2012 Preseason Rankings - Expectations Not High For Nebraska

With Gholston (sp?), I agree, you take Cousins out of there, that offense is taking a big step back. And to have them 6th?

In all honestly, my opinion of Andy Staples is that while he can be funny and an entertaining writer, doesn’t really present well thought-out arguments. Wetzel is kinda the same, good investigative journalist, but bad at putting all the pieces together. Even when we agree with a stance, I think he presents a poor argument oftentimes.

Every ranking except for Bill’s has Nebraska higher than they are right now. In other words, pretty much everyone expects Nebraska to improve, if only slightly.

I think Nebraska being ranked anywhere from 18-25 is probably appropriate right now.

I’m not really getting the Sparty love right now, though. Like Jon said above, MSU has to replace far more key components of the offense than do their Legends competitors Michigan and Nebraska. Sixth is way, way too high for a team that narrowly won the Outback Bowl and returns a fraction of its offensive production next year.

I think most of the polls most consistently got Michigan about right. Michigan should be improved again next year, but lets not forget that they were quite fortunate to get to 11-2 this year, and next year’s schedule will be quite a lot harder.

As for Ohio State, I side with the people who refuse to rank them as part of their punishment for cheating. This is a ranking, not a power ranking. I expect a 10-2 season out of them, however, because the Leaders is going to be hilariously weak next year and they get Nebraska and Michigan at home.

I think Wisconsin is a sub-top 20 team. Their passing game is likely to be among the worst in the Big Ten next year, and that’ll sap a lot of the advantage that they’d have ordinarily gotten with Ball’s return. Their defense simply hasn’t been (and I believe probably will continue to not be) all that good. They’ll still be a dangerous team, but I don’t see them as having the offensive diversity to beat the better teams on their schedule.

SEC restrictions on oversigning (which if I understand limit teams to to 25 per year? Big deal – you can still run off 15 kids every four years, but I guess it’s something..) probably won’t have much effect on the LSU/Bama juggernauts for a few years. QB could be interesting for them. Mettenberger comes with plenty of baggage having been shown the door at Georgia and Gunner Kiel might be talented, but do you really want a true freshman in there against Bama?

The Texas – Notre Dame preseason rankings I believe just reflect a major shortcoming of the ranksters – there’s a certain degree of laziness once they get out of the top 15 or so. Why find out which So. Miss or Northen Illinois might have shown enough against decent competition to warrant a spot when you can just scribble down a historical name and mumble something about their youth?

(This isn’t a bad thing. Nothing is funnier than Lou Holtz spitting all over Mark May while he makes his annual preseason prediction that last year’s 5-7 Domer team will go to a CBS bowl/win a national title/etc. Already deluded Domer fans then are even more shocked and crushed when powerhouses like North Carolina and Navy piss on the dream. Again.)

What am I missing here? Will Braxton Miller suddenly be able to pass and not run himself into bone-crushing hits? Who is the dominant back that will make up for the lack of any kind of air attack?

I’m not buying the “Insert Urban Meyer and Ohio St. is a national powerhouse again” line until it actually happens. Not saying that it can’t or won’t happen eventually, but I don’t see the team with the 2011 105th ranked offense in the country becoming a 2012 top 10 squad right off the bat. I just don’t.

Ohio St. football is a disaster right now and the only good things to happen to them this year were the Wisconsin upset and the Penn St. scandal. They don’t fix that house overnight.

For the past two seasons we came in with very high, almost unreasonable expectations. Those expectations looked like they could be met at times, such as when we were up 20-0 in the Big 12 championship, or when we dominated Sparty 24-3. But ultimately we fell short and ended each season with 4 losses. These unreasonable expectations cause fans to overlook obvious weaknesses the team may have, and obvious challenges they need to overcome. Great examples are this year’s defense APART from Lavonte and Dennard, or the difficulties of this year’s schedule.

No one is happy with 9-4 around here, but when you gulp down the Big Red kool-aid you will be disappointed 99% of the time. In a state where college football is king, there’s plenty of kool-aid to go around between January and August. It’s okay to sip on it from time to time, but don’t bet your farm on the Huskers’ success every year.

Generally speaking I am a very glass half-full kind of fan. I think that next year we definitely have the potential to be better if only due to it being the first “normal” season since 2009. In 2010, the story-line was all about it being our last year in the Big 12, the refs screwing us over, and everyone giving us their best shot. Last year it was all about it being our first year in the Big 10, us not having the right personnel to stop big-bruising teams like Wisconsin, and us having to face 13 new teams.

As for ranking…well it depends on how the young team develops. Just a few years ago everyone was saying that Pelini is a master at developing talent, but now everyone seems to think that he has no talent to work with. I completely disagree with that notion, and guys like Chase Rome, Andrew Green, Jamal Turner, Kenny Bell, Tyler Moore, and even Taylor Martinez (still) should improve quite a bit next year. If those guys can take the next step (which I believe they will), then this team could easily exceed these relatively low expectations.

And here is my first prediction for the 2012 season:

Southern Miss kicks the Big Red’s ass on September 1st!

Wow.

The good news is that Michigan and Wisconsin are home games for us. Michigan, in particular, would almost certainly be a loss if it were an away game, but in Lincoln our odds improve exponentially. I say we probably win one of those games and lose the other one.

Some folks have Southern Miss as a wild card, and I agree they can’t be overlooked, but they are still a Conference-USA team playing in Lincoln. I think we win there.

The bad news is we have to go on the road to OSU and MSU. I think OSU is beatable — they will not turn into an SEC West school just because Urban Meyer is there. MSU loses Kirk Cousins and their top four wide receivers, but their defense is loaded and, in East Lansing, I would chalk this up as a loss.

We should beat UCLA on the road (I predict 20,000 Nebraska fans at that game). The same is true with Iowa, although that game won’t be a cake walk. One would expect us to win a road game against Northwestern if, this time around, we can figure out a way to contain Kain Colter.

Assuming that one of the games I have listed as a win goes against us — such being the nature of college football — I think a 9-3 or even 10-2 regular season is a reasonable expectation.