More or less confident in team after Cincinnati?

[Irv]

I don’t see how you are supposed to look at this game, tick off all of the positives, and then note that you are a bad Satterfield and qb decision from at best going to OT, where it certainly seems more likely than not that we would have lost.

 

[Toe]

That was a team that went 5-7 last year, and we played them like a team that may or may not go to a bowl game this year.

 

[RedTillDead]

Neutral for me as it’s week 1 but a couple thoughts:

- Offense last year in the final 3 to 4 games looked better than what I saw tonight JMHO. Felt like I was watching a Satterfield O compared to a Dana O.

- Defensive line is worse than I thought they’d be.

 

[NorthWillRiseAgain]

More confident. Didn’t beat a great team but still better than most play on week 1. Clean a few stupid mistakes, find a rb#2, & locate a deceptive pass rush and we’ll be fine.

Cincinnati was no worse than that shitty Northwestern team we lost to in Ireland, or those crappy Colorado teams, or Georgia Southern etc. it’s a step in the right direction.

 

[Kaladin]

God we finally win a close game with a great play to end it and people still can’t be happy

Just a bunch of miserable soul sucking pussies

It won’t hurt to enjoy life for 5 minutes

 

[NorthWillRiseAgain]

Neutral for me as it’s week 1 but a couple thoughts:

- Offense last year in the final 3 to 4 games looked better than what I saw tonight JMHO. Felt like I was watching a Satterfield O compared to a Dana O.

- Defensive line is worse than I thought they’d be.

I don’t think the offense was that bad. Satt went 3&out it felt like 80% of the times.

 

[Seaofred92]

A lot of people on here need to know how to feel after winning a close game lmao

This is COLLEGE FOOTBALL. Be happy we won in a scenario we haven’t in a long long time and move on. Yes there is stuff to work on, there is also stuff that is incredibly exciting that we easily forget about. Be happy and move on.

 

[Mavsker]

God we finally win a close game with a great play to end it and people still can’t be happy

Just a bunch of miserable soul sucking pussies

It won’t hurt to enjoy life for 5 minutes

it's 2:1 less confident now but it will balance out more tomorrow, always does

 

[JerryBones5]

Listen, Cincy was way better than what I was expecting. Sorsby is gritty as hell and his legs are problem. Not even coping I think they have a good year in the big 12. Danas play calling was questionable as fuck.


1-0. That's all that matters. Go get better this week and get ready for Michigan. A lot easier to go practice after a W than an L.

 

[MaxHuskers34]

I don’t see how you are supposed to look at this game, tick off all of the positives, and then note that you are a bad Satterfield and qb decision from at best going to OT, where it certainly seems more likely than not that we would have lost.

I saw a special teams that was flawless. A secondary that was near perfect outside of one hold. Ends (Nwaneri/Davis) living in the backfield off the edge. I saw wide receivers make catches and very minimal drops. A QB that outside of one play keep the ball in safe places and extend a drive when needed with his legs. Our QB looked completely comfortable and composed in this offense. I saw a RB average over 4 YPC against maybe the best Defensive tackle we see all year. I saw a Head Coach manage the game beautifully. Sorsby was the most mobile QB we’ll see all year so take the QB rush yardage with a grain of salt.

Run defense is the only cause for concern.

All in all this team just won a game then the previous 7 teams would have lost. We have all the reason in the world to be excited. This was a 6.5 point spread so a 3 point win isn’t a terrible result. We face Akron and Houston Christian next and Rhules history gives us no reason to think the issues won’t be fixed.

 

[TheXHerb]

We aren’t good enough at stopping the run or pressuring the QB. (and/or QB runs) We also aren’t great at running the ball, not terrible, but far from good. What we seem to be good at, after 1 game keep in mind, is dropping back and picking the defense apart. As long as we can keep Dylan upright he can manage a game and dissect a defense. We also seem to be pretty good on the back end, defensively.

Are we good? Not yet. Can we get there? Maybe, we have a manageable schedule, but I’m a little worried B1G offenses are gonna over power/match our front seven. Good win, we need to get A LOT better. JMO

I think these questions need to be answered by taking into account who Cincinnati really is, not what we expect them to be.

They played three deep safeties almost all night to make sure Dillon wasn’t gonna beat them with the long ball. That’s why Emmett had such a great game. They weren’t there for run Support. I don’t know how long it’s been since we had 100 yard rusher, but Emmett had a good game. The problem is he’s not a game breaking back with speed to hit the home run. He shifty and hard to tackle at times, but he’s not gonna blow open huge runs very often, because that’s not who he is. But he made the most of the opportunities he had.

Cincinnati has upgraded their speed on defense and you could tell. We are not built to dominate a team in the big 12, we’re built to beat teams in the Big Ten. That’s why getting big plays in this game was difficult. We did not have the speed advantage like we’ll have at times in the Big Ten.

And outside of their electric quarterback making spectacular scrambling plays, they really didn’t run the ball that well on us. Sorsby he’s gonna do that to a lot of teams this year, not just us.

Cincinnati is not a good match up for us, but we came away with the win and that’s all that matters.

We punt the ball in the third quarter or we make that first down in score, this game looks more like what people expected. That’s on the coach not the team in my opinion. Some pretty dumb play calls today outside of mostly well called game.

Let’s get back to playing inferior teams and Big Ten teams and see what we have.

 

[BIGSTICK67]

Think about it.

2 turnovers for Cincy. No turnovers for the good guys. Waaaaaayyyyyy better special teams. We won a one score game....and the alleged strength of the team struggled.

Pretty obvious it's better.

 

[NorthWillRiseAgain]

I think Dana was much better than Satt. Satt would have still tried to pass deep on their shell defense and we would have punted after 3 plays all night. Frost would have just said “they had too many safeties, it was confusing”.

It wasn’t perfect but they learned a lot more here than in practice.

 

[Mavsker]

Think about it.

2 turnovers for Cincy. No turnovers for the good guys. Waaaaaayyyyyy better special teams. We won a one score game....and the alleged strength of the team struggled.

Pretty obvious it's better.

I don't mean better than we were, I mean better (or worse) than what you expected

 

[NorthWillRiseAgain]

I’d like to see someone else returning kicks. Marshall or Barney?

 

[Dawgsauce]

We have one rb that needs 32 touches to barely beat Cincinnati

O line gotta step up going forward, and yes get EJ 20 touches a game.

 

[V-Doub]

I think these questions need to be answered by taking into account, who Cincinnati really is not what we expect them to be.

They played three deep safeties almost all night to make sure Dillon wasn’t gonna beat them with the long ball. That’s why Emmett had such a great game. They weren’t there for run Support. I don’t know how long it’s been since we had 100 yard rush but Emmett had a good game. The problem is he’s not a game breaking back with speed to hit the home run. He shifty and hard to tackle at times, but he’s not gonna blow open huge runs very often, because that’s not who he is. But he made the most of the opportunities he had.

Cincinnati has upgraded their speed on defense and you could tell. We are not built to dominate a team in the big 12 we’re built to beat teams in the Big Ten. That’s why getting big plays in this game was difficult. We did not have the speed advantage like we’ll have at times in the Big Ten.

And outside of their electric quarterback, making spectacular scrambling plays they really didn’t run the ball that well on us. Sorsby he’s gonna do that to a lot of teams this year, not just us.

Cincinnati is not a good match up for us, but we came away with the win and that’s all that matters.

We punt the ball in the third quarter or we make that first down in score, this game looks more like what people expected. That’s on the coach not the team in my opinion. Some pretty dumb play calls today outside of mostly well called game.

Let’s get back to playing inferior teams and Big Ten teams and see what we have.

Yes, a lot depends on how good Cincinnati really is. Hard to say right now, but 100% convinced Sorsby is gonna drive a lot of defenses nuts until he get hurt/injured. He’s a decisive hard nosed runner, looks like a much shittier version of Tim Tebow or Cam Newton. And you can win with that type of QB if you have a defense. Not sure Cincy has that type of defense, but i don’t think they’re terrible either. Their formula for winning could do well in the BigXII, but they’ll have to gut out some close games.

 

[HerbRedman]

Neutral. It’s week 1.

Should have had a neutral option, OP.

Pate is joking here but it's a fair point. People buried Oregon after they looked bad 2 weeks in a row to start 2024. But they won both games (barely). BTW one of them was vs a FCS team.

I'm neutral on this NU team. If not slightly positive bc we usually lost this type of game.

 

[Toe]

Cincy's D was leaving guys wide open underneath all night long. Granted, that was partly due to prioritizing not giving up deep passes. But other than maybe Corleone (who was out half the time), I didn't see much from their D that impressed me.

 

[Irv]

What I have a problem with is that we are once again in a position to make excuses for a game that really was not a very good performance.

But we’ll turn on the tv Saturday and see teams - many of them with less overall talent and certainly with lesser aspirations - who are going to come out and look good, ready to play, and even improved from the previous year.

I have been and am a big Rhule fan, but the time has come for the team on the field to start matching the talk.

We shouldn’t still be in the position of trying to explain why the offense coming up with 13 points not aided by a deep turnover is really a lot better than it looked. We shouldn’t be celebrating that the defense played well except for getting gashed by a running qb (again) who had his team in a position to win the game with a minute left.

We constantly have to come up with justifications for why the program isn’t making the progress others are, to convince ourselves that what we saw wasn’t as bad as it looked.

I’m just ready to be done with that phase. It’s the 8th year in a row of this. It’s time to start expecting a team that looks like it can actually be trouble for the opposition - not just a team that if you squint you can convince yourself was maybe better than it seemed.