Even with WI's good line play, the NU defense acquitted itself well: 109 yards rushing and 197 passing. It was NU's inability to move the ball except in garbage time that lost the game.
Fitz on OL
- Thread starter NJCat
- Start date
Correct. NU had -55 yards in sacks so gross rushing was 25+55=80. Still not very good.
I have been a fan since 1985. Sue me for being satisfied with 9-10 win seasons; during my time on campus, our teams won 11 games TOTAL, and that was considered an excellent run...
It is very difficult to make the BIG 10 championship game. For example Michigan, with all of its built-in advantages over us, has the same number of appearances as us. Wisky on the other hand, has been in the championship game the most times of anyone (5, TWO MORE than even Ohio State!), so you can see where our problem lies
Though I believe we can get there(we were possibly a victory over Wisky away this year). it will be a TREMENDOUS accomplishment for us to overcome Wisconsin; and it is not something as a fan of Northwestern that I will ever EXPECT to happen as a condition of being satisfied with my fandom. I love my team and all of their tremendous accomplishments of the last 20 years that started with Barnett and have continued under Fitz, ALL OF WHICH were completely unfathomable when I attended school, and all of which have positioned us for even greater success in the future.
80 is the number that Wisky is averaging in rushing yards allowed on the season.
That is a stupid comment. Yea, Fitz is focused on his goal of being a runner-up Coach. Lose your anger DaCat and embrace the great season. I guess someone is always willing to carry the negative flag, provided we aren't winning National Championships. Sheesh!
Fitz +1
Roni +1
DaCat -2
But the 80 they are allowing includes yards lost to sacks!!! So the number to compare to 80 is 25.......
Right, but sacks are included in that calculation. In our 80 yards, they are not.
You watched a different game.
OK, WI had 303 yards in sacks against 966 net yards rushing allowed. So if you take out the sacks, they allow 106 yards per game rushing and NU gained only 80. Anyway you cut it NU was below average against the WI rushing defense.
Please tell me it's named Bikini Atoll.
So you missed CT making that terrible decision on the Pick 6, then? This is just one of many examples....
One play doesn't change a game. Games are won on the line of scrimmage and Wisconsin's DL kicked our OL's ass the entire game and had Thorson playing like a guy who was shell shocked and running for his life.
I would argue that we lost the game due to that terrible stretch in the third quarter. If you feel that the OL was solely to blame for that terrible stretch, we will agree to disagree I guess....
Nobody is saying we don't want better o-line play, but Penn State came within four points of an unbeaten season with a line that might not even have been as good as NU's. They had arguably the best back in the country in Barkley and couldn't get him 100 yards in many games. In addition to the o-line, we need more explosion at the skill positions to be truly top-notch. Wisconsin was the only consistently good o-line in the B1G this season. OSU was terrific some games, not so good in others.
The Dark Ages are over. They've been over for a long time. Sorry you're still scarred by the ineptitude of the football team during your time at NU, but the bar has been raised. EXPECT victory. EXPECT championships. If the team has a weak link, year after year, then it's a reasonable point of discussion. We're so close to Indy, yet still so far away. Next year's schedule is more difficult, and many of our division opponents (e.g. Nebraska, Purdue, Minnesota) will probably be improved. 9-3 is great, but we had a chance at the division title this year.
Name me anyone in the B1G this year other than Wisconsin (and on some occasions, OSU) who consistently ran the ball well on a good defense this year. For that matter, who in the B1G managed to successfully run the ball on NU this season? Good defenses are good defenses because they can stuff the run on most occasions. That's why you'd better have someone who can pass if you're going to win consistently in college football nowadays.
I am not scarred by anything, I am delighted to be a fan. And I will be a fan in any manner in which I choose. Sorry that it done not rise to the level of your satisfaction.
What is a standard is Wisconsin taking 3 stars like we do, and making them into All-American OL. Year after year and putting them in the League. Their latest AA OL was a QB in HS.
If we were half as good as Wisconsin as developing OL, then I would have no problem with Fitz crowing about his brah. Color me unimpressed that we dominated Illinois's freshmen and a Minnesota team that lost by a total of 70-0 in their last two games. What did we look like against decent defences? Or even other crappy ones like Duke, Nevada, and Bowling Green?
Bottom line as pointed out by others - if we are going to win the West, much less the B1G, then we need to be as good as Wisconsin.
This was raised by a poster on the hoops board, an Illini at that, but why is it that you put so much store in pre-season rankings? Especially after the last regular season game has been played. Do you really think Nebraska had a great OL?
We lost the game because we lost the line of scrimmage. We gave up something 8 sacks and god knows how many more hits/pressures on the QB. We couldn't run the ball worth a lick either. OL don't get enough credit when teams win but when you put up stats like that it's pretty obvious where the game was lost.
This was addressed in my prior post. Cliffs; we ran above average against a very good Iowa defense, and below average against a very good Purdue defense. Minny was the only Big defense that could be described as "decent" but not very good or elite, and we torched them in a game where they knew what was coming.
Did not address noncon in my prior posts, but we ran below average vs a terrible Nevada run defense, above average vs a terrible Bowling Green rush D, and well below average vs a decent Duke rush D. JJ was playing hurt for those games, though, so that was certainly a factor.
All official rushing stats in college subtract sack yardage. I think the NFL includes sacks in net passing yards.
You're not going to convince me of your position that the team outside of the OL was blameless in the loss, so agree to disagree?
Nebraska had a coaching problem (particularly the Defensive Coordinator) not a a player talent problem (outside of perhaps the RB position) and certainly not an OL talent problem.
I didn't say that. Of course no player plays a perfect game. What was pretty obvious was that our OL got whipped the entire game. It was obvious to me and FItz has pretty much acknowledged the same in previous press conferences. You don't seem to see it that way so obviously we'll have to agree to disagree.
We tend to go to extremes on websites, which probably is no surprise to anyone given the state of dialogue about most subjects these days. I get the arguments of what I'll call the perpetually "unsatisfied" bunch that we gotta expect more, shoot for national championships etc. Who on this board wouldn't want to go 12-0, win the title and get into the CFP? And I thought the criticism of the staff about the start of the year was legit as the team looked dazed and confused for the first couple of games. They got the train back on the tracks, but it took a long time to do so. If they're crapping around with the o-line again at the beginning of next year, I will agree it's a systemic problem and heads should roll. On the other hand, I'm pretty damn satisfied with a 9-3 season and will be more so if the Cats can get a bowl win. We were better than quite a few teams in the B1G this year, including some that have access to a far larger pool of player recruits than we do. Once again we led the B1G in player graduation rate, which is the very definition of an actual "student athlete." Northwestern is winning with relative consistency and doing it the right way.
Does being satisfied with the current season make me a Pollyanna? Hardly. I think we should always go for winning every game and expect improvement. I'm not happy with debacles such as the Duke and PSU games this year. And our failure to develop the o-line is certainly a topic worthy of dicussion (and I suspect it's being discussed at several other B1G schools after this year).
But the fact that I'm not a Pollyanna also makes me a realist. We are not going to recruit year-in and year-out with the likes of Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan. They simply have too many built-in advantages. I liken NU to a 190-pound fighter facing a 240-pound fighter (OSU, PSU, Michigan). Assuming they both can handle themselves well, that larger guy will clean the smaller guy's clock most of the time. But assume the smaller guy is a sharp fighter with a good punch. Every once in a while, he might get in the perfect punch and knock the larger guy on his butt. That's what I give NU against the top tier of the league — a puncher's chance. I don't think it's at all unrealistic to strive to beat Wisky and win the West. Hell, we've beaten the Badgers quite often in the past 20 seasons. But to win the whole thing now is even harder than 20 years ago. It's not like '95, '96 and 2000 when we could take the title without playing Ohio State. If we improve and the stars align (few major injuries, a manageable OOC schedule, a decent interdivisional schedule etc.), we might take one of these things. In the meantime, pardon me for enjoying a 9-win season at NU — something we haven't enjoyed too often.
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So at it relates to the OL problems, you need to see the same pattern happen for 5-6+ years in a row before you agree it's systemic. That's how long these exact same problems have been going on.
Ok more generally, do you think the OL performed well in the first 5 games. If not, why not? That's like 40%of the season playing poorly. Is this ok with you? If you shit your pants at work Jan-May and then have a good June to decide, do you crow about it to your boss?
Actually, that's exactly how I operate.
It might have been useful, in retrospect, to have have finished experimenting with the OL starting line up before the 5th game.
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Sorry, but you called other posters "12 year olds" with "bizarre minds" in another thread. I guess they (or we) don't rise to your level of satisfaction.
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