The Blue Board

Dude... I said Nebraska had a good defensive performance. I gave them credit. But MSU's playcalling certainly didn't help things.

T-Mart didn't do jack squat in that game. He looked like some MAC level walk-on playing in his first game. And it took Burkhead 35 carries to barely get over 100 yards. This year the run is going to be extremely emphasized over the pass, which we were doing particularly well against you guys, but for some inexplicable we wanted to try to beat you at your strength by throwing over the cover, hence why we say that game was very poorly called. All that said, I am pretty confident that the rematch in EL won't be all that close going our way.

Right now the passing game is merely a question mark, not necessarily a weakness. People act like a first-year starter at QB has never had a successful season. In fact, I'm pretty sure the majority of teams that won a BCS national championship did so with a first-year starter at QB (or at least an underclassman).

A lot of people are also acting like our whole season hinges on Maxwell. Our strength is going to be defense and running the ball -- that's how you win games in the Big Ten. And I firmly believe we'll effectively run the ball since we return 4/5 starters on the o-line and have Bell and Caper in the backfield. Maxwell won't be asked to be anything other than an effective game manager; throwing screens, short passes out of play-action, and the occasional shots deep. I'm pretty sure he's got the tools to handle that.

We aren't running a Texas Tech air-raid offense here, and trying to beat people in shoot-outs 47-45. If that was our style, I would be much more concerned.

Seriously, when was the last time we had issues at the skill positions? We've always had solid QBs, WRs and RBs, our issue was always the guys in the trenches, and we figure to be strong in that department this year, on both sides of the ball.

How am I wrong? How can you definitively say the passing game will be weak when you haven't even seen it yet? Plus, Maxwell will have started 7 games before October 20th, so it's not like you can say he will not have thrown a meaningful pass.

Beyond that, I just don't get why anybody thinks we're going to need Joe Montana in order to win games. As long as Maxwell isn't throwing picks all over the place, we're going to be fine.

Though to be fair, I think MSU showed last year they don't have to throw it particularly well and still beat UM

KC was 13/24 for 120 yards in 2011 vs UM.. not going to get much worse than that in terms of throwing the football

Bump

Interesting reading, post facto.

Bump

I thought 9-3 (6-2) before the season. If MSU beats UM, I think they end up 8-4 (5-3). If MSU loses to UM, then 6-6 (3-5).

Homer Alert

I think they lose to Nebraska regardless. If they beat UM, I give them a pretty good shot of playing well enough to beat an up and down Wisconsin team. If they lose to UM, I think they won't be able to regroup until after the bye.

Bump