Solar

18 rushing yards and 4 sacks in the half. It's incomprehensible how we could go from having on of the best OLs in the country last year to this with three of the starters returning.

You mean our former projected first round draft Conerly? If this OL keeps deteriorating it will become recruit repellent. We already aren't doing great, but this will be a nail in the coffin. But you have to figure Lanning will pay attention to not losing our on OL recruits. This will be a test of how long Lanning's leash is on his position coaches.

Was watching on YouTube bootlegs for about 5 minutes, then NBC swooped in and copyright them all. Every other game stream is still up. Kudos to NBC for defending their racket. Thanks to the radio now, although it sounds pretty brutal. No improvement from last week.

NIU played better and won straight up. No flukes required. In fact the in their last drive they were given a clearly bad spot by a side judge that forced them to kick without running down the clock further, then after the clock stoppage to check the spot (which wasn't overturned due to crap camera angle), they forgot to run the clock saving a timeout for Notre Dame in their last drive. Freeman decided to kick a 62 yards with :05 and a time out left. What a chump. It was blocked (2nd of the day).

Stupid for obvious reasons that don't even need to be explained.

Happy to report the senior laden Northern Illinois is taking it to Notre Dame in North Bend. NIU is averaging 14 yards per play vs Notre Dame's 4 in the second quarter. NIU has the lead despite Notre Dame receiving the opening kick.

? Why are you looking in this topic if that is the case? Where else do you recommend we talk about this so we don't spoil things for you? I'm not trying to be rude, it's just an unreasonable request to a problem you're intentionally creating and can easily mitigate yourself.

Another freaking bang-bang PI not called! Really blatant knocking the receiver to the ground with the ball still 3 to 5 feet away, such that the ball hit the defender in the numbers with the receiver out of the path of the ball. Announcers said it's because they were both going for the ball. No. Modern football refs have been given a pass not to make the calls a basketball ref has to make all game long. Just because it happens quickly doesn't mean you can't judge it. Man up, trust your eyes and call it geez.

Watching Michigan play old school B1G ball against Texas is one more nail in the coffin for that style of play, and one more data point that if you don't have a QB, you don't have a team. This is going to end up a very lopsided score. I think it comes down to a simple fact. A perfectly executed defense cannot stop a perfectly executed offense, especially when it comes to passing.

It's a insidious business strategy to pick up just one thing that each household can't live without throughout the year and eventually you have everyone signed up, and human psychology will keep them subscribed unless they go on a lower my bills mission. I think they will win the war. I still don't care, they aren't getting my money.

Similarly, despite my Eeyore take on the team I think we win by more than 20. The reasons are kind of simple. If Georgia Southern can put up 45 we can put up even more. And defensively I think we can have one of the best run defenses in the country. Strange as it seems, I think covering the spread will come down to our defense' ability to contain the run at the edges, because BSU will see from the tape there isn't anything to be had up the middle, but If they bounce it outside against the secondary run support they can get some serious chunk yardage. I think that's also why the screen plays were effective. Finding ways to get around our DL will be the name of the game.

That's a bold strategy Cotton. Let's see if it keeps working. 52-27 3 3 398

If only ESPN would have picked up our game. I've decided I'm not going to sign up for Peacock. I don't like being blackmailed into buying things I don't want. I refuse to encourage bad behavior by business. I'll just have to follow the game some other way.

It's almost like the NCAA Lawyers are only good at enabling bad behavior of the organization they have been compensated to take responsibility for. They seem hell bent on maximizing the legal exposure of the NCAA. Maybe the lawyers know what they are doing, just making more work for themselves at the expense of a gullible organization. Billable hours baby!

So the poor blocking was as much mental as physical. We can only hope they were hung over or at least just stayed up way too late screwing around the night before to have a clear head. Terry is supposed to be this great up and coming coach, but he needs to get his stuff together and control his room and teach up the talent he has or he's going to destroy the goodwill and reputation he has earned to date. He also needs to improve recruiting, as that has been dropping off a bit too. He may not be long for this team if this becomes a trend.

LoL. I was in San Diego at my daughter's volleyball tournament, I accept none of the blame.

The coaches coach the practices, but I do wonder sometimes about the wisdom of shuffling the line to get the best 5 players in rather than just filling the one hole with your 6th or even 10th best player. It's like the US 4x100 team that loves to shuffle everyone at the last minute to have the fastest people at their fastest spot, then they jack up the handoffs and get DQ'd.

Thank very much for the research! I'm also very much in the camp of blaming the people that decided on a cloudy day to build Autzen as an east-west stadium. It seemed like Gabriel was looking into the sun on every important drive.

It perfectly explains it. James can bully his way through contact in a way Whittington can't. So if holes aren't there, it favors James.

I totally agree. I rolled my eyes every time Josh Pate brought this up. The only thing we gave up was having your season not matter half way through because you lost a second game.

That speaks more to a physical issue than a mental issue doesn't it? If they are unathletic, or all worn out from too much practice/exercise. Here's another thing to ponder. Idaho's DL didn't appear to wear down as the game went on. Some combination of their smaller size, conditioning, resting up, depth and our OL also wearing out as the game went on.

I agree Lanning has been placing reasonable bets with nearly all of these calls. And it's certainly to the benefit of the players psychology that the coach believes in them to get the job done.

Wait. Are you talking about LSU or Oregon? Woof.

Personally I think it's disingenuous to say they loaded the box to stop the run, yet covered well deep leaving only a few underneath routes at 5-10 yards. It's like they had 15 players on the field or something. The truth is more likely they knew Stein and Gabriel's tendencies and took away the run and the bird bombs leaving short and intermediate routes know Gabriel doesn't throw intermediate routes due to the risk of being picked off by some he can't see on the other side of his blockers. Has anyone watched enough prior tape to know if Gabriel targets 10-30 yard routes much?

I really appreciate your assessment Charles, and I concur as do many in the media that have evaluated how open down field receivers were. However here is what DL said the day after the game having been able to evaluate the film. I think he is lying to cover for DG for all reasons/excuses we are speculate about.. Sun in the eyes, Stein's direction, being too short to see the field, etc. Q: How much of the lack of explosive plays about not making the correct read or was it the defense they ran? Lanning: "'I'd say none of it was really him [Gabriel] not making the right read. I think they, you know, we took a shot early in the game down the field, and then they stopped playing that coverage that gave us the opportunity to take that shot. We called a lot of shot plays, and they played over the top. So I think Dylan made the smart decision with where, where he took the ball, where he got to the ball. And, you know, you don't go what 41 of 50 passing if that's not the case. So, he did a really good job of making decisions on where he could actually go with the ball given the opportunity. They just eliminated some of those opportunities to take those shots. I think more of your explosives are going to come whenever you do catch the ball in space, who's going to break a tackle, who's going to go cover up on the block downfield, and those are the things that we got to do a better job taking care of. And then being able to run the ball more effectively."