What did we learn? Purdue

seaofred92

seaofred92

New member
- Trey Palmer may legitimately have a claim as the best WR at NU by the time he’s done here if he stays another year

- Lots of missing pieces still on both sides of the ball

- Guys mentally are in a different stratosphere than they’ve been in the last few years. NU would have 100% folded down 10-0 in previous years, nice to see the fight even if we’re flawed

- Thought we were just a step slow everywhere on defense and it showed big time on some of the near misses on the longer throws AOC was able to make. Need to up overall team speed

- Poor tackling will continue and won’t be fixed overnight, although it is getting better than earlier this year

- Anthony Grant has somewhat come back to Earth after the hot start, not sure if thats an OL thing or scheme thing or what

- Oliver Martin has sneakily emerged as a nice #2 WR the last few weeks

- Vokolek has really emerged as a receiving threat in addition to the blocking, he may have a shot at the NFL

- Some fans will be mad about TOP but love to celebrate the multiple sub 2 minute TD drives  :)

- Most importantly, I’m still having fun watching this team. Get healthy during the idle week next week and see what happens against Illinois. Would love to squeak into a December bowl game if possible.

 
seaofred92 said:
- Guys mentally are in a different stratosphere than they’ve been in the last few years. NU would have 100% folded down 10-0 in previous years, nice to see the fight even if we’re flawed
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I don't disagree with anything else you said. But how has this become a narrative? Frost didn't work but it wasn't because his teams folded. In fact the only reason he got.a 2 game prove it stint this year is because as Trev noted in his press conference, '

"Frost's teams didn't quit." This revisionist history is nonsense. 

Frost didn't do a good job, but his teams didn't fold. Sorry, carry on.

 
Palmer is a dude

Our OL might be the worst in NU history

Our D over pursues.  A lot.

Busch has got to find a way to manufacture pressure.

This team showed fight.  Plays for this staff.  They just "play" different.  

CT is tough.  He must feel like he has been hit by a train every Sunday morning.

No idea why we did not play more press coverage and jam the slower receivers at the line.

Their 9th string, walk-on RB killed us.

AOC will be the best QB we see all year.

ST's showed up big time again.

Hill was doding well in the return game.  Did he go out?

Burned out on the coaching search.  no idea who it will be. Can do  a lot worse than MJ.  Wouldn't be mad if he got it.  Not my first choice, but not gonna hate it.

Did I mention our OL?

 
We absolutely need to keep Mickey in some capacity. Trev needs to negotiate this with the next HC.  He brings national recruiting credibility and brought Palmer who single handedly kept us in the game tonight. He can go into any 5 star receiver recruit in the county and compete because he has guys like Chase and Jefferson on his resume and just turned Palmer into one of the best receivers in the country.

Our lines need a complete rebuild. This is the priority in my opinion for the next coach.  The DLine was really bad tonight. The OLine has been bad forever.

The defensive game plan was really poor tonight. I know we were playing with a mash unit but you have to try something. I’ll never know if maybe this was just our game plan knowing we had to bend and not break because we were going to go toe to toe unleashing Palmer? I sort of think though we had to YOLO to Palmer because our defense was not able to stop Purdue.

I did not have us winning this game but we played hard and that was good. No doubt we need to improve both the player roster and some coaches. Lots of dead weight that just aren’t contributing.

 
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Time of Possession is rarely our friend, but it’s clearly having a negative effect on our defense. 
 

We faced 101 plays on defense tonight. In contrast, we had 52 offensive plays. For reference, Illinois faced 42 from Minnesota. No amount of S&C can fully prepare a defense to face 90+ snaps a game without seeing the injured list start racking up. Will be very interesting to see how many extra snaps our defense had to face at the end of the year in comparison to our peers. Either need to start forcing turnovers or shut down opponent drives. 

 
Nothing new…OL is still trash…defense can’t stop a fly…Thompson throws interceptions at the worst possible times.

The only positives are:

(1) Palmer is arguably one of the best receivers in the Big if not the best.

(2) The players respect Mickey and they play hard for him and never quit.

(3) our special teams do not suck anymore

 
Wistrom Disciple said:
Time of Possession is rarely our friend, but it’s clearly having a negative effect on our defense. 
 

We faced 101 plays on defense tonight. In contrast, we had 52 offensive plays. For reference, Illinois faced 42 from Minnesota. No amount of S&C can fully prepare a defense to face 90+ snaps a game without seeing the injured list start racking up. Will be very interesting to see how many extra snaps our defense had to face at the end of the year in comparison to our peers. Either need to start forcing turnovers or shut down opponent drives. 
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Eh .... I think what had a negative effect on our defense was not being able to stop the run.  Or the pass.

 
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