don't get why people are freaking out

BoSolich said:
most people would have been fine being 5-5 at this point before the season started.

we knew raiola would take some bumps as a true freshman so not sure what people were expecting from the offense.

the defense has exceeded expectations in every game except indiana.

so what are people so made about? we have a top 18 recruiting class and on track to make a bowl if we win a favored matchup against wisconsin.
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lol, we're ranked 101st in scoring offense in the nation and that is heavily skewed by our cupcake non- con schedule against the likes of northern iowa and UTEP.  We havent scored more than 21 offensive points since sept 20th against illinois.

Our defense?  I'd argue has been a massive disappointment.  Fans that rely on stats will cherry pick certain stats to make the case theyre a top 15-20 unit yet casually ignore our cupcake schedule is a massive part of that.  1/3 of our schedule is in the bottom 10 in offensive scoring.  The remaining portion is largely not in the top 50% offensively.  Sure, they've been hung out to dry by this limp d!(k offense, but let be real, no one has confidence they will make a key stop when we have the lead... how many missed turnover opportunities did we gift USC this past weekend?  Simply put, there isnt a single difference maker to be had on this defense and all of them have displayed numerous examples where the moment was simply too big to make a play

We heard all offseason about the receiving room and transfers- they've been a complete failure.

All offseason we heard nothing but rave reviews about the stout defense, senior laden.  One could make the case not a single one of them has progressed since last year, majority of them have in fact regressed.

Our special teams unit continues to be one of the worst ran in the nation.  

Our schedule, actually setup to be pretty friendly, one of the easiest we've had since joining the big ten.  USC is way below what everyone expected, we had a meh UCLA team at home.  And yet here we are stuck at 5 wins for a month and a half.

Fans and media are literally questioning whether dylan raiola should be the qb to end the year to not shake his confidence further and go to a qb who couldn;t throw last year and led the worst offense in our progrum history.

There is quite possibly not a single thing about this progrum that has been displayed on the field that fans are optimistic about moving forward and Coach Rhule is now starting to use the "players need to make plays" response because he doesnt have the answer either.

But yeah, why is everyone upset lol

 
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The Dude said:
We may not be winning, but we're not winning the right way.  It could be worse, could be Colorado or Indiana, who is winning the wrong way.

I won't be truly worried until we're still not winning in year 3.  That's when the magic usually happens for Rhule.
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Read an article today talking about year 4 being when Rhule's rebuilds kick in....Moving goal posts now.  Always thought it was a 3 year build everywhere he's been.

You can have it right and you can have it now.  But you can't have it right now.

The above is from a proud craftsman who was being pressured to hurry up his repair work on a large corporate jet. 

The line seems to fit Matt Rhule's approach to rebuilding the Husker football program.  He's doing the best he can with what he has in year two of his four-year rebuild.

https://www.si.com/college/nebraska/football/huskers-have-two-chances-for-win-no-six-husker-dan

 
gossamorharpy said:
lol, we're ranked 101st in scoring offense in the nation and that is heavily skewed by our cupcake non- con schedule against the likes of northern iowa and UTEP.  We havent scored more than 21 offensive points since sept 20th against illinois.

Our defense?  I'd argue has been a massive disappointment.  Fans that rely on stats will cherry pick certain stats to make the case theyre a top 15-20 unit yet casually ignore our cupcake schedule is a massive part of that.  1/3 of our schedule is in the bottom 10 in offensive scoring.  The remaining portion is largely not in the top 50% offensively.  Sure, they've been hung out to dry by this limp d!(k offense, but let be real, no one has confidence they will make a key stop when we have the lead... how many missed turnover opportunities did we gift USC this past weekend?  Simply put, there isnt a single difference maker to be had on this defense and all of them have displayed numerous examples where the moment was simply too big to make a play

We heard all offseason about the receiving room and transfers- they've been a complete failure.

All offseason we heard nothing but rave reviews about the stout defense, senior laden.  One could make the case not a single one of them has progressed since last year, majority of them have in fact regressed.

Our special teams unit continues to be one of the worst ran in the nation.  

Our schedule, actually setup to be pretty friendly, one of the easiest we've had since joining the big ten.  USC is way below what everyone expected, we had a meh UCLA team at home.  And yet here we are stuck at 5 wins for a month and a half.

Fans and media are literally questioning whether dylan raiola should be the qb to end the year to not shake his confidence further and go to a qb who couldn;t throw last year and led the worst offense in our progrum history.

There is quite possibly not a single thing about this progrum that has been displayed on the field that fans are optimistic about moving forward and Coach Rhule is now starting to use the "players need to make plays" response because he doesnt have the answer either.

But yeah, why is everyone upset lol
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100% agree.  Rhule was supposed to show a significant jump in year 2 from year 1.  Right now we are not seeing it at all.  The defense is giving up 9 more points a game in 2024 against conference opponents than they did in 2023.  Tony White's unit is just as lost as the offense has been.  The ONLY major area of improvement from last season is our punter who has been consistent all season. Last year he struggled in several games.  

 
I will say this: after this season, we are losing a ton of our starters. Banks, Neyor, Mazzccua, Bullock, Hill, Sherman, Garcia-Castaneda, Scott, Buschini, Hutmacher, Robinson, Benhart, Corcoran, Gifford, Singleton and R. Johnson will all be gone. That is a massive amount of talent. Our team will look dramatically different next season. That could be just the excuse Rhule uses for another down season if we look awful in 2025.

 
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Street Novelist said:
I will say this: after this season, we are losing a ton of our starters. Banks, Neyor, Mazzccua, Bullock, Hill, Sherman, Garcia-Castaneda, Scott, Buschini, Hutmacher, Robinson, Benhart, Corcoran, Gifford, Singleton and R. Johnson will all be gone. That is a massive amount of talent. Our team will look dramatically different next season. That could be just the excuse Rhule uses for another down season if we look awful in 2025.
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Massive amount of losing talent ***

and good riddance, I’ll lend a hand and help em move. Vast majority of those players represent nothing but mediocrity during the worst stretch of modern husker football

 
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Caliborn72 said:
But I will say, from my perspective that was not how the season was packaged at all to me through the offseason. We felt competent QB play would have given us an 8 or 9 win season last year and that with a relatively easy schedule this year, we might have a real outside shot at the playoff.
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Yeah, about that 'relatively easy schedule' we were supposed to have this year. ESPN's FPI currently has our strength of schedule at #14. For comparison, our FPI SOS last year was #69.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/fpi/_/view/resume/sort/resume.avgsosrank/dir/asc

(Incidentally, Indiana's SOS comes in at #106...)

 
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Toe said:
Yeah, about that 'relatively easy schedule' we were supposed to have this year. ESPN's FPI currently has our strength of schedule at #14. For comparison, our FPI SOS last year was #69.

https://www.espn.com/college-football/fpi/_/view/resume/sort/resume.avgsosrank/dir/asc

(Incidentally, Indiana's SOS comes in at #106...)
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Yeah, about that ‘relatively easy schedule,’ don’t take my word for it! The article you posted in this thread:



References two different times that we needed to take advantage of the schedule we’d been given and predicted a 9-3 season for us.
 

My post was about the context of the offseason expectations. Avoiding Oregon, Penn State, and (at the time) Michigan, while getting Indiana, UCLA, Purdue, Rutgers, and Illinois who were all picked to finish at the bottom of the conference looked like a layup. Especially when you include the clown show (at the time) at Colorado, and bottom of the FBS and FCS UTEP and Northern Iowa.

The context has changed as no one expected Indiana to be a power or that Colorado would go on a nice run. But I would not have expected us to be 5-5 at this point in the season.

 
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Street Novelist said:
I will say this: after this season, we are losing a ton of our starters. Banks, Neyor, Mazzccua, Bullock, Hill, Sherman, Garcia-Castaneda, Scott, Buschini, Hutmacher, Robinson, Benhart, Corcoran, Gifford, Singleton and R. Johnson will all be gone. That is a massive amount of talent. Our team will look dramatically different next season. That could be just the excuse Rhule uses for another down season if we look awful in 2025.
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the bolded will be the only real losses.  I would say Banks and Neyor but they can't block for s#!t and have a hard time getting open.  

 
Street Novelist said:
I will say this: after this season, we are losing a ton of our starters. Banks, Neyor, Mazzccua, Bullock, Hill, Sherman, Garcia-Castaneda, Scott, Buschini, Hutmacher, Robinson, Benhart, Corcoran, Gifford, Singleton and R. Johnson will all be gone. That is a massive amount of talent. Our team will look dramatically different next season. That could be just the excuse Rhule uses for another down season if we look awful in 2025.

MyBloodIsRed16 said:
the bolded will be the only real losses.  I would say Banks and Neyor but they can't block for s#!t and have a hard time getting open.  
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I think you are wildly underselling Bullock and Gifford, and Banks/Neyor/Sherman/Benhart have all been solid for the most part. Bullock is playing really well, and Gifford has been solid. Giffs only consistent issue is he doesn't take the ball away, but he plays a really tough position and mostly plays it well. Mistakes at that position just show up very clearly, and it's easy to miss when he does his job.

Seeing how Gottula has performed makes me feel better about replacing Scott/Benhart, in the relatively recent past the backups have looked terrible when called on at OL. But Gottula has been good (incredible for a redshirt freshman playing LT), Evans is better than last year, and Lutovsky has been solid after years of getting a few chances and completely blowing them. So development is happening on the OL, which is exciting. But replacing 5th/6th year guys is always a little nerve-wracking. 

 
Husker in WI said:
I think you are wildly underselling Bullock and Gifford, and Banks/Neyor/Sherman/Benhart have all been solid for the most part. Bullock is playing really well, and Gifford has been solid. Giffs only consistent issue is he doesn't take the ball away, but he plays a really tough position and mostly plays it well. Mistakes at that position just show up very clearly, and it's easy to miss when he does his job.

Seeing how Gottula has performed makes me feel better about replacing Scott/Benhart, in the relatively recent past the backups have looked terrible when called on at OL. But Gottula has been good (incredible for a redshirt freshman playing LT), Evans is better than last year, and Lutovsky has been solid after years of getting a few chances and completely blowing them. So development is happening on the OL, which is exciting. But replacing 5th/6th year guys is always a little nerve-wracking. 
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I think Bullock is having a solid year.  I expected more out of Gifford. But I also believe we have guys waiting in the wings who are better than they are (or will be).  I'm not too worried about replacing guys at this point with the portal.  I feel better about the O-line as each guy will be a year older and have some experience under their belt when next season rolls around.  

 
MyBloodIsRed16 said:
I think Bullock is having a solid year.  I expected more out of Gifford. But I also believe we have guys waiting in the wings who are better than they are (or will be).  I'm not too worried about replacing guys at this point with the portal.  I feel better about the O-line as each guy will be a year older and have some experience under their belt when next season rolls around.  
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Who? I think you're right on the "will be better" (I would say could be better), but I am not convinced those guys are going to be better than Bullock/Gifford or even Sherman/Benhart next year. Now obviously at some point the younger guys need the playing time to develop into better players. But if we had guys currently better than them, those guys would be playing. We need big leaps from quite a few guys for the defense to hold steady, let alone improve next year.

 
gossamorharpy said:
lol, we're ranked 101st in scoring offense in the nation and that is heavily skewed by our cupcake non- con schedule against the likes of northern iowa and UTEP.  We havent scored more than 21 offensive points since sept 20th against illinois.

Our defense?  I'd argue has been a massive disappointment.  Fans that rely on stats will cherry pick certain stats to make the case theyre a top 15-20 unit yet casually ignore our cupcake schedule is a massive part of that.  1/3 of our schedule is in the bottom 10 in offensive scoring.  The remaining portion is largely not in the top 50% offensively.  Sure, they've been hung out to dry by this limp d!(k offense, but let be real, no one has confidence they will make a key stop when we have the lead... how many missed turnover opportunities did we gift USC this past weekend?  Simply put, there isnt a single difference maker to be had on this defense and all of them have displayed numerous examples where the moment was simply too big to make a play

We heard all offseason about the receiving room and transfers- they've been a complete failure.

All offseason we heard nothing but rave reviews about the stout defense, senior laden.  One could make the case not a single one of them has progressed since last year, majority of them have in fact regressed.

Our special teams unit continues to be one of the worst ran in the nation.  

Our schedule, actually setup to be pretty friendly, one of the easiest we've had since joining the big ten.  USC is way below what everyone expected, we had a meh UCLA team at home.  And yet here we are stuck at 5 wins for a month and a half.

Fans and media are literally questioning whether dylan raiola should be the qb to end the year to not shake his confidence further and go to a qb who couldn;t throw last year and led the worst offense in our progrum history.

There is quite possibly not a single thing about this progrum that has been displayed on the field that fans are optimistic about moving forward and Coach Rhule is now starting to use the "players need to make plays" response because he doesnt have the answer either.

But yeah, why is everyone upset lol
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I wanted to give everyone more time, but after yesterday's press conference I'm not expecting any big changes as far as improvement with this staff.  Rhule was asked about why the defense is making mistakes they shouldn't and his response was (paraphrasing) "The PAC12 has some really complicated offenses and our guys are seeing some complicated things".  

Well, UCLA, USC, and Washington have losing records against old B1G teams.  Why can everyone else stop them but the Huskers can't.  And the PAC12 offense answer really isn't an excuse for Indiana or Illinois.

 
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