The difference in the last two weeks.

[caliGopher]

Against Nebraska: PJ led teams are 6-1. Some close games recently, but a significant win streak. Team comes out inspired. We have a solid game plan. The players understand it. We beat Nebraska handily.

Against Iowa: PJ led teams are 1-7 versus Iowa. Games have generally been close, but Iowa came out in the 2nd half last year and embarrassed us after a rousing second quarter. Came into the game scared, and the team looks confused and unprepared. Playing not to lose from the opening kickoff. Iowa spared us the suspense of last year, and embarrassed us for a full game.

One of Mason's biggest faults was that the team reacted to his demeanor. If you go back to his more epic collapses (not all of them, but the Tech Games in particular), you can see him relax on the sideline. The team loses focus. They lose the game.

I believe Fleck has a similar problem. When he turtles up for games, he doesn't think we can win; it creates doubt and confusion on the team (not just this year). For all his bluster, he is overly cautious more often than I think he needs to be with the team.

Just looking for your thoughts as I try to reconcile the wildly different outlook of the team between Iowa and Nebraska and the varying degrees of success in between for teams still on the schedule.

 

[Some guy]

What evidence do you have to say the team played scared vs Iowa?
This is a claim I have seen numerous times in the past few days but I haven’t seen anything to back it up.

People said three man rushes on third and long, but they have done that all year against multiple opponents.

 

[GopherTheJugular]

Nebraska's offensive line was weak and they lost a player during the game. Iowa's line had no issue with us.

I think it's more likely to blame what happened at the lines of scrimmage in those games versus game plans and preparation.

Not sure Mason's players gave up once he relaxed. I think a better explanation is that teams weren't prepared to defend what we were doing and then after making the adjustments at half time, the more talented team would eventually come back and win.

I think if there was anything related to the players giving up, it was probably after it was 17-0 and they realized they were most likely going to lose again.

 

[MNVCGUY]

What evidence do you have to say the team played scared vs Iowa?
This is a claim I have seen numerous times in the past few days but I haven’t seen anything to back it up.

People said three man rushes on third and long, but they have done that all year against multiple opponents.

Agree.....we definitely didn't execute well but I don't get where this idea of playing scared is coming from.

 

[Some guy]

Agree.....we definitely didn't execute well but I don't get where this idea of playing scared is coming from.

I’m all in to have the solution be as simple as get fleck some confidence

 

[Tech Machine]

I don’t doubt that they are fully prepared for what they expect. I don’t think the same team, with the same coaches come out unprepared one week and prepared the next.

However if you get something different than what you prepared for and don’t adjust, it will appear that everyone missed practice all week. It could be a matter of the Iowa offensive line being that much better than Nebraska, or the db’s coverage better. The Gopher offensive line, I think you have to say, is bad. How many holes between the tackles do they get per game? Darn few. Not much margin for error this year.

Other than the first drive against OSU, the three losses to me seemed like emotional or attitudinal flatness, almost doom and gloom. Maybe that is just my feeling after those games start!

 

[caliGopher]

What evidence do you have to say the team played scared vs Iowa?
This is a claim I have seen numerous times in the past few days but I haven’t seen anything to back it up.

People said three man rushes on third and long, but they have done that all year against multiple opponents.

Three-man rushes aren't because we're scared; it's because our secondary has dropped off considerably from last year.

Ultraconservative is because PJ's scared. The try not to lose approach.

Now, when you're down 0-17 against the Hawkeyes after 4 offensive plays, and 0-24 after 7 offensive plays, it's hard to say what their intentions were coming into the game.

That said, from that point forward, the game plan was to minimize the loss, rather than get creative - like we did against tOSU (at least to start the game). It didn't work much against tOSU, but it still felt like there was an effort on offense. The only real effort I saw from the offense was to make sure we didn't end up with negative rushing yards for the game, which is the only thing we succeeded at, gaining 31 yards to end with 24 for the game. No targets for our best receiver Smith. Geers, who is built for this type of game, only one catch on two targets.

The one drive we got a little creative with our play-calling was the field-goal drive. We never went back to it, but we did at least abandon the run on first down after that (until the last drive). We averaged 1.7 yards per carry on first-down runs - 11 of those came from the final play of the first half (6) and the first play of the final drive (5). Which means we stayed committed to running the ball on first down (until late in the game) at a rate of 0.75 yards per carry. You don't have to give up on the run to be less predictable. Granted the first time we went to the pass on first down was Lindsey's first interception, but by the beginning of the 2nd quarter, taking some smart shots to change call playing up wasn't going to hurt our chances.

Defensively, the numbers don't look as bad, but that was more a factor of Iowa's typical offensive approach and a 24-0 lead early in the second quarter.

We did some things we haven't done against Nebraska and caught them off guard. The lack of preparation and a game plan to put Iowa on their heels, at least a little bit, never materialized. Maybe it was there, but we abandoned it after the poor start and never attempted to come back to it.

 

[Some guy]

Three-man rushes aren't because we're scared; it's because our secondary has dropped off considerably from last year.

Ultraconservative is because PJ's scared. The try not to lose approach.

Now, when you're down 0-17 against the Hawkeyes after 4 offensive plays, and 0-24 after 7 offensive plays, it's hard to say what their intentions were coming into the game.

That said, from that point forward, the game plan was to minimize the loss, rather than get creative - like we did against tOSU (at least to start the game). It didn't work much against tOSU, but it still felt like there was an effort on offense. The only real effort I saw from the offense was to make sure we didn't end up with negative rushing yards for the game, which is the only thing we succeeded at, gaining 31 yards to end with 24 for the game. No targets for our best receiver Smith. Geers, who is built for this type of game, only one catch on two targets.

The one drive we got a little creative with our play-calling was the field-goal drive. We never went back to it, but we did at least abandon the run on first down after that (until the last drive). We averaged 1.7 yards per carry on first-down runs - 11 of those came from the final play of the first half (6) and the first play of the final drive (5). Which means we stayed committed to running the ball on first down (until late in the game) at a rate of 0.75 yards per carry. You don't have to give up on the run to be less predictable. Granted the first time we went to the pass on first down was Lindsey's first interception, but by the beginning of the 2nd quarter, taking some smart shots to change call playing up wasn't going to hurt our chances.

Defensively, the numbers don't look as bad, but that was more a factor of Iowa's typical offensive approach and a 24-0 lead early in the second quarter.

We did some things we haven't done against Nebraska and caught them off guard. The lack of preparation and a game plan to put Iowa on their heels, at least a little bit, never materialized. Maybe it was there, but we abandoned it after the poor start and never attempted to come back to it.

Lol in this post you say ultra conservative but they threw the ball like 9 of the first 12 plays

Then later you say Iowa was conservative

Was Iowa scared ?

Mixing play calls bad isn’t a reflection of the coach’s fear level, IMO


Whatever helps you sleep at night but in this post you provided no proof of fear being the cause and then admitted that Iowa was also conservative when conservatism that didn’t exist was the closest thing you had to proof of fear.

 

[MNVCGUY]

No targets for our best receiver Smith.

He spent most of the game on the sideline in sweatpants.....so.....

 

[btowngopher]

Iowa has beaten Nebraska 9 out of their last 10 meetings, so the biggest difference is that clearly Nebraska has been a definitively lesser opponent.