Praise and Concerns about the loss... GT

I saw a team of first time starters, transfers, and underclassmen. After 1 game, there will clearly be a learning curve, but I saw a lot of promise out there. The team grew very quickly, and I assume they will get better every week. Myles Brennan is getting ragged on pretty hard, but I think he is still the real deal. Dude looked a little nervous (rightfully so), but he posted a good line and showed some fight and talent in those lead changes. He will definitely improve each week. Rest of the offense, I saw some drops and the line looked shaky at times, but they should both improve as Brennan does. Offense looked fine, not too concerned with them yet.

Concerns about the offense: It looked like the only thing Steve Ensminger learned from Joe brady was how to set up formations and plays, but not how to execute them. The passing game was struggling, but he kept passing. It seemed to me like he was trying to think "hey what would we do last year". But that isnt going to fly, he needs to recognize when and why something isnt working and try something else. I saw a lot of RPO, but MB clearly wasn't going to run the ball, even the announcers commented on it. Again that shows me, he is mirroring the formations, but not having a defined plan on how it will work.

This is a concern, but I won't jump to conclusions yet. Let's see how week 2 goes. Maybe he was trying to get MB's confidence up.


Defense got shredded, mainly the DBs. But hey, that guy was dropping dimes. We have a next man up kinda team, but not when that man out is Derek Stingley. He is the cornerstone of our defense, especially the secondary. Losing him on short notice worried me, and I bet it really worried Bo Pelini, because he knew that everything he had gone over with the team revolved around that guy playing lock down D on one side of the field. D line looked great, LBs looked great. Jabril Cox and Jacoby were monsters. Scheme was exploited, tackling was below average.

Concerns about the defense: Derek Stingley is only one guy, most teams are running 4-5 receiver sets these days and our scheme looked underprepared for that. Maybe the new offenses have passed Bo by, and his aggressive style is easy to pick apart. It was pretty clear to me that we did better dropping 8 guys than blitzing 5.

Hopefully that was a fluke, and Stingley's return will fix a lot of problems. and Again, only 1 week, I still have faith in Bo and the defense. That D line will look nasty as the season goes on, with Glen Logan back also.

Let's see how next week goes, I think we will get back on track.