The Bone Yard

TMart is the heart of our fumbling problems. I like TMart but I am hopeful Armstrong and Stanton are even better.

Its hard enough to win right now, but really they are playing two games a week. one vs the other team and one vs themselves,

Need some help here. Who was it that made kids that fumbled carry around a football all during the week leading up to the next game?

Not saying Dirk is wrong, but I can't imagine he finds much enjoyment in his work. His sole role seems to be grudgingly giving very muted praise to any success NU has and, apparently, spending every waking hour coming up with articles that either cast NU in the worst possible light, portray the coaches as negatively as possible, and inform us the sky, if it hasn't already fallen, is approaching rapidly.

LOL...Can you imagine how much "fun" hanging out with he and Barfknecht would be? Yes...that was sarcasm...

This is just stupifying!!!!!!!!! You are going to get all over Abdullah for 3 fumbles on plays from scrimmage, but just accept Turnover Martinez' lack of leadership in this area, and he handles the ball every play whereas Abdullah 25-30% of the time? The special teams situation needs a major overall in every area with real coaching - that will fix most of those fumbles IMO.

And yes, the turnover prone QB situation could change. We have a guy in Tommy Armstrong available, who has been in the system for awhile now, and who is better than Turnover by all accounts. Play TA and these turnovers presumptively take a precipitous drop in number.

11 INTs in 14 games is very acceptable, although about half of them are very preventable stupid throws where it was hard to understand what he thought he was seeing, and they come in clusters. It's the 10 fumbles that are usually the killer. He looked so much better early on like he was consciously trying to correct this. Then as of Ohio State (another big game collapse) he just went off a cliff for about 5 games. The numbers are staggering, but so are the bunches of turnovers together in big games, mostly just silly mistakes. People ask why we don't perform well as a team in big games? How discouraging is this trend to the rest of the players? Very. It was also about this time that the offense because less proficient and much less fast paced. There is probably a connection in that when he begins to struggle mentally with managing the offense his concentration on holding onto the ball isn't as intense because he is struggling trying to understand the check-downs or something.

These numbers are not new or mystifying as they are just added info to an ongoing problem. Fix it and we are an elite team most years. Turnover would have to be the greatest QB of all time by a large margin to overcome these numbers, and of course he isn't that by a long shot. Turnovers problems can be coached out of most players, and if not, they should sit. The fact that this problem has not been corrected for years is very troubling.

Interesting, why is that? I respect Dirk more than Rome. But he's not a journalist.

Preaching to the choir

I heard Bo kicks Dirks puppies when jogging in Omaha.

P.S. I like Dirk and how he's not afraid of asking the tough questions that we all want the answers to anyway

Pretty much ESPN as a whole

I'm saying we can't have two turnover prone guys in the backfield. We're going to have one in Martinez regardless. We can afford two. Armstrong won't be a serious option next year. Barring injury Armstrong won't play outside of mop up duty. But there is plenty of competition at RB for Abdullah.

Point taken, but Abdullah only had 3 fumbles on plays from scrimmage all year (when he's "in the backfield"). For a guy that was your feature back and gained well over 1,000 yards that is not "fumble-prone" in my book. The 6 in all his work is an issue but the special teams situation was such a meltdown this year I'm giving it something of an asterisk. IMO the #1 focus of the staff going into spring and fall camp has to be orchestrating about a 300% improvement in that phase of the game (and I'm only talking about returns and coverage - I know Maher struggled some and not as effective as 2011, but he was still good overall). The fact that we had several incredible comebacks to win games and only lost four games is probably most amazing because of the ineffective play in the kicking game all season. I'd have to do research to be sure but I would suspect we gave up 40-50 yards in field position per game on average. Worst I've ever seen at Nebraska.

On the other hand, the primary responsibility of a QB is to properly managed the game and avoid turnovers whenever reasonably possible. That needs to change. I don't disagree that TA won't be given the chance but that will only be because of a bad coach's decision. We played Turnover Martinez as a RSF when he clearly wasn't ready and we had a better option that sat on the bench. TM shouldn't get any special treatment when TA is likely better and him playing will likely get us more Ws next years.

I agree except I would remove "very" from the "good" but that is just me. I don't think they teach REPORTING in journalism anymore.

I almost never read anything by Dirk. Way too much like Barfknecht. I just don't care for the smarmy, little kid style "gotcha" then hiding behind semantics, etc...