[Husker] Wah Wah Wah

[Nick Chevance]

A minor issue with an earlier post in this thread - Shawn Sherlock
indicated good and great are not synonyms but antonyms.  Maybe in
business-speak they are, but not in English.  But I can see the argument
that settling for "good enough" isn't the same as great.  And I'm not sure
anyone is settling for good is good enough.

I saw a pretty good offensive team yesterday wearing the N on their
helmets.  A fumble may have been the key to reversing our fortune, but none
of us here really had much hope for that game, did we.  I think we
acquitted ourselves well yesterday, better than most of us thought we
would, probably far better than some of us thought. We out rushed them by
100 yards but sacks (5 for 26 yards) dropped that to about 77 yards
difference.  Still, we allowed only 162 yards rushing to a team that we all
thought was going to put up Wisconsin-like numbers on us.

I saw a decent defensive team hold in check a very good offensive team for
most of the game. Their QB was average in the first half, pretty good in
the second.  Take away their 4 touchdown passes (the shortest was 24 yards)
and the total yards passing goes down to 250, 8.6 per attempt and 18 per
completion.  That's not that different from Martinez (204/7.6/13).  They
wanted to exploit our corners with their speed on the outside, and were
pretty successful.  But for the most part, they made really good catches on
good, but not amazing, throws.  The best throw was to the back out of the
backfield after the D-line forced the QB to scramble to his right.  Compton
had him covered but the throw was to the back's outside shoulder, the
runner adjusted, caught the ball, and ran it it before Compton could
adjust.  Compton was just unable to keep up, and I'm not sure anyone else
could have.  And two of those other catches were to wide open receivers
because of  blown assignments (but the offensive scheme had a lot to do
with that, I'd bet).  We held their rushers pretty much in check, but they
are a more complete team offensively than we faced all year, and managed to
convert several long 3rd downs when they needed to.

The guys on BTN last night in wrapping up the bowls mentioned that Georgia
controlled Martinez's feet, didn't let him run, and forced him to throw.  I
saw something a bit different.  The third and especially the fourth
quarters saw several sell out blitzes at Martinez, giving him little time
to select a receiver.  There were receivers open, but he didn't have time
to find them.  They had impressive speed on the ends, and Martinez didn't
react well under the pressure.  Overall, we got beat by a superior team.
But we didn't get embarrassed.  The defense did well, the offense did
really well.

I'm not satisfied with a 14 point loss, but that team did something that a
lot of fans didn't think they'd do.  They were in it until the 4th
quarter.  I'm hoping for better next year.  I'm always hoping for better
the next year.  I'm not some like some crazy Cubs fan, hoping against hope
that next year they'll go 13-0 and start of string of 4 or 5 national
championships.  But this year was an improvement over last year, and I
anticipate improvement next year.  Let's hope Bo's statement about the
red-shirted freshmen D-linemen proves correct, that they will be the
monsters we hope they are.  Can't wait til next year.

Nick
-- 
"In politics stupidity is not a handicap."
Napoleon Bonaparte