Report Card: Huskers 17, Wisconsin Badgers Way-Too-Many-More

As much as it’s fun to heap on a certain offensive player, this loss came down to a disorganized, unmotivated and poorly coached defense. No punts for the entire second half?

Never thought I’d type the sentence above about a Pelini defense, but the truth hurts in this case. To be clear though, I absolutely trust Bo to get it turned around, but its painful right now.

Considering this is, I think, his youngest team yet, I guess we can chalk it up to his growth as a HC. They’re going to be seriously reconsidering their approach to practice and games this week, I’m guessing.

I hope they’ll be focusing on that secondary this week, with the defense focusing on a tackling fundamentals as a group.

The offense, really, is not that bad. Other than Martinez’ Jekyll and Hyde approach to reading the defense (I don’t know how they can fix that) and Beck forgetting about his four running backs (I’ll chalk that up to HIS inexperience), they aren’t really the issue on this team.

At least not enough to be noticed like the last two seasons.

We had the correct call on for most of their big plays, so coaches knew what was going on. But the players in the secondary just flat out failed them. Barring a Calvin Johnson or Justin Blackmon type WR lining up on the other team, double coverage should completely negate them in a QBs eyes. But watching them saunter past 2 safeties and a CB time and time again had to look too good to be true to Wilson.

There is a major problem with your play calling. Nebrask was succesful early on because of the balance between runs with Burkhead and Martinez, and the passing game. When we got away from that we got killed. When the defense knows that we are going to pass they are going to sit back and pick it off, just like Wisconsin did all night. The secondary was bad, the linebackers weren’t good, the pass rush was mediocre (how many sacks are we going to whiff on)??? But the main problem to me was the play calling. Memo to OC Beck, his name is Taylor Martinez, not Peyton Martinez.

Over-calling throwing plays resulted in interceptions, the interceptions lead to short field scores, the short field scores resulted in our D getting spent and demoralized.

Take a below average young secondary up against an NFL level QB and receivers and that game is what you get. Fresno and Washington threw all over us…Wilson and crew are at a whole different level. Our only chance to stay in that game was to be in a shoot out. But that chance was blown with the turnovers.

No one beats Wisconsin if they can’t out-punch them; no one succeeds in the Big Ten (at the level NU expects for itself) with a one-dimensional offense. If either condition were untrue, RichRod would still be at Michigan. RichRod thought he was joining a conference just like his old conference, only with bigger crowds. Not exactly, as it turns out.

There are a lot of single-wing QBs in the conference right now, but they never win (note how zealously Michigan worked on Denard’s passing game on Saturday; Forcier and Denard could hardly walk or raise their arms by October 15 in the RichRod years). Actually, they rarely make it through the season unhurt. Focusing on playcalling ignores the fact that NU couldn’t handle Wiscy physically, and, again, having a one-dimensional QB just won’t work in the Big Ten. I suppose that a lot of people still think that the Big Ten is a “slow” conference (that’s what Mike Gundy said on Saturday, smirking while he predicted an NU victory because of NU “speed”), but whatever. The Combine measures speed and there is no gap.) And I suppose some people think it’s a big deal to play assignment football on defense and maintain leverage on a running QB. But it’s really not, not when it’s been a prerequisite for being successful, forever.

I think you will see OSU with a very simple game plan, as well, and not just on defense. OSU is so bad at QB that they may well come out in a T-formation (joking); they will see if NU can stay with them physically for more than a quarter, which was the duration of NU’s competitiveness Saturday. If I were to indulge in mind-reading, in the aftermath of that game and a thousand close-ups of Pelini’s frozen visage, I would suggest that he was shocked by the physical domination, and as a good Ohio boy, he knows that if you cannot win at the LOS, you cannot win the game.

So I would spend my time wondering how NU learns to play physical football again per the Osborne years, and what NU is going to do with a zone-read, big-play targeting QB in a conference where the DEs and LBs understand leverage and tackling, and the QBs are managers as well as athletes. Net, it all starts with physical play, and right now half the teams in the conference are more physical than NU.

As you wish, though evidently you haven’t seen the last 10 or so Iowa-Wisconsin, or the last five Wisconsin-MSU games.

Of course, I never said that Martinez played poorly because of a physicality disadvantage. I just said that it was a style of quarterbacking that even RichRod couldn’t make work in the Big Ten, with both Forcier and Denard. It’s certainly fine with me if Nebraska wants to run the single-wing, but I would be concerned if I were an NU fan.

The game-planning for OSU should be telling. I’m sure their coaches are going to go one-dimensional and run power, and if you’re right, NU will shut them down easily and bludgeon them on both sides of the ball.

The comment about the SEC/LSU is amusing, given that even a Big East team racked up over 500 yards on them.

And when you lose big, you usually aren’t as bad as people say you are. Sometimes you are that bad, like in 2007 with Bill Callahan. But I think this is a game where it’s not as bad as it seems. The score got lopsided pretty quickly, and mistake after mistake killed us by both coaches and players. Then once the players were down, they lost their fight and stayed down.

It wasn’t a gap in talent or coaching, it was just a bad game…the coaches’ had a good gameplan to start, but it failed down the stretch in epic fashion. We could replay this game this Saturday and have a much more favorable result. I put it on the coaches more than anyone for allowing a bad collapse in the 2nd quarter to get out of hand in the 3rd quarter.

These kind of games happen every year. Great teams can rise above it, but good teams usually can’t. Nebraska is a good team this year, no doubt in my mind, but we aren’t great. We could be great later in the year, and perhaps the season will culminate with a rematch with Wisconsin in the Big 10 title game where we play much much better and maybe even win.

Go Big Red! I sure hope we beat Ohio State this week.

Wisconsin scares the ever-loving tar out of me. They are going to destroy Penn State by sixty points. I can only hope for mercy where I know there is none.

I’m hoping there isn’t a rematch in Indy. This opinion is based on the assumption that NU’s coaches wouldn’t allow Taylor Martinez to attempt more than 10 passes in the rematch. It’s always tough to beat a good team twice in one season, but it would be even harder if the coaches actually stuck with what works (Burkhead). I believe the Badgers are a better team, but the difference between these teams is not as large as Saturday’s final score would indicate.

Unrelated: To anyone who made the trip to Madison; it was awesome having you all here. The atmosphere was fantastic all weekend.

Have they been handed out yet? Pretty sure someone else already brought this up at some point…