[NU Sports] Putting it into perspective (fwd)

[Tom Maycock]

> have.  When you're facing 2nd or 3rd and long and down by 14 or more
> points, 
> the running game isn't at the top of the playlist.

Yep. The holding penalties really killed any chance we had. I can't
remember now if it was 5 or 6 consecutive drive-killing holding
penalties. That took away the running game entirely, and we simply were
not going to to convert 2nd and 20 or 3rd and 20 against Michigan.

We spotted them 10 points, which was probably more than could be
overcome. Baz was off at times, the receivers dropped a bunch of
crucial passes. And the O-line didn't hold up quite as well as they
needed too, killing any chance for a comeback with the holding
penalties. Basically, the NU offense had to play really well to win
this game, and instead played poorly for big chunks of the game.

The one scary thing was seeing how effective stunts and blitzes were at
disrupting the passing game. They were bring guys all the way around
from one side of the D-line to the other, pretty much ensuring that
they would have an unimpeded path to the QB when they rounded the
corner. Baz wasn't finding anyone open early, and then the pressure
would come and he would have to scramble and improvise. The coaches
will need to address that tactic or Iowa and OSU will do the same.

The good news:

* The defense made huge strides. I have no idea how they managed to
hold up in the 2nd half, but they did. This loss was all on the
offense. 

* Special teams--despite lots of punts from bad field position, we
never gave up a decisive return. I still wish we could drop KO's in the
endzoen, but given the limitation, we executed the KO strategy pretty
much perfectly--again, no killer returns.

* We are generally close to matching up physically with Michigan.
That's an amazing change from 20 years ago.

The bad news: the offense picked a bad time to make bunches of
mistakes. Certainly a lot of credit goes to Michigan's defense--they
forced those mistakes by covering receivers and pressuring the QB.

The Iowa game is now really huge. Drop that, and we probably get killed
at OSU, and will face a real, real tough game at Illinois. Beat Iowa,
and you go into an OSU with a nothing-to-lose attitude and probably
have a lot more confidence going down to Champaign.

Tom