An ugly day in Durham
- Thread starter lou v
- Start date
NU has a chance to win 7 or 8 games. Lou scoffed at this at being too low (as I am sure most of us did). Seems like best-case scenario now.
Season could go either way, still early. If we play up to the talent we have we will win those 7 games, if we don't we will win 4. A don't see a string of powerful teams in the B1G West. Pretty much all of them have flaws. Looks like it might be a typical NU season, with some horrible losses, but still some strong wins.
Losing Watkins was a killer on D. The secondary was supposed to be a strength, which would allow Doc to be more aggressive with blitzes and schemes. With that unit now decimated, he has to go conservative, and we get no pass rush as a result.
I mentioned elsewhere...we'll get to six wins. It will happen. Like every year I've watched NU football, we'll win some we aren't "supposed" to win and we'll sh*t the bed on some games we're supposed to win. I believe six is a reasonable number...but yeah at this point I have ZERO hope of getting to eight or nine.
Pitt fan here. We beat Duke 56-14 last year and Northwestern, who apparently has the same QB, same RB (who killed us for over 200 yds rushing - meanwhile we've held Saquon Barkley to under 100 yards rushing both times we played him) gave us hell in that bowl game.
Wondering if Duke is really that much better or you guys lost more i'm just not aware of.
Wondering if Duke is really that much better or you guys lost more i'm just not aware of.
We brought back 4 starters from the OL, but our OL coach decided to make them play different positions just for shits and giggles.
Using today as a snapshot in time, every team remaining on our schedule except one played better than we did today. And using the past two games, every team except two (maybe 3) have played better in their opening two games. I do expect the OLine to improve as the players get settled into their roles and develop more chemistry. We also need to see if we start getting cornerbacks back from injury and up to 100%.
But right now, we are worse than we expected to be and most of the teams on our schedule (MSU, Maryland, and now Illinois) appear to be improved. Jury is out on Minny since Oregon State is very bad.
If we are going to improve enough to win six games or more, we will have to see some significant progress next week and after the bye.
Games that were previously classed as probable wins have now been downgraded to "winnable" - which is the language of the underdog.
I doubt it was for giggles. My incredibly ignorant guess is that he was seeing his O-Line getting manhandled by our D-Line in practice and realized it was time to panic.
