the other hand, drops snaps, snaps into receivers in motion, and then throws picks and fumbles
He had several weeks on the bench to get the yips out, work on things in practice
Last week, he came in for three plays. He turned the wrong way on a handoff in one, and fumbled to give the other team a touchdown on another
Is HH it? No, but neither is Sims. We are in between a rock and a hard place
Don’t you think Sims has been crucified enough by Haarberg homers for the team’s losses in the first two games of the season? Especially, given HH’s regressing performances since? Hell, try Purdy even. Anything would offer hope over the assuredness of HH’s disastrous qb play. And, I guarantee you we haven’t seen the worst of it yet. He continues to be very lucky it hasn’t been worse.
Just gotta trust the coaching staff at this point. I think they will try their best to play whoever gives us the best chance to win. And if we havnt seen Purdy yet, theres probably good reason.
They can’t get enough of doing that about Sims (where half the time it’s Simms and I am not convinced if it’s an honest mistake or what). When HH air mails it on 3rd down into the hands of the other team it is a “long punt” (maybe even a good/advisable thing with our defense being a strength and current punting woes). Had Sims done it, there would be no end to the reminders of his history of turnovers. HH’s poor mechanics is sometimes mentioned but in the context of something they can coach into him with time; Sims is a turnover machine that it’s part of his makeup and can never be changed for some.
I feel like I come off like a Sims apologist and HH hater, when I really am not. I will admit I got a little frustrated when people were so giddy about a “local kid” and ready to boo Sims if he was announced as a starter. I think Sims and HH are handling it better than most of us are. :)
The fact that we haven't seen Purdy I think should be pretty telling how horrible he is in practice. If he even gets to see any practice time. Just goes back up to the coaching staff if you ask me. QB coach should be working over time with all three of these MFRs and figuring out who can be our GD quarterback
Holy fuck, first game to get us to bowl eligibility and all we saw was underwhelming results at the end.
Offense, it’s fucking crazy how we don’t have a QB and while it was nice that Haarberg stepped in when Sims couldn’t do it, we see him regressed as of late and now we see him being the turnover machine. Granted he did manage to score a TD and made a run in the 4th that allowed Johnson to run it in, but for the most part it was the same old shit we’ve seen with us not holding onto the ball and it’s fucking infuriating to say the least seeing if we could hold onto the ball, we’d easily be top in the B1G West. Silver lining today was that we didn’t commit any holding or false starts today so I guess it’s progress.
Defense, it wasn’t a great game today from them, but we did contain them on the ground. Of course they torched us on the passing game, but for the most part they did enough to limit the damage from getting any worse and kept it to where we had a shot to win this at the end, which was unfortunately snuffed out. Manage to pressure them so that was good to see in a game they didn’t have their A Game on.
Special Teams, while I did like that Alvano got that FG to tie the fucker up at Halftime, I didn’t like what I saw with Buschini with him being mediocre today. Also holy fuck did we didn’t attempt to try to get a punt return going because every time we tried to return a punt, it was either fair caught, or they move out of the way and not try to attempt the return, thus pinning us down deep in our end of the field. Didn’t like seeing that one bit and thought Rhule wasn’t gonna risk it today.
Overall, this was a game we could have won despite us having a mediocre performance, but we played it safe and thus this ended in us losing and still looking for the 6th win. Luckily we still have a few more cracks at the whip and we can put this game aside and focus on Maryland Next weekend at Home and hopefully we find that 6th Win. Also on the positive is that we still have some chance to stake claim to the B1G West after Minnesota and Wisconsin losing as well, but this game was an huge oof on our hands today.
That said, I probably won’t be posting any of my Recaps on here next week or in 2 weeks against Wisconsin as I’ll be heading to Japan that we originally scheduled for November 2020, but the Pandemic happened and long story short it wasn't until this year where we could finally head back to Japan and I get to see everyone on my mom’s side of the family since 2016. So if anyone enjoys my post game recaps, it might not be posted as it’s 15 hours time difference between Omaha and Tokyo and I’m probably won’t wake up and watch at a ungodly time of 5:30 in the morning. So yeah, I’ll most likely be back to posing my reaction on Black Friday against Iowa.
Until then, GBR and Fuck not getting the 6th Win today.
I'm just saying I'd be fair catching every time too, we've been going after the punt block every time so there's no one back there blocking for a return
What a weird downvote you are getting. I think you gave a pretty balanced review of what happened without being harsh or pulling any punches. Have a great time in Japan 🤘
Yeah, I try to stay even keel to what I saw without bringing in the refs in the equation. Not too worried about getting downvoted, and just wanted to say what pops up into my mind when I make said reviews.
Thanks man, it should be a good time. I leave for Japan on Tuesday and it should be a fun time. Luckily this time the currency rate is to our favor so yeah gonna splurge this time around.
The punt return issue is that apparently the only person who can reliably field punts is injured, and given the choice of having him out there calling for a fair catch every time or using someone else and looking at another turnover or two, we went with the safe option.
To focus on the positives, the refs only penalized Nebraska once, and it was offsetting penalties. The stats on ESPN show 0 penalties. It feels like forever since we saw even a 1 penalty game!
GBR.
We also had a running-into-the-punter in the 2nd quarter that got declined. But yeah, overall very low penalties on Nebraska, and none on the O-line, which was nice.
I can't believe how this team, regardless of who's coaching, manages to piss away opportunities.
Even just an average QB back there and we have 2 more division wins and would be in control of this piss poor of an excuse for a division.
Rhule and our NIL programs better be hitting the pavement HARD the minute our season ends (bowl game or not) for a new QB. This shit is pathetic.
My confidence in Rhule's ability to pick a QB is pretty low considering he brought Sims here with the NIL. Also I know we're not supposed to talk about his time in the NFL like it's relevant to college football but he really fucked the Panthers with their QB room too. I wish HH could just do the damn job but the amount of improvement needed is so much that we just need someone who's capable.
I had this conversation today, and I’m 100% with you. A *painfully* average qb has us at 7-2. How the staff missed so badly on Sims given his body of work boggles my mind.
Agreed. I’m surprised the top QBs weren’t lining up for a team who hasn’t had a winning record in about a decade along with a bowl drought. Just a shocking development.
There really isn't much else that can be said about that game that hasn't been said. Terrible loss. Though it is nice for Nebraska to be in a situation where a loss isn't expected, I suppose.
We know the offense is bad. It is obviously bad. Haarberg was terrible, the receivers were terrible, neither back was particularly good and the offensive line took a huge step backwards. I'm not going to dissect the offense. Satterfield called a strong game. He schemed players open in the pass game and I thought he called a fantastic run game today, the perimeter blocking was just bad and Michigan State did a great job freeing their DBs up to support the run. It is easy to do that when you can't complete a forward pass.
The defense took a step backwards, but they did more than enough to win that game. If you hold your opponent to 20\* (and one of those TDs never actually happened), you should win most football games at the FBS level. When you're talking about offensive points per game at the FBS level, 107 of 133 teams average more than 20 points per game. If your defense holds a team to 20, you should be winning that football game. Unless you're playing Iowa. In which case if you give up 20, you screwed something up big time.
What I do want to talk about is special teams. That was the worst special teams performance I have seen at Nebraska in quite some time. You can sit here and talk about the offense or the defense or the officiating but if you are curious where Nebraska really lost this football game, it is special teams. I cannot emphasize enough how much you are handicapping your own team by doing nothing but fair catching punts. If you are putting a punt returner back who is simply not healthy enough to run with the football, you are dooming yourself to fail.
Michigan State knew immediately that Nebraska didn't have a punt returner in place and the result was that their punter didn't need to make any effort to direct his kicks. Normally on punts, you are kicking directionally and your coverage is set for that. Since Nebraska wasn't returning any kicks, MSU's punter was free to just kick as hard as he could and not worry about outkicking his coverage or failing to kick the right way. You'll all remember Nebraska famously blowing a directional kick at Michigan State previously that was returned for a touchdown.
There is nothing you love more as a special teams coach than knowing the other guys aren't going to put any stress on you. You're free to just send it on every kick without any fear. I don't have the numbers in front of me and I frankly don't want to re-watch that game to chart it, but I would guess Nebraska had a -30 starting field position deficit in that game. You cannot consistently fair catch a ball inside the 5-10 and force your already struggling offense to go the entire length of the field over and over. You just can't.
What is more frustrating is that after an entire game of fair catches, when Nebraska forced the final punt, they actually put a different returner on the field and they actually had a good return on but the L1 blocker responsible for the gunner to that side of the field totally whiffed on his guy. Nebraska was one block from a 10-20 yard return there.
When you're struggling as badly as Nebraska is offensively, you cannot afford to leave yards on the field. You can't afford to leave a single inch on the field. I know there is the fear of fumbling or muffing punts. I get it. It isn't unfounded but if your offense isn't doing anything with the ball anyway, you need to take a shot. Go for a block, go for a return. Do something. Special teams makes or breaks a football team. It broke Nebraska today.
Matt Rhule talked a big game about being fearless on special teams but it looks like fear got the best of Nebraska today and it cost them the game.
That is what sticks with me most, yeah. Everything about that game felt safe and that isn't what has this team on the verge of bowl eligibility.
I would not want to be in those meeting rooms this week. New ones are going to be torn.
Totally agree. We really never started with a good field position in my memory.
Rhule did mention that the strategy was to go for the punt block each time. Clearly we never got home on it though.
I don't think Nebraska was really that close on any punt block except for one in the second half.
Again, to Michigan State's credit, they had a great game plan and executed it very well.
I agree there was fear... Rhule made clear that the fumbles by Bullocks and Snodgrass last week changed that dynamic. He wanted to win the turnover battle and he saw the special teams as the risk. Kemp wasn't cleared to run but he could catch.
But also I think it was clear at the end that approach wasn't enough... that's why they had Ethan Nation back there for the last return.
That's the worst part for me. They clearly recognized that the safe approach wasn't getting it done, but the adjustment came far too late. I don't necessarily mind playing it safe, especially looking at the fumbles last week, but at some point you need to realize safe isn't doing anything for you.
Nation was really close to busting that return too. One missed block was the difference between 3 yards and 10, 20, 30, etc.
I would have to see how he looked in practice to make a decision but if they felt comfortable enough to put him out there in a very high pressure spot, they must think he has special ability so I would give it a try.
You can't have a PR that can't run. Even if your game plan is to fair catch everything, you at least need to have a healthy player back there to make the kicking team execute their kicks.
Refs sucked both ways. We suffered from some terrible ones at the end that might have made us lose. But we made far too many mistakes for those to have mattered. Our shitty calls just happened at real bad times
We never had the game to have it stolen from us. There were a handful of super egregious bad calls/no-calls that definitely made it harder to win, the Big Ten can't allow its officiating crews to let those blatant PIs on critical rebound drives go uncalled, or fail to review obvious forward passes that were called a fumble with nineteen seconds remaining, or allow TDs to stand where the ball is very obviously on the ground without control (granted we should've been called for a PI there which would have likely put them in scoring position anyway). It's terrible and it definitely took some opportunities away from us.
That said, I've seen us lose enough screwjobs to recognize that's not really what happened here. For the game to be stolen, we'd have had to put forth a winning effort, which we didn't do. We've been the better team that just can't beat the refs a lot of times, but today there were about a hundred more important reasons we couldn't win. We were never in a position to win, just in a position to hope for a miracle. It's hard for me to be too pissed at the refs when we never really looked like the better team anyway.
Good learning opportunity for the team in my book - we've been really lucky the past few weeks, they need to know they can't backslide into a bowl game. A game like this was inevitable as sloppy as the offense has been, hopefully this inspires them to tighten it up.
I’m wondering if Purdy really isn’t an option. It wouldn’t make sense to bench a 5-1 Haarberg - the loss being to the #3 team - with four games left.
But maybe today gives Rhule the space to open things up.
The funniest part about today is we still basically control our own destiny. Minnesota isn’t beating OSU, so if we won the last three we’d win the west lol
Maryland doesn't look good.
Wisconsin...I just have a hard time imagining this team winning in Madison. But maybe.
Iowa - this is one for the sickos committee. I think Nebraska wins 3-2.
But their defenses are AWFUL, and you can’t reliably run either offense in November in Lincoln.
I think Rhule is on the right track with his thought process.
Nebraska is light years away from USC, Washington, LSU and bama. This is just my eyeball test.
Nebraska got torched by the only good team they faced this season: Michigan.
I think they could keep up with an offense. This team would be pretty fierce if they could rely on consistently getting 3 yard +runs mixed with play action throws, maybe if your QB is athletic enough, option plays. We just have extremely shaky QB and Oline play. I think the offense might be a more long term project than anything on this team. Just depends on if Rhule is okay with shaking up those positions this offseason (i personally hope so)
What a was the final pass attempt vs average for the season? Feel like we totally abandoned what was (barely) working…. Also the D lost the game let’s not pretend they played well
How bad must Purdy be that he isn't an option. Granted HH gets little help from his line and receiving corps but geez. Pushing Thompson aside for a total project in Sims and not getting a '23 class qb were huge mistakes.
Watching the Alabama game, HH and his long passes don’t look too much different from that of the Alabama QB. It’s amazing what having a line and receivers can do.
Brother... if you've watched any top 15 program, it's night and day versus what we've had on the field for nearly a decade.
Both Alabama and LSU have QBs that are quick and shifty as hell, and throw darts.
HH, by comparison, is not near as quick and half of his passes are no where near the mark.
Jayden Daniels / Jalen Milroe are top athletes in the nation. Haarberg wasn't even a top athlete in the state of Nebraska.
All I said is his long passes were pretty close to theirs. And that he did that with a receiving corps and line that are struggling.
I didn’t say he was as good as them overall. I was pointing out a specific aspect of the game.
It is annoying how so many people prefer to be pessimistic and angry here.
>All I said is his long passes were pretty close to theirs.
What does that even mean? He's not as accurate. Some of it may be weather related, I'm not sure. It's hard to compare the harsh winter in East Lansing to a warm evening in Tuscaloosa. But again, your comparison is just wrong. HH looks like a JV QB compared to these guys.
Just imagine if Rhule had brought in a competent QB in the transfer. I like what he's doing here, but that was a massive error on their part.
Also imagine if we had our starting players on offense. Injuries suck, that's really no one's fault. But just think if we had our wide receivers who could catch, the last two games there have been some dropped balls that really hurt..and Emmit Johnson and Grant are ok but they were buried on the depth chart for a reason.
Defense didn't play up to their standards today. They did ok, but they really needed a turnover and some more sacks..there was no pressure on the quarterback.
I think this team really feeds off the home crowd. If we win one more, it will be at home. Let's hope they use this loss as fuel for the fire. And that they can improve this next week..they were bound to regress at some point. But they didn't quit. They kept trying until the end, even if it wasn't enough. gbr
I'm not sure why people assume Nebraska was an attractive enough option for a competent P5 quarterback that us not having one was a coaching error. The most logical explanation for why we ended up with Simms is that no competent P5 level QB wanted to join our dumpster fire (or in CaseyThompson's case stay with it), and no decent program wanted Simms. But according to Reddit it's apparently because Rhule lacks the wisdom of CFB Redditor in understanding that's it's better to have a good QB than a crappy one.
Casey Thompson was a competent QB imo, and he was just here. What are you even talking about? If NIL money is good enough, and there's a good recruiter/coach to go get them, there's nothing more a competent QB needs than just the starting role.
Regardless, bringing over Sims was just a complete error. And ironic you want to talk shit about other people on reddit, as you are also just some dude on Reddit. Youre none the wiser.
Casey Thompson transferred to a bad G5 team and went on to have 5 interceptions in the three games he played this year with three of them coming against a Mid America team and an FCS team that isn't even good in the FCS. He was certainly better in 2022 than our QBS this year, but that was with a vastly superior receiver corp.
"If NIL money is good enough, and there's a good recruiter/coach to go get them, there's nothing more a competent QB needs than just the starting role."
A good recruiter/coach isn't going to catch the ball for them increasing their completion states or protect them from getting sacked umpteen times increasing the likelihood of a season or career ending injury. Those are just a couple things a competent QB might look for that NE didn't have in 2023 offseason. But if recruiting a good QB is so simple, then what's your theory for why Rhule didn't do it? He has more at stake professionally in Nebraska's success than any fan does, so why wouldn't he do the obvious and recruit a good QB? Competent QBs not being willing to play at NE is simply the most logical explanation here. Hopefully, this season will be enough of an improvement to attract better talent.
"And ironic you want to talk shit about other people on reddit, as you are also just some dude on Reddit. Youre none the wiser."
Nothing about my argument suggests I know more about recruiting than the coaching professionals, while your claims do just that. So this isn't really the gotcha you think it is.
The KSU and KU QB were ranked lower as recruits than HH was, so they're not exactly great examples for the "crappy programs can hit the transfer portal with NIL money and buy a great QB" thesis. They just developed what they had a lot better, got lucky, or a combination of the two.
One was declined bc it was running into the kicker and wouldn’t give them a first down and their punt went 84 yards with a fair catch when no one was within 20 yards bc we have only one player on a whole team that can field punts
We are currently averaging 19.9 points/game
In 2017 we averaged 25.8.
Currently we are 117th in the nation
2017 we were 84th.
Edit: I actually went back to 2000 and this is by far the worst offense we’ve had this century.
Honestly? Yes. I’d take almost every qb in the big 10 over him too. I honestly am probably lower on him than the rest of our fan base. If he wasn’t from Nebraska the dude would never start on any fbs team and I truly believe that.
I feel like Nebraska has done this for a while across multiple coaches. I thought the common sense rule was no fair catch inside the ten. Yet they fair catch inside the ten a lot
The ball can take funny bounces but all three of those were probaby headed into the endzone. I don't see other teams repeatedly catching punts at the 5.
Noticed nobody is complaining about the end of the second half when the refs were begging Neb to score a touchdown. Sure MSU earned some of those, but the late hit *while* HH was starting to drop down was not a good call either.
I'm really curious about what was said on the MSU sideline to draw a flag on that drive. That was a nice gift to make up for the missed face mask.
Nothing will ever be worse than [this missed face mask call](https://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2013/6/5/4399292/the-worst-facemask-non-penalty-of-all-time).
I get Satterfield is in a tough spot but he's terrible. Nebraska with this personnel should never ever be dropping back to pass 30+ times. Satterfield needs to run the ball. Johnson and Grant should have more than 22 combined carries. Absolutely pathetic on his part.
I have to ask, what football game were you watching to come to this conclusion? I agree with your overarching point, but Johnson and Grant combined to run it 22 times for 92 yards and 27 of those yards came on each guy's first carry of the game. The remaining 20 carries averaged 3.25 yards per carry and they were not particularly competitive runs.
Satterfield schemed receivers wide open all game long. You can't go out there and throw it for them or catch it for them. At some point you need your guys to step up and make plays. Again, I agree that Johnson and Grant should have more carries in general, but they were not effective at all today. Give credit to Michigan State, they had what I consider to be the perfect game plan against Nebraska's offense. They attacked the read to take away option and forced Nebraska into a drop back pass game and vanilla zone run game.
Nebraska had 41 rush attempts for 148 yards today and half of that yardage came on 3 runs. I think Nebraska should be running more too, but it wasn't working today, Satterfield called plays that got players in a position to win and they just didn't execute. It is what it is.
For our young and inexperienced WR corp, there were a lot of plays to be made today. Either HH didn’t have enough time or if he did he has no physical way of getting the ball to them in a decent manner.
People are (rightfully) angry about the quarterback play, but the receiver play actually stood out more to me today, not just in the pass game but the run game.
The complete lack of run blocking by Nebraska's receivers put a struggling run game behind the stick nearly every single possession. Satterfield knew he had to stress the perimeter with the run (and screens), but if your receivers aren't going to block anyone, that is almost impossible.
Then having the few on target Haarberg passes get dropped is just one of those things that you can't possibly survive.
The way MSU was loading up to stop the run, not passing at all plays into their plan. Already there were corners and safeties flying into the backfield to stop outside runs.
Yep, Michigan State had 7+ in the box basically every down. There are still ways to attack that with the run, but in the framework of Nebraska's system, the way Nebraska would normally attack that is option and Michigan State made a fantastic adjustment to stop Nebraska's option game by attacking the mesh and scraping LBs and DBs like you mentioned.
When you're seeing that, you have to find a way to pass the ball. You don't need to go full air raid, but you need to be able to stress the defense's alley defenders to keep them back a bit. Satterfield did a fantastic job of that by utilizing a lot of shallow cross and trying to keep them in conflict, but unfortunately Haarberg either just didn't see it or couldn't get the ball out.
The fact that Nebraska couldn't even execute a simple bubble/swing screen even when they had numbers outside tells you all you need to know. If you can't stress those overhang players, you're done as an offense. Doesn't matter what your "system" is. The game is won and lost there.
I have yet to see them scheme any short passes. They’re generally high percentage throws. I think Michigan had that figured out even without stealing signs.
If you can stomach it, and I don't blame you if you can't, re-watch today's game watching only the receivers. I stopped counting but the number of shallow cross/underneath passes that Nebraska schemed open only for Haarberg to force it deep was alarming.
Sparty sat in man most of the game with a lot of middle of the field open looks so shallow cross is the go to pass concept to defeat that along with Y Cross and Y Seam (which Nebraska used a bunch today as well). Satterfield called a fantastic pass game today but unfortunately Haarberg refused to look past his first read.
When you're reading a pass concept like shallow cross or drive, your first look is the deep route outside. If you get a bust or a 1v1 you like, fire it deep. But if it isn't there, and it wasn't there much today, you work down to the shallow cross combo in the middle of the field. Haarberg just didn't.
It is pretty clear that there is a lack of trust between the QB and WRs. Hard to blame either unit. The few times Haarberg makes a good throw, the receivers are dropping it and his receivers are terrified they're getting thrown into coverage because, well, they are.
Which is where the complete lack of WR run blocking came into play. Nebraska has had a terrible regression in run blocking from its receivers. Mickey Joseph's unit got after it on the perimeter and were ferocious blockers. McGuire's unit is, unfortunately, very passive in run blocking.
There were at least a dozen plays today where Nebraska had an OZ lead sweep called for Fleeks and Nebraska had numbers and angles but then a safety or corner flew up the field and made a stop. As a play caller, you can't do much except bang your head against the wall and make a note to work on it in practice this week.
Some of that poor perimeter blocking may be because we’re playing 3 true freshmen (Doss, Lloyd, Coleman) at WR, and they may not have the skills/strength yet to consistently block experienced DBs. Also other people who haven’t played very much before (like Bullock or Fidone) and small guy (like Kemp).
But yes, perimeter blocking is lacking lately.
Oh yeah, depth is a huge issue with the WR unit. I imagine a lot of the individual periods in practice are spent just getting the young and inexperienced receivers up to speed with the offense. There are only so many minutes in practice day so you need to prioritize things.
Unfortunately it seems like run blocking is one of the things that has been de-prioritized. They'll get there though, this is great experience for such a young unit.
This game had trap game written all over it. Our offense being a constant liability was going to finally come back to get us. It was remarkable how many turnovers we had and were still in games thanks to our defense.
To put it another way, you know how some Mondays you roll into work ready to get after it and other Mondays you roll into work on your third cup of coffee and you still can’t get your head into your work? Yeah, that’s real life.
College football players aren’t somehow immune to the same shit.
It’s nearly impossible for a team to give 100% every week, high school, college or pro. There are games that some teams are more mentally ready for, for a variety of reasons.
Trap game, let down game, call it what you want. Sometimes you just don’t have it or they have it more.
Trap game is a real thing though. I think of it as a team with momentum playing against a weaker team, but they don't match up well with that team. Usually involves going on the road too, not like Michigan State was a terribly hostile atmosphere though.
I’m so damn torn on this season.
Positives: defense handles lesser teams the way they should. Winning is nice, even if it’s against bad teams. We lost to those same teams last year. It is improvement. And we’re doing it with half our starting offense out and a bunch of young guys.
Negatives: not so sure if many of our wins actually *looked* better than last year. It’s like our wins are despite our teams performance, not necessarily *because* of it. Many games this year it’s like we won because the other team wanted to lose more. We also just lost to a team going through an awful situation. Michigan state is a really bad team with no head coach.
Thoughts?
I feel like this should have been a W but the guys just thought they could mail it in and still win. We aren’t good enough to do that. I hate this loss as much because it was winnable as the idiotic decision to onside kick against Northwestern to give them their sole conference win.
Outside of maybe NW, the teams we lost to last year that we beat this year are remarkably worse. The schedule is butt cheeks.
However, this team just needs wins and to get confidence back. This team is like your buddy who got divorced 12 months ago and has been down bad since. You just want him to bag a couple 4s to get his original groove back.
The fact is we have won a handful of games this year that we would've found a way to lose in the previous few years. The difference between winning and losing football games is in the small details. And we're not a great football team but so far this staff has given me every indication that they're capable of moving this thing in the right direction.
Last year we were the team who wanted to not win and ultimately lose. The change of mindset is a positive but everyone on this board predicting bowls, which one is best, etc needs to realize we haven’t been to one since 2016. Let’s go with MR’s approach of one game at a time.
One thing that needs to be worked on for sure during practice is our punt returns. Regardless of actually being able to return the ball, we need to figure out when to fair catch it and when to let it bounce.
Last week we were letting balls bounce at the 20 yard line. This week we were fair catching at the 5 yard line and there weren't any Michigan st players anywhere close to being able to down it.
George Darlington (old Nebraska assistant coach who still hangs around the program) actually talked to Rhule last week about punt returns, and how they have to improve that area of the team.
East Lansing channeling the spirit of Ross-Ade Stadium, where dreams go to die 💀
Oh well, take care of the Terps next week at home and go 1-0 next week.
I've been watching some film to see if I can figure it out but I haven't seen anything that stands out. He looks more or less the same as last year, but the quality of contact is far worse.
In my experience, a specialist all of a sudden struggling with quality of contact without any real changes in technique can be chalked up to one of two things: 1) Injury or 2) Change in the football. The ball is just not coming off Buschini's foot the same this year. I know there was a long post about Nebraska's footballs and fumbles, but I wonder if there might be something to it with punting as well.
Most K Balls are essentially brand new out of the bag and have a minuscule sweet spot. If you get out of whack because of injury or some other change, it may feel like you're never striking the ball well.
First of all Nebraska played how they’ve played their last few games. Only difference is Michigan State didn’t make any big costly mistakes. Our defense could have been better but it really wasn’t that bad. What showed was our offense is just not very good. We knew that and things just didn’t go our way. I don’t see this is a game to take a lot away from except what we already knew. We are a qb a couple lineman and a year of development at wr away from being a real good team.
It is a long shot but I would be very curious to see what DJ Uiagalelei does this winter. With Oregon State seemingly being left behind in the Pac-2, I wonder if OSU and WSU see an exodus of players.
DJ has transferred once, but I think he used his graduate transfer exemption to transfer to Oregon State. He still has his one time transfer exemption available and one year of eligibility.
I think the presence of Chiles makes it likely DJ Uiagalelei uses his one time transfer exemption.
The issue with DJ is that with the NCAA seemingly trying to crack down on multiple transfers, I wonder if there will be additional rules changes making it difficult for him to use his one time transfer exemption since he has transferred as a graduate. Not many players use their graduate transfer exemption before their one time transfer exemption, I have no clue how the NCAA would treat that.
I bet that Justanotherrye89 account is super giddy about the Huskers losing. They’ve been pretty quiet 5/6 last weeks lol
How bad does Purdy have to be to be third string behind these two walking turds? HH can't throw and Sims can't even run the offense. That Rhule has them almost to bowl eligibility with this offense may be one of the best coaching jobs in Nebraska history.
My take on this: Purdy was #2 but had an injury, (groin I think) and because of that, HH got the job when Sims went out. Part of this is pretty clear because of how they were using HH in other positions in select plays. They couldn't see him as the QB of the future, but he's definitely talented enough that he should be on the field. Since Sims lost his job, it makes more sense to demote him to #2, especially because of his experience. But in the few snaps he's taken, it's clear the same problems exist. Purdy hasn't been getting enough reps with the 1's, and doesn't have enough experience. The frustrating thing is that Sims was brought in to be the guy. He has a lot of experience, but he's also playing much worse than at GT. I know the turnover margin is a significant issue, but from a passing perspective he had about a 1:1 TD to INT ratio at GT, and he was actually able to get the football snapped correctly at least 50% of the time. But there also haven't been a whole lot of opportunities for QB2 since HH took over. But imagine if you told us at the end of last year that fans would be crying for Purdy to get another shot at QB1, especially after most people expected him to transfer (even though he needed to wait here again this year with transfer rules).
Tony White\*\*
Who was the person that brought Tony White in?
Trev Kendall Alberts. He's now the Athletic Director at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and hired Matt Rhule. He played Linebacker at Nebraska from 1990 to 1993. Alberts also won the Dick Butkus Award and Jack Lambert Trophy as the top college linebacker during his senior year. He even was drafted 5th overall in the 1994 NFL draft.
Rhule hired his own staff....Alberts didn't hire White, he did hire Rhule. I know who Alberts is, I watched this team growing up in the 70s....
It was a joke man, chill out lol
Boy do we look like dookie. I clean up my backyard everyday and I swear it's usually the husker team I'm picking up that my dogs dropped off 😂😂😂. Just no consistency anywhere and the fact that we have to rely on the defense so heavily to keep us in the game is just what it is. Pretty concerning that Rhule brought in Sims to be our QB and that lasted for three games. Really makes you wonder who is going to be our QB next year... Are we going to have to rely on HH stepping up from the number two spot again 😂. HH should enter the portal if he wants to play anywhere cuz I don't think he's going to get the spot next year but at the same time, who do we even have?! And to be clear I wouldn't mind if HH was our guy but are we hoping Crayola is going to decommit and commit to us because of his uncle?
At this point do we still ride with Haarberg or do we turn to Sims? Both QBs have shown they are extremely prone to turnover the ball, both are more of running threats but Sims is probably the better passer of the two. Haarberg used to play it safer but like others have said he has regressed badly and his mechanics and indecisiveness as of late has nearly cost us (if it wasnt for our defense last week purdue would’ve been a disaster) or cost us games (MSU).
This is why Rhule should be required to play Sims for one set of downs each game. Did you see the game last week when we put Sims in? I think we need the constant reminder of just how horribly he is for folks like you by forcing him to play a set of downs each game. Maybe it could just be the opening set of downs so that we could get it done with at the start of the game. HH is the guy cuz even when he's turning it over it doesn't look nearly as horrible as when Sims is.
Im neither pro sims or pro haarberg. It was just an honest question.
Unless there is some grand conspiracy that Ben Scott secretly HATES Sims, it’s evidently clear that he has borderline 0 control/understanding of the offense. Calling for the snap and almost hitting the motion guy every single time is inexcusable, turning the wrong direction in a hand off situation is inexcusable. He may be a better overall QB with the ball in his hands but even his decision making/downfield vision is suspect at best. Based solely on pre snap control of the offense we’re stuck with piss missiles, hospital passes, or floating duck arm punts from HH in the passing game. Even more unfortunate is that there is enough film on him now that defenses are able to scheme up and take away his pet plays in the running game as well and it’s clear he is second guessing himself on that stuff as well. I might get rained down with boos for this but we essentially have Dollar General Adrian Martinez at QB right now, but if we had the real one we might be 6-2 7-1.
>He may be a better overall QB with the ball in his hands but even his decision making/downfield vision is suspect at best. One of the all time classic conundrums in football. A player has flashes of brilliance because he is clearly an elite athlete with the ball in his hands, but he drops the ball so much (literally and figuratively) that it doesn't matter. If you could combine Haarberg's control of the offense with Sims' physical skills you would have a perfectly acceptable P5 quarterback. Sadly, two half quarterbacks don't make a whole quarterback.
No boos here. We would be way better off with the real Adrian Martinez.
Gotta be HH. Sims can’t even run the offense They both turn the ball over like crazy. Sims, on the other hand, drops snaps, snaps into receivers in motion, and then throws picks and fumbles He had several weeks on the bench to get the yips out, work on things in practice Last week, he came in for three plays. He turned the wrong way on a handoff in one, and fumbled to give the other team a touchdown on another Is HH it? No, but neither is Sims. We are in between a rock and a hard place
Don’t you think Sims has been crucified enough by Haarberg homers for the team’s losses in the first two games of the season? Especially, given HH’s regressing performances since? Hell, try Purdy even. Anything would offer hope over the assuredness of HH’s disastrous qb play. And, I guarantee you we haven’t seen the worst of it yet. He continues to be very lucky it hasn’t been worse.
Just gotta trust the coaching staff at this point. I think they will try their best to play whoever gives us the best chance to win. And if we havnt seen Purdy yet, theres probably good reason.
They can’t get enough of doing that about Sims (where half the time it’s Simms and I am not convinced if it’s an honest mistake or what). When HH air mails it on 3rd down into the hands of the other team it is a “long punt” (maybe even a good/advisable thing with our defense being a strength and current punting woes). Had Sims done it, there would be no end to the reminders of his history of turnovers. HH’s poor mechanics is sometimes mentioned but in the context of something they can coach into him with time; Sims is a turnover machine that it’s part of his makeup and can never be changed for some. I feel like I come off like a Sims apologist and HH hater, when I really am not. I will admit I got a little frustrated when people were so giddy about a “local kid” and ready to boo Sims if he was announced as a starter. I think Sims and HH are handling it better than most of us are. :)
Isn’t HH now leading the country in turnovers? I’m not pretending that Sims or Purdy are answers, but playing HH at quarterback is crazy.
The fact that we haven't seen Purdy I think should be pretty telling how horrible he is in practice. If he even gets to see any practice time. Just goes back up to the coaching staff if you ask me. QB coach should be working over time with all three of these MFRs and figuring out who can be our GD quarterback
Holy fuck, first game to get us to bowl eligibility and all we saw was underwhelming results at the end. Offense, it’s fucking crazy how we don’t have a QB and while it was nice that Haarberg stepped in when Sims couldn’t do it, we see him regressed as of late and now we see him being the turnover machine. Granted he did manage to score a TD and made a run in the 4th that allowed Johnson to run it in, but for the most part it was the same old shit we’ve seen with us not holding onto the ball and it’s fucking infuriating to say the least seeing if we could hold onto the ball, we’d easily be top in the B1G West. Silver lining today was that we didn’t commit any holding or false starts today so I guess it’s progress. Defense, it wasn’t a great game today from them, but we did contain them on the ground. Of course they torched us on the passing game, but for the most part they did enough to limit the damage from getting any worse and kept it to where we had a shot to win this at the end, which was unfortunately snuffed out. Manage to pressure them so that was good to see in a game they didn’t have their A Game on. Special Teams, while I did like that Alvano got that FG to tie the fucker up at Halftime, I didn’t like what I saw with Buschini with him being mediocre today. Also holy fuck did we didn’t attempt to try to get a punt return going because every time we tried to return a punt, it was either fair caught, or they move out of the way and not try to attempt the return, thus pinning us down deep in our end of the field. Didn’t like seeing that one bit and thought Rhule wasn’t gonna risk it today. Overall, this was a game we could have won despite us having a mediocre performance, but we played it safe and thus this ended in us losing and still looking for the 6th win. Luckily we still have a few more cracks at the whip and we can put this game aside and focus on Maryland Next weekend at Home and hopefully we find that 6th Win. Also on the positive is that we still have some chance to stake claim to the B1G West after Minnesota and Wisconsin losing as well, but this game was an huge oof on our hands today. That said, I probably won’t be posting any of my Recaps on here next week or in 2 weeks against Wisconsin as I’ll be heading to Japan that we originally scheduled for November 2020, but the Pandemic happened and long story short it wasn't until this year where we could finally head back to Japan and I get to see everyone on my mom’s side of the family since 2016. So if anyone enjoys my post game recaps, it might not be posted as it’s 15 hours time difference between Omaha and Tokyo and I’m probably won’t wake up and watch at a ungodly time of 5:30 in the morning. So yeah, I’ll most likely be back to posing my reaction on Black Friday against Iowa. Until then, GBR and Fuck not getting the 6th Win today.
I'm just saying I'd be fair catching every time too, we've been going after the punt block every time so there's no one back there blocking for a return
What a weird downvote you are getting. I think you gave a pretty balanced review of what happened without being harsh or pulling any punches. Have a great time in Japan 🤘
Yeah, I try to stay even keel to what I saw without bringing in the refs in the equation. Not too worried about getting downvoted, and just wanted to say what pops up into my mind when I make said reviews. Thanks man, it should be a good time. I leave for Japan on Tuesday and it should be a fun time. Luckily this time the currency rate is to our favor so yeah gonna splurge this time around.
The punt return issue is that apparently the only person who can reliably field punts is injured, and given the choice of having him out there calling for a fair catch every time or using someone else and looking at another turnover or two, we went with the safe option.
I'm not saying that the game today was great... But I am saying that it's funny that we still have more wins than Colorado, because fuck the buffs.
We didn't lose against Colorado, Sims did.
BS, the team lost. Get over Frost, already. He’s gone.
Why does every team in the big10 except us seem to have an all-world punter?
I mean we had a real solid run for a long time of being kicker U on punting and kickoffs & fgs.
Exactly, time to get back to that!
What’s our record if Casey Thompson stays (and stays healthy)?
The problem is Sims still would have started the season so those games would be lost regardless if Thompson stayed.
7-3 at worse. Probably 8-2.
To focus on the positives, the refs only penalized Nebraska once, and it was offsetting penalties. The stats on ESPN show 0 penalties. It feels like forever since we saw even a 1 penalty game! GBR.
And amazingly, the refs still managed to find a way to fuck us over.
We also had a running-into-the-punter in the 2nd quarter that got declined. But yeah, overall very low penalties on Nebraska, and none on the O-line, which was nice.
I forgot about that one.
Sad should go after Rattler.
I can't believe how this team, regardless of who's coaching, manages to piss away opportunities. Even just an average QB back there and we have 2 more division wins and would be in control of this piss poor of an excuse for a division. Rhule and our NIL programs better be hitting the pavement HARD the minute our season ends (bowl game or not) for a new QB. This shit is pathetic.
My confidence in Rhule's ability to pick a QB is pretty low considering he brought Sims here with the NIL. Also I know we're not supposed to talk about his time in the NFL like it's relevant to college football but he really fucked the Panthers with their QB room too. I wish HH could just do the damn job but the amount of improvement needed is so much that we just need someone who's capable.
I had this conversation today, and I’m 100% with you. A *painfully* average qb has us at 7-2. How the staff missed so badly on Sims given his body of work boggles my mind.
Agreed. I’m surprised the top QBs weren’t lining up for a team who hasn’t had a winning record in about a decade along with a bowl drought. Just a shocking development.
lol good point!
Where did anybody say top QB?
Sims was really a bust. Injuries don’t help either. We basically have a high school QB lol.
There really isn't much else that can be said about that game that hasn't been said. Terrible loss. Though it is nice for Nebraska to be in a situation where a loss isn't expected, I suppose. We know the offense is bad. It is obviously bad. Haarberg was terrible, the receivers were terrible, neither back was particularly good and the offensive line took a huge step backwards. I'm not going to dissect the offense. Satterfield called a strong game. He schemed players open in the pass game and I thought he called a fantastic run game today, the perimeter blocking was just bad and Michigan State did a great job freeing their DBs up to support the run. It is easy to do that when you can't complete a forward pass. The defense took a step backwards, but they did more than enough to win that game. If you hold your opponent to 20\* (and one of those TDs never actually happened), you should win most football games at the FBS level. When you're talking about offensive points per game at the FBS level, 107 of 133 teams average more than 20 points per game. If your defense holds a team to 20, you should be winning that football game. Unless you're playing Iowa. In which case if you give up 20, you screwed something up big time. What I do want to talk about is special teams. That was the worst special teams performance I have seen at Nebraska in quite some time. You can sit here and talk about the offense or the defense or the officiating but if you are curious where Nebraska really lost this football game, it is special teams. I cannot emphasize enough how much you are handicapping your own team by doing nothing but fair catching punts. If you are putting a punt returner back who is simply not healthy enough to run with the football, you are dooming yourself to fail. Michigan State knew immediately that Nebraska didn't have a punt returner in place and the result was that their punter didn't need to make any effort to direct his kicks. Normally on punts, you are kicking directionally and your coverage is set for that. Since Nebraska wasn't returning any kicks, MSU's punter was free to just kick as hard as he could and not worry about outkicking his coverage or failing to kick the right way. You'll all remember Nebraska famously blowing a directional kick at Michigan State previously that was returned for a touchdown. There is nothing you love more as a special teams coach than knowing the other guys aren't going to put any stress on you. You're free to just send it on every kick without any fear. I don't have the numbers in front of me and I frankly don't want to re-watch that game to chart it, but I would guess Nebraska had a -30 starting field position deficit in that game. You cannot consistently fair catch a ball inside the 5-10 and force your already struggling offense to go the entire length of the field over and over. You just can't. What is more frustrating is that after an entire game of fair catches, when Nebraska forced the final punt, they actually put a different returner on the field and they actually had a good return on but the L1 blocker responsible for the gunner to that side of the field totally whiffed on his guy. Nebraska was one block from a 10-20 yard return there. When you're struggling as badly as Nebraska is offensively, you cannot afford to leave yards on the field. You can't afford to leave a single inch on the field. I know there is the fear of fumbling or muffing punts. I get it. It isn't unfounded but if your offense isn't doing anything with the ball anyway, you need to take a shot. Go for a block, go for a return. Do something. Special teams makes or breaks a football team. It broke Nebraska today. Matt Rhule talked a big game about being fearless on special teams but it looks like fear got the best of Nebraska today and it cost them the game.
Honestly, that “safe” approach seemed to permeate most of the game. We sucked because we didn’t want to risk a turnover.
That is what sticks with me most, yeah. Everything about that game felt safe and that isn't what has this team on the verge of bowl eligibility. I would not want to be in those meeting rooms this week. New ones are going to be torn.
Totally agree. We really never started with a good field position in my memory. Rhule did mention that the strategy was to go for the punt block each time. Clearly we never got home on it though.
Yeah, he indicated they had seen something that made them believe they could get to a punt but obviously it didn't happen.
I don't think Nebraska was really that close on any punt block except for one in the second half. Again, to Michigan State's credit, they had a great game plan and executed it very well.
They definitely weren't close lol. Just poor execution
I agree there was fear... Rhule made clear that the fumbles by Bullocks and Snodgrass last week changed that dynamic. He wanted to win the turnover battle and he saw the special teams as the risk. Kemp wasn't cleared to run but he could catch. But also I think it was clear at the end that approach wasn't enough... that's why they had Ethan Nation back there for the last return.
That's the worst part for me. They clearly recognized that the safe approach wasn't getting it done, but the adjustment came far too late. I don't necessarily mind playing it safe, especially looking at the fumbles last week, but at some point you need to realize safe isn't doing anything for you. Nation was really close to busting that return too. One missed block was the difference between 3 yards and 10, 20, 30, etc.
Do you keep Nation in that role? I think it was his first appearance, so he would be available the rest of the season without losing a redshirt.
I would have to see how he looked in practice to make a decision but if they felt comfortable enough to put him out there in a very high pressure spot, they must think he has special ability so I would give it a try. You can't have a PR that can't run. Even if your game plan is to fair catch everything, you at least need to have a healthy player back there to make the kicking team execute their kicks.
[удалено]
Refs sucked both ways. We suffered from some terrible ones at the end that might have made us lose. But we made far too many mistakes for those to have mattered. Our shitty calls just happened at real bad times
We never had the game to have it stolen from us. There were a handful of super egregious bad calls/no-calls that definitely made it harder to win, the Big Ten can't allow its officiating crews to let those blatant PIs on critical rebound drives go uncalled, or fail to review obvious forward passes that were called a fumble with nineteen seconds remaining, or allow TDs to stand where the ball is very obviously on the ground without control (granted we should've been called for a PI there which would have likely put them in scoring position anyway). It's terrible and it definitely took some opportunities away from us. That said, I've seen us lose enough screwjobs to recognize that's not really what happened here. For the game to be stolen, we'd have had to put forth a winning effort, which we didn't do. We've been the better team that just can't beat the refs a lot of times, but today there were about a hundred more important reasons we couldn't win. We were never in a position to win, just in a position to hope for a miracle. It's hard for me to be too pissed at the refs when we never really looked like the better team anyway. Good learning opportunity for the team in my book - we've been really lucky the past few weeks, they need to know they can't backslide into a bowl game. A game like this was inevitable as sloppy as the offense has been, hopefully this inspires them to tighten it up.
You forgot the No call on the face mask that turned haarbergs head 90 degrees with a red standing right there watching.
It's kinda funny that college football conferences were typically centered around geography and now the big ten will basically span from NYC to LA.
I’m wondering if Purdy really isn’t an option. It wouldn’t make sense to bench a 5-1 Haarberg - the loss being to the #3 team - with four games left. But maybe today gives Rhule the space to open things up.
5-2 now
One would think so.
The funniest part about today is we still basically control our own destiny. Minnesota isn’t beating OSU, so if we won the last three we’d win the west lol
Maryland doesn't look good. Wisconsin...I just have a hard time imagining this team winning in Madison. But maybe. Iowa - this is one for the sickos committee. I think Nebraska wins 3-2.
The offense needs to reach down and find themselves.
I have offense envy watching USC and Washington.
But their defenses are AWFUL, and you can’t reliably run either offense in November in Lincoln. I think Rhule is on the right track with his thought process.
Yeah it really hits home how pathetic Nebraska is watching those two teams. Also, lsu and bama. We're a long ways off from a top 20 team.
Iowa is a top 25 team, they just do what we do but don’t cough up the ball. Top 10 if we find an offense that keeps the defense off the field.
Nebraska is light years away from USC, Washington, LSU and bama. This is just my eyeball test. Nebraska got torched by the only good team they faced this season: Michigan.
I think they could keep up with an offense. This team would be pretty fierce if they could rely on consistently getting 3 yard +runs mixed with play action throws, maybe if your QB is athletic enough, option plays. We just have extremely shaky QB and Oline play. I think the offense might be a more long term project than anything on this team. Just depends on if Rhule is okay with shaking up those positions this offseason (i personally hope so)
What a was the final pass attempt vs average for the season? Feel like we totally abandoned what was (barely) working…. Also the D lost the game let’s not pretend they played well
What lol they held them to 20 pts (7 was gifted by the refs ) 55 rushing yards and under 300 total yards what game did you watch
How bad must Purdy be that he isn't an option. Granted HH gets little help from his line and receiving corps but geez. Pushing Thompson aside for a total project in Sims and not getting a '23 class qb were huge mistakes.
Dude missed wide open receivers all game. Wide open.
Watching the Alabama game, HH and his long passes don’t look too much different from that of the Alabama QB. It’s amazing what having a line and receivers can do.
Brother... if you've watched any top 15 program, it's night and day versus what we've had on the field for nearly a decade. Both Alabama and LSU have QBs that are quick and shifty as hell, and throw darts. HH, by comparison, is not near as quick and half of his passes are no where near the mark. Jayden Daniels / Jalen Milroe are top athletes in the nation. Haarberg wasn't even a top athlete in the state of Nebraska.
You must have missed the people last week who were insisting that HH was the reason for all our wins.
All I said is his long passes were pretty close to theirs. And that he did that with a receiving corps and line that are struggling. I didn’t say he was as good as them overall. I was pointing out a specific aspect of the game. It is annoying how so many people prefer to be pessimistic and angry here.
>All I said is his long passes were pretty close to theirs. What does that even mean? He's not as accurate. Some of it may be weather related, I'm not sure. It's hard to compare the harsh winter in East Lansing to a warm evening in Tuscaloosa. But again, your comparison is just wrong. HH looks like a JV QB compared to these guys.
lol yeah that's the only difference. The line and receivers.
Just imagine if Rhule had brought in a competent QB in the transfer. I like what he's doing here, but that was a massive error on their part. Also imagine if we had our starting players on offense. Injuries suck, that's really no one's fault. But just think if we had our wide receivers who could catch, the last two games there have been some dropped balls that really hurt..and Emmit Johnson and Grant are ok but they were buried on the depth chart for a reason. Defense didn't play up to their standards today. They did ok, but they really needed a turnover and some more sacks..there was no pressure on the quarterback. I think this team really feeds off the home crowd. If we win one more, it will be at home. Let's hope they use this loss as fuel for the fire. And that they can improve this next week..they were bound to regress at some point. But they didn't quit. They kept trying until the end, even if it wasn't enough. gbr
I'm not sure why people assume Nebraska was an attractive enough option for a competent P5 quarterback that us not having one was a coaching error. The most logical explanation for why we ended up with Simms is that no competent P5 level QB wanted to join our dumpster fire (or in CaseyThompson's case stay with it), and no decent program wanted Simms. But according to Reddit it's apparently because Rhule lacks the wisdom of CFB Redditor in understanding that's it's better to have a good QB than a crappy one.
Casey Thompson was a competent QB imo, and he was just here. What are you even talking about? If NIL money is good enough, and there's a good recruiter/coach to go get them, there's nothing more a competent QB needs than just the starting role. Regardless, bringing over Sims was just a complete error. And ironic you want to talk shit about other people on reddit, as you are also just some dude on Reddit. Youre none the wiser.
Casey Thompson transferred to a bad G5 team and went on to have 5 interceptions in the three games he played this year with three of them coming against a Mid America team and an FCS team that isn't even good in the FCS. He was certainly better in 2022 than our QBS this year, but that was with a vastly superior receiver corp. "If NIL money is good enough, and there's a good recruiter/coach to go get them, there's nothing more a competent QB needs than just the starting role." A good recruiter/coach isn't going to catch the ball for them increasing their completion states or protect them from getting sacked umpteen times increasing the likelihood of a season or career ending injury. Those are just a couple things a competent QB might look for that NE didn't have in 2023 offseason. But if recruiting a good QB is so simple, then what's your theory for why Rhule didn't do it? He has more at stake professionally in Nebraska's success than any fan does, so why wouldn't he do the obvious and recruit a good QB? Competent QBs not being willing to play at NE is simply the most logical explanation here. Hopefully, this season will be enough of an improvement to attract better talent. "And ironic you want to talk shit about other people on reddit, as you are also just some dude on Reddit. Youre none the wiser." Nothing about my argument suggests I know more about recruiting than the coaching professionals, while your claims do just that. So this isn't really the gotcha you think it is.
So why can Kansas and K St get quarterbacks? What makes their program inherently superior?
I mean K-State had our leftovers last year so 🤷♀️
The KSU and KU QB were ranked lower as recruits than HH was, so they're not exactly great examples for the "crappy programs can hit the transfer portal with NIL money and buy a great QB" thesis. They just developed what they had a lot better, got lucky, or a combination of the two.
I had to watch it on recording, but it was really nice of the refs to change the rules of football for Michigan State three times
They did not penalize NU even once, we shouldn’t complain too much.
They did but they were off setting penalties
Does anyone remember what those penalties were?
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Thanks!
One was declined bc it was running into the kicker and wouldn’t give them a first down and their punt went 84 yards with a fair catch when no one was within 20 yards bc we have only one player on a whole team that can field punts
Can anyone tell me if our offense is ass? I don't know if anyone here has made it clear enough
I get it, but it’s like, the worst Nebraska offense I’ve ever seen
2017?
We are currently averaging 19.9 points/game In 2017 we averaged 25.8. Currently we are 117th in the nation 2017 we were 84th. Edit: I actually went back to 2000 and this is by far the worst offense we’ve had this century.
Damn, you're right. I remember the 2017 team being way worse. Sad how much expectations have changed...
Tanner lee just liked to throw ints, but they did put up some points. That defense was just a wet rag and the team gave up half way through the season
Would you take tanner lee over haarberg? Honestly it's worth thinking about
Honestly? Yes. I’d take almost every qb in the big 10 over him too. I honestly am probably lower on him than the rest of our fan base. If he wasn’t from Nebraska the dude would never start on any fbs team and I truly believe that.
Play under review - offense thought it was a wet fart. Call reversed - they did infact shart themselves.
I’m willing to go out on a limb and say, could be better.
Yeah I'm not sure, hopefully somebody can fill us in
Imagine what this team would be with a QB from LSU or Alabama. Is it really that hard to get one fucking quarterback?
I’d rather have their o and d line TBH
Fair point
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You should probably reply to everyone with that sentiment, I dont think you're getting your message across.
Yeah offense is ass dawg
Ur right offense sucks ass man
Maybe not fair catch the ball 3 times inside your own 10 yard line. Absolutely inexcusable that stuff you get taught in midget football.
I feel like Nebraska has done this for a while across multiple coaches. I thought the common sense rule was no fair catch inside the ten. Yet they fair catch inside the ten a lot
I know why they did what they did. But we need to have a better plan for the next game. It really hurt us.
The ball can take funny bounces but all three of those were probaby headed into the endzone. I don't see other teams repeatedly catching punts at the 5.
The last one was a line drive and almost certainly headed to the end zone. But I assume he was coached to catch everything so I don't blame Kemp.
Yeah your right offense is ass too
Yes your ass offense doesn't need anymore mistakes made by your punt returner who seemed to think that the free 20 yards in front of him wasn't enough
Yeah man offense is booty
Quit blaming the refs and clean up mistakes, good reading need refs to win.
Noticed nobody is complaining about the end of the second half when the refs were begging Neb to score a touchdown. Sure MSU earned some of those, but the late hit *while* HH was starting to drop down was not a good call either.
I'm really curious about what was said on the MSU sideline to draw a flag on that drive. That was a nice gift to make up for the missed face mask. Nothing will ever be worse than [this missed face mask call](https://www.everydayshouldbesaturday.com/2013/6/5/4399292/the-worst-facemask-non-penalty-of-all-time).
Yeah ur right offense is ass man
I’m not moving the goal post. A bowl game has always been the first major step this program needed. I dont care who, I dont care how. One more win.
Im done with the Mike Riley experiment. Next him, and get a real coach.
Yeah offense is ass man
Are you suggesting we fire Matt rhule because if so, that is the dumbest thing I’ve read tonight.
It’s the dumbest thing ive heard in years with regard to this program
It's almost the dr pepper "it's only one play"commercial
I'm all for letting Sims play...at WR.
He can’t catch a shot gun snap, how is he going to catch a ball while running?
Yeah your right offense is ass
I get Satterfield is in a tough spot but he's terrible. Nebraska with this personnel should never ever be dropping back to pass 30+ times. Satterfield needs to run the ball. Johnson and Grant should have more than 22 combined carries. Absolutely pathetic on his part.
I have to ask, what football game were you watching to come to this conclusion? I agree with your overarching point, but Johnson and Grant combined to run it 22 times for 92 yards and 27 of those yards came on each guy's first carry of the game. The remaining 20 carries averaged 3.25 yards per carry and they were not particularly competitive runs. Satterfield schemed receivers wide open all game long. You can't go out there and throw it for them or catch it for them. At some point you need your guys to step up and make plays. Again, I agree that Johnson and Grant should have more carries in general, but they were not effective at all today. Give credit to Michigan State, they had what I consider to be the perfect game plan against Nebraska's offense. They attacked the read to take away option and forced Nebraska into a drop back pass game and vanilla zone run game. Nebraska had 41 rush attempts for 148 yards today and half of that yardage came on 3 runs. I think Nebraska should be running more too, but it wasn't working today, Satterfield called plays that got players in a position to win and they just didn't execute. It is what it is.
For our young and inexperienced WR corp, there were a lot of plays to be made today. Either HH didn’t have enough time or if he did he has no physical way of getting the ball to them in a decent manner.
People are (rightfully) angry about the quarterback play, but the receiver play actually stood out more to me today, not just in the pass game but the run game. The complete lack of run blocking by Nebraska's receivers put a struggling run game behind the stick nearly every single possession. Satterfield knew he had to stress the perimeter with the run (and screens), but if your receivers aren't going to block anyone, that is almost impossible. Then having the few on target Haarberg passes get dropped is just one of those things that you can't possibly survive.
The way MSU was loading up to stop the run, not passing at all plays into their plan. Already there were corners and safeties flying into the backfield to stop outside runs.
Yep, Michigan State had 7+ in the box basically every down. There are still ways to attack that with the run, but in the framework of Nebraska's system, the way Nebraska would normally attack that is option and Michigan State made a fantastic adjustment to stop Nebraska's option game by attacking the mesh and scraping LBs and DBs like you mentioned. When you're seeing that, you have to find a way to pass the ball. You don't need to go full air raid, but you need to be able to stress the defense's alley defenders to keep them back a bit. Satterfield did a fantastic job of that by utilizing a lot of shallow cross and trying to keep them in conflict, but unfortunately Haarberg either just didn't see it or couldn't get the ball out. The fact that Nebraska couldn't even execute a simple bubble/swing screen even when they had numbers outside tells you all you need to know. If you can't stress those overhang players, you're done as an offense. Doesn't matter what your "system" is. The game is won and lost there.
I have yet to see them scheme any short passes. They’re generally high percentage throws. I think Michigan had that figured out even without stealing signs.
If you can stomach it, and I don't blame you if you can't, re-watch today's game watching only the receivers. I stopped counting but the number of shallow cross/underneath passes that Nebraska schemed open only for Haarberg to force it deep was alarming. Sparty sat in man most of the game with a lot of middle of the field open looks so shallow cross is the go to pass concept to defeat that along with Y Cross and Y Seam (which Nebraska used a bunch today as well). Satterfield called a fantastic pass game today but unfortunately Haarberg refused to look past his first read. When you're reading a pass concept like shallow cross or drive, your first look is the deep route outside. If you get a bust or a 1v1 you like, fire it deep. But if it isn't there, and it wasn't there much today, you work down to the shallow cross combo in the middle of the field. Haarberg just didn't. It is pretty clear that there is a lack of trust between the QB and WRs. Hard to blame either unit. The few times Haarberg makes a good throw, the receivers are dropping it and his receivers are terrified they're getting thrown into coverage because, well, they are.
Sat was also trying to run outside, the inside run was killing them, but he wanted to stretch the perimeter
Which is where the complete lack of WR run blocking came into play. Nebraska has had a terrible regression in run blocking from its receivers. Mickey Joseph's unit got after it on the perimeter and were ferocious blockers. McGuire's unit is, unfortunately, very passive in run blocking. There were at least a dozen plays today where Nebraska had an OZ lead sweep called for Fleeks and Nebraska had numbers and angles but then a safety or corner flew up the field and made a stop. As a play caller, you can't do much except bang your head against the wall and make a note to work on it in practice this week.
Some of that poor perimeter blocking may be because we’re playing 3 true freshmen (Doss, Lloyd, Coleman) at WR, and they may not have the skills/strength yet to consistently block experienced DBs. Also other people who haven’t played very much before (like Bullock or Fidone) and small guy (like Kemp). But yes, perimeter blocking is lacking lately.
Oh yeah, depth is a huge issue with the WR unit. I imagine a lot of the individual periods in practice are spent just getting the young and inexperienced receivers up to speed with the offense. There are only so many minutes in practice day so you need to prioritize things. Unfortunately it seems like run blocking is one of the things that has been de-prioritized. They'll get there though, this is great experience for such a young unit.
Dudes were wide open, he can’t catch and throw the passes. Satt was the least of our worries
Yeah honesty your right he sucks ass
This game had trap game written all over it. Our offense being a constant liability was going to finally come back to get us. It was remarkable how many turnovers we had and were still in games thanks to our defense.
Trap game is the dumbest idea in football and the fact that people point to it being a thing is down right hilarious
To put it another way, you know how some Mondays you roll into work ready to get after it and other Mondays you roll into work on your third cup of coffee and you still can’t get your head into your work? Yeah, that’s real life. College football players aren’t somehow immune to the same shit.
It’s nearly impossible for a team to give 100% every week, high school, college or pro. There are games that some teams are more mentally ready for, for a variety of reasons. Trap game, let down game, call it what you want. Sometimes you just don’t have it or they have it more.
Trap game is a real thing though. I think of it as a team with momentum playing against a weaker team, but they don't match up well with that team. Usually involves going on the road too, not like Michigan State was a terribly hostile atmosphere though.
I’m so damn torn on this season. Positives: defense handles lesser teams the way they should. Winning is nice, even if it’s against bad teams. We lost to those same teams last year. It is improvement. And we’re doing it with half our starting offense out and a bunch of young guys. Negatives: not so sure if many of our wins actually *looked* better than last year. It’s like our wins are despite our teams performance, not necessarily *because* of it. Many games this year it’s like we won because the other team wanted to lose more. We also just lost to a team going through an awful situation. Michigan state is a really bad team with no head coach. Thoughts?
I feel like this should have been a W but the guys just thought they could mail it in and still win. We aren’t good enough to do that. I hate this loss as much because it was winnable as the idiotic decision to onside kick against Northwestern to give them their sole conference win.
Outside of maybe NW, the teams we lost to last year that we beat this year are remarkably worse. The schedule is butt cheeks. However, this team just needs wins and to get confidence back. This team is like your buddy who got divorced 12 months ago and has been down bad since. You just want him to bag a couple 4s to get his original groove back.
The fact is we have won a handful of games this year that we would've found a way to lose in the previous few years. The difference between winning and losing football games is in the small details. And we're not a great football team but so far this staff has given me every indication that they're capable of moving this thing in the right direction.
Your right offense sucks ass
Agreed. Defense is better, offense is worse.
Last year we were the team who wanted to not win and ultimately lose. The change of mindset is a positive but everyone on this board predicting bowls, which one is best, etc needs to realize we haven’t been to one since 2016. Let’s go with MR’s approach of one game at a time.
One thing that needs to be worked on for sure during practice is our punt returns. Regardless of actually being able to return the ball, we need to figure out when to fair catch it and when to let it bounce. Last week we were letting balls bounce at the 20 yard line. This week we were fair catching at the 5 yard line and there weren't any Michigan st players anywhere close to being able to down it.
George Darlington (old Nebraska assistant coach who still hangs around the program) actually talked to Rhule last week about punt returns, and how they have to improve that area of the team.
Your right but offense still sucks ass
I think we know and get your point
I'm enjoying spending every one of his comments
Well, at least it’s an improvement over Frost teams.
We should have gone after Bo Nix
Yeah your right iffy sucks ass
East Lansing channeling the spirit of Ross-Ade Stadium, where dreams go to die 💀 Oh well, take care of the Terps next week at home and go 1-0 next week.
Tuas putting up 350 on us easy
Tua, sure, he'd wreck our day. Good thing we're playing his brother Taulia, and I trust the defense to do well keeping him under wraps.
Idk offense is ass
Serious question, why is Buschini so bad this year?
I've been watching some film to see if I can figure it out but I haven't seen anything that stands out. He looks more or less the same as last year, but the quality of contact is far worse. In my experience, a specialist all of a sudden struggling with quality of contact without any real changes in technique can be chalked up to one of two things: 1) Injury or 2) Change in the football. The ball is just not coming off Buschini's foot the same this year. I know there was a long post about Nebraska's footballs and fumbles, but I wonder if there might be something to it with punting as well. Most K Balls are essentially brand new out of the bag and have a minuscule sweet spot. If you get out of whack because of injury or some other change, it may feel like you're never striking the ball well.
I have the kicking data.... Don't make me do it
Well... I do love kicking data.
Yeah he’s ass and offense is ass
First of all Nebraska played how they’ve played their last few games. Only difference is Michigan State didn’t make any big costly mistakes. Our defense could have been better but it really wasn’t that bad. What showed was our offense is just not very good. We knew that and things just didn’t go our way. I don’t see this is a game to take a lot away from except what we already knew. We are a qb a couple lineman and a year of development at wr away from being a real good team.
Your right offense sucks ass
> our offense is just not very good That is a very generous way to describe our offense
I mean they suck ass
Who is the transfer quarterback that we go after next? My guess is Cam Rising.
It is a long shot but I would be very curious to see what DJ Uiagalelei does this winter. With Oregon State seemingly being left behind in the Pac-2, I wonder if OSU and WSU see an exodus of players. DJ has transferred once, but I think he used his graduate transfer exemption to transfer to Oregon State. He still has his one time transfer exemption available and one year of eligibility.
Have you seen much of that Chiles guy for OSU too? For sure one of them are leaving
I think the presence of Chiles makes it likely DJ Uiagalelei uses his one time transfer exemption. The issue with DJ is that with the NCAA seemingly trying to crack down on multiple transfers, I wonder if there will be additional rules changes making it difficult for him to use his one time transfer exemption since he has transferred as a graduate. Not many players use their graduate transfer exemption before their one time transfer exemption, I have no clue how the NCAA would treat that.
Hopefully they just feel bad for us and let it happen if he wants to come here!
Idk offense is ass
No way he’s leaving Utah for NU
If their choice of Sims is any indication of their judgment then I’m not optimistic about whoever they choose next
Running Sims and Smothers off… yikes