Nothing interesting, exciting, or innovative about this team. I mean the Bears suck but at least Fields is interesting to watch. Nothing to see here.
Not only 1-10 but just so boring to watch
- Thread starter wildcatcoaster
- Start date
Yep… the offense of a bad high school team. No size or speed at WR. QBs who have no sense how to run an offense and no arm strength anyway. It’s ugly.
Maryland is exciting to watch on offense. We need Fitz to open up the offensive philosophy. Fitzball has won plenty of games against good and lesser opponents when we have a top 25 D. When he have a bottom 25 D, we can’t even outscore FCS teams. It’s going to be much easier for him to get back to winning with a 50th ranked offense and 50th ranked defense, than trying to find another Hankwitz.
I mean, they do a little bit. They have to be attractive to recruits. There is a reason we can’t bring good WRs onto campus…
We mostly agree on this point, so I’ll just reiterate that I’m going to go apeshit if, upon having built our covered, nearly indoor stadium, highly rare in the world of college football, we’re still running a 4 yards and a cloud of dust scheme rather than taking advantage of being out of the elements and building a modern, spread attack that likes to pass the ball.
Yeah, but if you don't win and you don't entertain, where are you?
I would much rather play boring winning football than exciting losing football. But that isn’t the point.
Well, Fitz's got the first part (boring) down Pat, the second part (winning), not, the third part (exciting), not, and the fourth part (losing), also down "Pat" Three of the last four years. So if they don't exist to entertain or win, they exist to be boring and lose? That's where NU is now.
That’s the tricky part. Even when we were winning we were never terribly exciting, instead relying on a team-oriented approach that minimized mistakes and gutted out mostly close wins. The room for error was never very big, now we seem to be on the downside looking up rather than the other way around. The question is how we get that edge back and then how can we sustain it.
Exciting, sure. But more in a “holy shit hang on this thing isn’t over until the clock reads 0:00” way than a “running a super cool up tempo offense and aggressive defense” kind of way. That’s literally the narrow margin for error that i was trying to describe. I interpreted your post as pining for the latter and I apologize if mistaken.
Wasn't pining for the latter necessarily, rather for a team than wins, mostly, and has some spark. The Cardiac Cats were much more exciting than 6-8 wins and a bowl game, although Fitz has produced exciting wins in his tenure. What has happened to both of those versions of the Cats?
Thinking about this, it’s sort of a funny conversation since college football actually does in fact entirely exist to be entertaining.
It might be interesting to get the perspective of those former NU players who moved on to other programs either college or pro to get their opinion of the strengths and weaknesses of NU’s program under Fitz. One wonders if the new AD has considered an outside evaluation of all aspects of the program and has been gathering his own information from peers in the field to evaluate the nosedive in performance the past 2 years. If the current direction of the program threatens to become the new norm then corrective action needs to be taken or we will be mired in a new Dark Age.
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The Dark Ages weren’t all bad. Throwing marshmallows was fun and any victory was a huge celebration. Extremely low expectations = higher chance at happiness.
This is true, and also why we haven’t had a decent QB or WR in approaching a decade. NU being boring af is a large part of why Covey gets his first D1 offer from NU, why NU had to wrestle away a walk-on to play QB last recruiting cycle, why a noodle-armed backup got about three career pass attempts being relegated in favor of an actual NU walk-on (who also played ahead of that recruited walk-on), and why NU’s best QB for next week (and our closest game of the season) was a pair of running backs.
An interesting offense is way more important to recruiting skilled offensive players than is ‘dope uniform combinations’.
Winning is not the best way to recruit offense players. Scoring is.
That’s also why Nick Saban’s teams throw it a bunch now. (Sagan’s first title team at Bama threw for 2700 yards in 2009. His 2020 title team threw for 4,650 in one fewer game. Mac Jones was a first round pick. Greg McElroy…was not.)
Wrong.
Partially right, but wrong, for the above reasons.
Saban doesn’t run a fun offense to get recruits, Saban just runs an offense to score as many points as possible, which involves passing a lot, which is fun, and which also achieves the primary goal of offense, which is scoring points, which is the #1 way to win football games in 2022. Saban is basically always able to recruit whoever he wants and build around that.
High-scoring offense = exciting offense = entertaining football = offensive recruiting
They’re all of a piece. The way to play winning football is to also play exciting football.
There were 22 games involving top 25 teams yesterday. The winning team scored 40 in half of them.
Alabama’s uniforms suck. So do USC’s. Fitz should spend more time figuring out how to score points. (GCG likes to dump on people who dump on uniforms mattering.)
“Regrets?
I've had a few,
but then again too few to mention.“
Coach Fitz
Chairman of the Bored
Geez, an entertainment business that doesn't exist to entertain. I don't need an MBA to know that's a really bad business model.
Businesses exist to bore. That’s how you draw in customers.
EXACTLY. An entertainment business! TV eyeballs and tickets! College football, NFL, MLB, latest Marvel movie, Taylor Swift tickets… all the same coin chasing the entertainment dollar. Entertainment!
We don’t really disagree on much here. I was just pointing out Alabama didn’t have to add “sizzle” to bring in recruits. NU, however, could stand to benefit from some offensive sizzle. Fortunately, sizzle also scores points, which wins games. So!
At this point, Sinatra might be a better option.
Winning would be easier if you had playmakers that would be attracted to an "exciting" offense
Can you give me an example of a team that is boring and wins conference championships
Trai Essex, former player, tweeted this:
"I gotta say, we’ve had quite a few bad years for Northwestern football…but to be this inept 2 years post B10 Championship appearance is a really really bad reflection of recruiting and development. I’ll always support but this is really disheartening to watch."
"I gotta say, we’ve had quite a few bad years for Northwestern football…but to be this inept 2 years post B10 Championship appearance is a really really bad reflection of recruiting and development. I’ll always support but this is really disheartening to watch."
You don’t sign big TV deals for winning, you sign em for eyeballs. The BUSINESS side of sports is pure entertainment, plain and simple.
I’m not advocating we re you’d our program around this central concept, I’m just talking about the business of sports. I’m fine if we want to be a defense-driven program under Fitz. It suits us and we already have a brand there. I’m not okay with pairing good defense with stupid and bad offense. You can be a defensive team and program and still have innovative, modern offense that scores points, and in good years scores a LOT of points.
Offensive minded HCs usually are the ones who are the biggest winners in CFB. If a Mike Leach type was the HC or just OC, NU could win with just a good to very good defense. No great skilled offensive players want to come to NU with the garbage they run here. Not sure what Fitz is thinking. Offense rules CFB.
I"ll take "boring" all day long again next year as long as we are winning. Winning is never boring.
