What did we learn South Alabama?

huskerfan74 said:
(1) We still do not have good special teams. Other than the individual effort of a very special athlete, i.e. Spielman, the special teams were as unspecial as they have been over the last six years at least.
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You can't just not point out how much improved our punting was today though, surely. That's either overly critical or a case of not really being able to dissect what you're watching. Our punt team all around played pretty well today.

 
Undone said:
You can't just not point out how much improved our punting was today though, surely. That's either overly critical or a case of not really being able to dissect what you're watching. Our punt team all around played pretty well today.
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I was thinking the exact same thing. It seemed like he just wanted to make very general observations without thinking about what really happened in the game. Also, him saying the punt return TD was only because of great individual effort is complete BS. I guess there was nobody out there blocking for JD. 

 
ColoradoHusk said:
1) Other than the missed FG by a backup kicker, the special teams were solid. Wandale had a couple nice kickoff returns, the kickoff coverage team didn’t let up any big returns, and Armstrong averaged 45 yards per punt (flipping the field once, and pinning them deep another time or two).

2. Other than Deontei’s penalty in the first quarter, I didn’t think there were super costly penalties which changed the momentum of the game. Maybe Wandale’s illegal motion (which was questionable) which negated a long catch and run.

3. Not sure if you have watched many other Big Ten games this weekend. Purdue lost to Nevada. Minnesota went down to the wire against a FCS school. Northwestern couldn’t do anything on offense against Stanford. Currently, Iowa is only up 10-7 at half against Miami (OH). NU is far from the only conference team struggling this weekend. 
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I respectfully disagree. Two of south Alabama’s scores came after mistakes by the special teams. The first score was the result of a bad kick that gave S Alabama a shot field and the second score was after Spielman muffed it. So. The special teams were not impressive. As for the big ten teams, Northwestern played a ranked Stanford game very close. Purdue’s QB had 423 yards alone in their last minute loss. But if you read my post carefully, the teams I mentioned are the ones that we fail to compete against. Wisconsin was extremely impressive and Ohio state did very well with a new coach. Michigan state held their opponent to -75 yards rushing. Even Illinois beat Akron by 39 points. We had a total of 274 yards in total offense.

I am am happy we won and very glad that our defense stepped up but let us not sugarcoat this. It was not a good game and the offense is a big concern going into next week’s game against Colorado in Colorado.

 
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Undone said:
You can't just not point out how much improved our punting was today though, surely. That's either overly critical or a case of not really being able to dissect what you're watching. Our punt team all around played pretty well today.
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Bad O Line = lots of punt team talk. 

 
Maybe it's been mentioned already, but there didn't seem to be too many dumb penalties. Couple false starts. But pretty clean game for the most part. Seems like dumb penalties have plagued NU for a couple decades. 

 
Fru said:
Maybe it's been mentioned already, but there didn't seem to be too many dumb penalties. Couple false starts. But pretty clean game for the most part. Seems like dumb penalties have plagued NU for a couple decades. 
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It’s been mentioned, but it’s worth mentioning again.  :P

 
Fru said:
So many dumb penalties killed drives in the past. Seems they're playing more disciplined ball. 
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Better than at some times in the past.  The late hit helped give them their first TD and the illegal motion by Wan'Dale wiped out a big play.  The false start on the PAT was pretty dumb but didn't hurt anything.

But I would agree that it seemed better overall.

 
I have not read all 11 pages so maybe some of this was said. 

Martinez did not seem fast or quick, he made bad reads and bad looking throws

Oline was depressing

mills couldn’t create anything with the poor oline play

Defense got a lot of turnovers but the dline didn’t dominate like you would expect against a bad opponent 

linebackers look slow with bad angles 

dbs made lots of plays with picks but lots of open receivers too 

not a fan of the boom or bust defense. Good teams are not gonna hand us 5 turnovers 

how long is our starting kicker out? 

 
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I learned that i drank way too much kool-aid and off-season strength and conditioning stories are as worthless as man titties.

I learned that this was my first husker game since I quit smoking. I missed it.

I am less confident about my trip to boulder next week.

 
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The biggest thing about the offense is that they just looked disjointed today and completely out of rhythm. Other than the first drive, they just looked out of sorts.  One thing that I didn’t like is that it was like Frost wanted to feature specific players on different drives. It was fairly balanced the first drive, and then it was like he wanted to establish the run with Mills. Then in the 2nd half, they brought Wandale back in and he was targeted 3 straight passes by Martinez. Then when NU finally got the ball in the 3rd quarter, they wanted to feature Mo. Mo had good runs, and then they went to the pass to him. That led to the pick by Martinez.  Frost also seemed reluctant to use Martinez in the run game. 

I think Frost will learn how to use all of the skill players at his disposal, and Martinez will do a better job of finding the open man. But the combination of a number of things today, led to the poor showing by the offense. 

 
I’m going to look at this a little differently. Yes, the team struggled, but maybe that is a good thing. Maybe that will wake them up to the fact that hype doesn’t equal success and they still have a way to go. If we would have steam rolled this team, perhaps the team is over confident going into next week. Now, they will be aware of the fact they need to work their asses off to beat Colorado and will go in there with something to prove and a chip on their shoulder. 

 
I thought our O line struggled 

i thought Martinez was trying to perfect instead of just being himself 

I thought the D finally started tackling a bit and obviously was aggressive and I liked that. 

The bad snaps really really hurt the timing. I like that Frost didn’t hesitate to try to remedy that and put someone else in. That was good. 

I also thought we didn’t pull, misdirect, trick play, or otherwise give away any blocking schemes. Call it vanilla, or whatever, but CU has no tape on our trap game, deep routes, or option game. 

Lets take the win, if feels GREAT. They’ll learn from this and hopefully shore up what they need. Hopefully all the hype washed off and they can just play some damn ball now. 

 
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