[Husker] Out Coached. Again.

[Patrick Gaule]

On 9/10/2012 10:30 PM, rczeranko at juno.com wrote:
> Actually Coach Pelini has Tom Osborne's endorsement. Remember it was Tom Osborne that chose Bo over Turner Gill. If Tom Osborne does not believe that Coach Pelini is cutting the mustard, then he will cut him loose.
>
> I don't think that it is kool aid. But it is interesting the Coach Osborne almost left for Colorado around his fifth season because fans were grousing about his 9 win seasons.
>
> I also, think that the defense gets an unfair share of the criticism. The offense cannot constantly go 3 and out and have any hope to the defense will always bail them out. If the offense had scored 49 as they did against Southern Miss, then Nebraska would have won on Saturday.
>    

If our defense is so bad that Nebraska needs to score 49 points every 
game to put us in a position to win, then we are in serious trouble.  
The last time a Husker team  approached that average per game was 1997. 
This offense can put up those numbers against lower quality opponents, 
but that isn't sustainable against conference opponents and BCS teams we 
play out of conference.

When Osborne was coaching, the TV broadcasts used to flash a statistic 
that showed Nebraska almost never lost when they scored over 35 points.  
It seems to me that scoring 30+ points should put you in a good position 
to win most games.  Considering the top 84 defenses in 2011 were able to 
hold their opponents to an average under 30 points, I think that's a 
fair statement to make. 
http://www.cfbstats.com/2011/leader/national/team/defense/split01/category09/sort01.html

The offense did falter in the 2nd half, but considering we only lost by 
6 points in spite of our defense giving up the 2nd most yardage in 
school history, I'd say they did their job.  The problem is that 
Nebraska's offense just isn't set up to compete in a back-and-forth 
shoot-out type of game.  If our defense was average, we would be OK.  
Unfortunately, they look downright terrible so far.