Well, that game played out almost exactly like we talked about in the preview. I wrote that our defense would be able to bottle up the nations leading runningback for Michigan State, and we would force their QB to throw to beat us which would end well for us on that side of the ball. I can’t be mad that our defense gave up a flea flicker TD and some fieldgoals. The key would be how our offense could respond when our defense bottled Sparty up. I picked Sparty to beat us by 3 in my preview because I thought we might get outcoached a bit and for some reason Michigan State is just in a better spot year 2 than we are year 4 of our coaches in terms of knowing how to win and discipline. While our offense didn’t play horribly, I think we pretty much know that our OL just isn’t where it needs to be and quite frankly I think it cost us the game.
What gets really tough for me is the fact that again, we will have people saying “see look how close we are. Another one score loss to a top 25 team.” I get that. And i’m one that says continuity is what is needed for Nebraska to rebuild a foundation. But what we continually gloss over is the fact that Mel Tucker has only been in East Lansing 2 years. And if we are using Nebraska fan message board logic, “Covid year doesn’t count against Frost” so does it not count for Tucker and he’s in year 1? Either way, we lost to a true first year coach in Bielema week 1, then lost to a second year coach in Tucker week 5, but we keep hearing how close we are. And compound that statement by again glossing over things like those teams getting better next year as well. It’s not like we are the only team that works on improving. If I told you in 2017 that the coach we hire will HOPEFULLY get us to a bowl game by year 4, would you be happy or would you want to look for someone else? I think this is a valid point:
That is basically a different way of what I was saying on the message board all along. Ya, I get we are showing some progress, especially defensively. But there was zero reason to not make a bowl game the first three years. If we are fighting for our first bowl berth in year 4 of a coach, there was definitely some regression. Mike Riley was 15-11 and coming off a 9 win season where we finished second in our division, and administration that has zero to do with coaching on the field forced him to fire his defensive coordinator and told his strength staff what lifts they could or couldn’t do. Conversely, Frost in his first two years here was given everything he wanted, never questioned, and went 9-15 with no bowl games. 3-5 the following year. And now sitting with zero Power 5 wins heading into week 6. I am not on the fire Frost train, but we have been massively underachieving. Moral victories in year 1 and 2 are what you build a program on. Not year 4.
It’s what I also talked about on the recruiting trail. Year 1 and 2 you can sell your vision and players will hop on board no questions asked. They want to help create your vision and culture for you. By years 3 and 4 (this is Frosts 5th recruiting class here) players want to see what you’ve been preaching and if it has come to fruition. A prominent high school coach here in Omaha openly said to the media “I tell my players if you want to commit to Nebraska, wait to see how this fall goes to make sure they back up what they are telling you or if it’s lip service.” And that’s about what every other high school coach in the nation says as well. Currently Nebraska is 79th in the nation according to Rivals, and dead last in the B1G, 11th in average star ranking. That’s not a coincidence. But enough of that, let’s get to the game.
What really frustrates me is we truly dominated that Michigan State. Heck, look at this stat:
Quite honestly, Mel Tucker did to us what Husker fans believed Scott Frost was bringing to the table back in 2017 when he was hired. We thought Frost could get us to about .500 first year, but his scheming/playcalling would get us a game or two where we were outplayed or had “lesser” football players than the other team, but he made the right calls and won us a game we shouldn’t have to get us to 7 wins or so in 2018. Michigan State had 2 touchdowns on the day. A fucking flea flicker because they couldn’t run against us at all, and a trick play on special teams called by a special teams coordinator that graduated from Lincoln Northeast.
That is unbelievably convenient that a guy that grew up 10 minutes from 10th and Vine called the special teams play to tie the game against us while our special teams rank as this:
Kick Return Defense (96th), Kick Returns (115th), Punt Returns (120th), Punt Return Defense (130th), Net Punting (128th).
That’s gotta be the worst in the country. And honestly, if we are still in year 1 and year 2 i’m completely fine with this game. But we are in year 4. I searched “Nebraska close” and went back to 2018. Let me know if any of this sounds familiar:
I don’t want to belabor this, but how we are feeling after this Michigan State year 4 game, is exactly what our fanbase was feeling after games in 2018. So what’s real for us? How we move forward from here is what will tell me if we are turning a corner. I said Sparty could be better than Oklahoma, and not much changed that for me after Saturday. But we gotta figure out how to not lose games we should win, and steal another one.
The Nebraska defense freaking stonewalled the Spartan rushing attack all night. You’ll see with this play, Tannor is the unblocked man and he does a great job of seeing the jet sweep and pursuing to the ball. But take a careful look here, if not for Cam Taylor-Britt and Deontai Williams making the play (like all night), this one goes a long ways as our playside ILB gets pancaked:
Guys like Garrett Nelson, Caleb Tannor, and our young ILBs of Henrich and Reimer have really came along and made it so we can lean on them against rushing teams. Ruud and Dawson have done remarkable jobs while Tuioti and Fisher are able to lean on their veterans to play lights out. I wasn’t complaining about DBs helping in the run game, more pointing out what Michigan State was probably noticing. Chinander wasn’t going to let their RB beat us. It was a masterful gameplan by him and his staff executed by his defense.
But as I stated earlier, Tucker and his staff knew exactly how to attack the defense that was smashing their ground game all night. Make us think they are running, then pitch it back to throw with a flea flicker. Newsome on the bottom has to help fit in the run game, and quite honestly we aren’t in trouble except for the fact that Farmer stands a little flat footed and gets ran by.
Sorry for the tweet in espanol just wanted to use the video. I will be curious to see what Northwestern does. If you go to that play where we stop them two tweets up, the tackle to the bottom side for Michigan State goes down to help on the double team and that stutter step makes it so he can’t get up to Reimer. So the person he was supposed to block outruns him and gets picked up by someone else. Northwestern will probably block this like outside zone and have more success.
But we also saw our OL struggle a bit.
Here is a bit what I talked about in my pregame write-up. Sparty comes with not a delay blitz, but a corner/nickel pressure and actually has their LB spy Martinez. The blitzer misses, then the spy misses, and Martinez is off to the races.
But here’s where I got a bit frustrated watching this game. You have Manning and Betts out there. And in this play, we have the numbers advantage in the box. 6 blockers vs 6 defenders, so if we win our battles this should be a higher gain. But we are handing off to 32… again not trying to go negative here, but just throw a fade in the endzone to one of those guys if we are handing off to someone other than Johnson or Stepp:
Let’s 180 this to positive and go back to something i’ve been saying the past three seasons on the site that kicked me off. TE is a position you had veteran talent that the NFL likes with guys like Stoll and now Allen/Vokolek. If your OL is struggling, freaking put two TEs in to help. Frost/Lubick started doing that, and we all of a sudden could break some runs with extra blockers to help our struggling OL. And our first TD may have helped pave the way to grind the clock in the second half and get the running game going:
Now, our RB would have been stuffed, but Martinez had quite the alley with Allen washing his guy out and Vokolek getting his block helping Corcoran get all the way up to backside safety.
So while we are at it… let’s give some props to Rahmir Johnson. He’s slowly asserting himself like Devine Ozigbo did in 2018. Damon Benning made a great comment that “Johnson needs the least to go right to be good.” What he means, is a guy like Stepp really needs the OL to get their blocks to be effective for us. Johnson has the ability to wiggle and make some guys miss when things aren’t going right. Not that this is about running, but when your OL is responsible for 7 sacks and 18 hurries (25 total), they aren’t very good and you need someone who can make something happen. Michigan State brought 4 guys or less on every play defensively except 4 and Martinez had pressure on 25 throws. That’s a real stat and freaking maddening. So i’ll just continue with something else that bothers me…
I also have seen a lot of mention of things like this for why we needed to get rid of guys like Wan’Dale Robinson:
I guess I just don’t follow the logic here. We needed taller receivers to complete these kinds of passes?
Umm…. that’s a really big window in the cleanest pocket you’ll ever get. Take another example from our game this past weekend. I don’t like to blow players up too much, but he’s a four year starter we need better from in the passing game. I understand there was pressure, but this happened all night. Austin Allen is 6’9″ and we are not hitting this pass that is wide open. Needing taller WRs isn’t the issue, just imagine if we could have had Robinson to go along with Toure, Manning, Betts… Wan’dale is currently the leading WR in the SEC.
What was really disheartening though was the end of the fourth quarter and overtime. Michigan State completes a 9 yard pass on 3rd and 10 so they are short. Frost calls a timeout to get the ball back for our offense. I’m thinking this is great, we are going to try and get in fieldgoal range. There’s 55 seconds left and they are punting the ball to us from their own 34. Then we end up having the ball with 27 seconds left, two timeouts, and on our 36, get sacked and we just go to OT keeping the timeouts in our pocket. I hated that, but I get Frost got worried with our OL. What compounded my frustration though with that decision is if your OL made it so you were scared to continue to try and score in regulation, why on earth did we go three straight passes in overtime instead of inserting two TEs to run? The third pass ended in an INT and essentially solidified the game. I think that is the epitome of what we’ve seen the last 4 seasons. We outthought the room there. Run the ball at least once, get the fieldgoal. Then force Michigan State who only had 14 yards in the 2nd half to try and score from the 25 on your defense. The INT took the wind out of our sails and cost us in my opinion. Tough way to lose.
I don’t want to dive too much into special teams as I said our stats and that’s all that’s really needed at this point, so we can just move on.
Where do we go from here?
I said before the season in my preview, I saw us at 6-6. While I predicted we’d lose to Sparty, that included a win over Illinois to start the year. We are now 2-3 and have 7 games left to find 4 wins to get to a bowl. Northwestern, Purdue, and Minnesota are essentially must win games now. That means you have to find one more between Ohio State, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. A friend said it best “no one left on our schedule scares me, but they don’t have to beat us since we find ways to beat ourselves.” As a Husker fan I spent every season this century explaining why Northwestern and the other games are winnable. “Did you see how bad Mertz is, Bucky looks beatable.” “Ohio State almost lost to Tulsa!” “Iowa let Colorado State hang around, we are better than the Rams.” And the same friend finally goes “what do you think the other teams say about Nebraska to convince them of a win coming their way?” Ugh.
But this is where the rubber meets the road. Any chance at getting to a bowl game means you have to win at home against Northwestern. And I think we will. The over/under is probably going to be in the freaking 40s. ESPNs FPI currently has us as favorites to win three more games this year with Wisconsin and Iowa as toss-ups.
http://www.espn.com/college-football/team/fpi/_/id/158/nebraska-cornhuskers
Captain obvious here, but you have to take down Northwestern. Pat Fitzgerald always plays Nebraska tough. I’ll have my preview up later this week, but this becomes an even more important game for Nebraska to get to a bowl. A must win. I had us winning it before the season, nothing has changed my mind there.
Bonus Segment
Had a few people ask about changes with the staff and if you can do them immediately. I don’t think you can with OL right away, that’s too big of a change. Something like that would have to wait until the end of the season. But something like Verdu going to analyst and moving Busch to full-time special teams while Frost handles QB coaching could happen. The issue is it takes Frost away from CEO roles where he can focus on the areas that are struggling since he has a coach for every position. But I think special teams have been so bad that you almost have to do something drastic. I doubt midseason anything happens like this, but I would think about making a move if i’m Frost based on those stats I just laid out. I also believe Busch being here as an analyst is a bit of a trial run to see how they all mesh together. You also have a safety net in case Fisher bolts, as Busch is an unreal recruiter and coaches secondary as well.
Food for thought
Had someone bring up an interesting point to me Saturday night while super hammered. We are basically evolving into 2 TE and even 3 TE sets against Oklahoma to try and overpower people. All the while that wasn’t what we were recruiting towards, our guys are just better at that. “If that’s the direction we are going, 2 and 3 TEs to help block people and get our offense going, is Frost the guy to do it? We don’t have Jordan Akins at TE, we are moving Prochazka there for games.” That is real interesting to me to just think about where we are now compared to where we were when he was hired. Everyone thought fast-paced and even had the debate of if that offense could work in the B1G. Remember this statement:
What’s actually happening is we are having to adjust what we do to be effective in the B1G, and I believe it’s a big reason why we are so far behind the schedule we thought would happen in 2017.
Last thing
I don’t expect Alberts to make a move unless we are 4-8 or worse. I’ll say it again, I don’t expect a move to be made. But just typing out loud for everyone, this would be the year to do it. Martinez going to be moving on so new staff could break in a new QB they want, and there is no recruiting class to save like there was when we let Riley go. Nebraska is currently 79th in the country according to Rivals and dead last in the B1G. It will be a smaller class anyway, with only 8 guys committed. When we let Riley go midway through year 3, we had guys like Mario Goodrich committed and Micah Parsons silently committed. We have nowhere near that kind of star power in the mix right now midway through year 4.
Again, not saying Alberts makes that move, but if he was going to, after this year makes a lot of sense. You just have to come up with the 20 million dollar buyout if you do it (luckily the contract he restructured is only 2.5 million per year final 2 years).
As usual SSO, great post. I always enjoy reading your perspective and insight in all things Husker football.
I have a few questions on the MSU game and the Husker program as a whole.
1. Why are we inserting Belt and Morrison into the red zone and giving them the rock? Is Johnson subbing himself out? I’m with you, more two TE sets and why is power QB runs in the red zone more effective? Is it the extra blocker(RB)? Do you think we give Scott or Yant any short yardage carries or are they too far away or undeveloped at this point? Johnson seems like a great third down back.
2. I’ll always support 2AM. For four years he has stood in front of the media and been accountable for whatever has happened in a game. INcluding how he took his benching. One of many high character players we have right now that are just great to listen to when they are available to the media. So I’m not banging on the kid, why, why, why is he not throwing the ball away when there’s heat? I know at times it is our best play (QB scramble) but a few times he could of chucked it to stop the clock, especially when no lanes are available. With that being said, do you think we should run more rollouts or RPO’s? Is that easier or more difficult to block? Especially for Benhart?
3. Lastly, If Alberts give SF an ultimatum to change his staff, do you think he will? He’s already gotten rid of two of his original staff members from UCF – will he push back or stand up for Austin and Verdu? Kind of like a Callahan/Cosgrove thing.
4. Will heads roll if what happened last week happens again in Lincoln this week?
I actually was watching the game and saw guys like Johnson move us all the way down the field and need out (they were long drives). It is interesting we don’t sub Scott or Yant in though in those situations.
We need to move the pocket for AMart, our OL can’t be trusted to keep him clean. I’d be furious if I was him which is why I believe it’s his last year here whether that be NFL or transfer.
I don’t know if Alberts would do that. I do think the AD needs to be the guy that gives HCs everything they need, but they shouldn’t dictate coaching moves. Eichorst did that with Riley and it completely collapsed the infrastructure. If i’m Alberts i’m asking Frost what his thoughts are and if he’s willing to make moves and see what he says. My gut tells me Frost has a move or two in mind.
If we don’t beat Northwestern I think it’s the beginning of the end.
You’re thinking Martinez is gone? IMO he is masking how bad our offense really is. So is ne t. Years QB on another roster right now?
He has told people this was his last year in Lincoln but that was before the season. If (and again, if) he goes, we will get a transfer portal QB so it will be that guy vs Smothers and Haarberg.
Nice post. Agree with your Martinez point. I feel like a lot of the Nebraska message boards either go full ‘dude sucks and keeps blowing the games for us’ or elevating him and blaming everyone else, and there’s little middle ground, which the truth usually lies in most cases IMO. Maybe it’s the debate-style media culture we live in.
I love the dude as a person, so he probably gets extra brownie points for that. I fully appreciate that with our O-line and everything else going on, his athleticism and experience save our butts often. We could be much worse. I think he has recently looked much better accuracy-wise and think he’s improved a lot.
At the same time, for all those times he breaks big runs or big plays, he still does make those plays like the interception in OT, and I think he misses a ton of reads. I feel like Martinez’ trajectory kind of follows Frosts…this post talked about how people say for Frost ‘look at this game, we are so close’, but SSO mentions yeah but it’s year 4 we shouldn’t have to say that by now. I feel a little the same for Martinez, like there’s games where he looks good or that he’s turned the corner, but it’s year 4 of starting for him, and his mistakes he makes I think are just who he is as a QB. For me, his athleticism gives him a low floor, but also has a pretty limited ceiling as a QB.
I think if we had a really good QB who got rid of the ball, made great decisions, and was very accurate, we could have also won a lot of games that we’ve lost.
He’s the best we got currently, and I don’t fault him personally for anything, but I guess I just wish we had an overall better QB, which I could say about many of our positions.
I am on the Martinez train and have defended him since people though McCaffrey should be starting over him. I wish I could see what he did with a better OL. But with that said, we had a better OL last year and we weren’t great either.
I’m also ultimately confused on why we aren’t giving our best athletes shots in the red zone. We have big athletic receivers on the outside and we don’t try back shoulder or 50/50 balls to these guys. We’re moving the ball between the 20’s and then bogging down a bit when the field shrinks. I’m just missing something I guess? Am I just Johnny armchair QB shaking my fist at the sky not knowing what I’m talking about?
Ya it’s tough when we aren’t there to see practices and what not, but I just feel like we outthink ourselves down there at times.
Good stuff. Couple of thoughts. I absolutely agree that we are having to change our offensive philosophy to compete in the BIG and that is why we are behind schedule. If Frost made the adjustments to recruiting and philosophy from the get go I think the conversations are different right now. If he somehow walks the tightrope and survives this season he better make changes. Obviously special teams and in my opinion Austin has to go or move on. Much like Tuioti came in after Dawson left Frost needs to find a guy who understands what we are trying to do schematically. I just don’t think they are on the same page.
Also any thoughts on who we might see in the two slots Frost called out in the presser at RT and LG? I would think Miller at RT but can Prochazka play either side? Is Nouili ready for a shot at RG?
Will be interested to see what they do.
I think we will see Prochazka at one of the spots and i’m thinking Bando gets a shot at another one. I’m curious what’s up with Banks. He was talked about all offseason as the swing guy that could basically play every position but center and he’s seen minimal snaps.
Yeah, I guess everyone with eyes agrees on the observed problems: OL & ST. But I think the mid-season changes apparently required to fix this are unlikely to happen, thus I expect us to be no better than 4-8 this year. Yes, it makes sense to make the head coaching change after that. Bye Scott, sorry to see you go, I’ve always liked & supported you.
I still think we can get to 5. But we have to quit shooting ourselves in the foot. 6 is really tough with losses to Illinois and now Sparty.
I think he’ll get another year too, but agree I think this year would be best if possible. Mentioned it in the Big10 coaches post, but I think this year’s recruiting class is pretty bad, a result of us sucking the past 4 years. I’ve seen the same ‘diamond in the rough’ or ‘better culture’ fits arguments, but I personally don’t share that line of thinking. Maybe if I thought we had a track record of developing lesser talent, but nothing I’ve seen shows me we are really identifying talent better than their ranking and developing them well. Especially at certain positions.
I think that we can look decent given our defense and Martinez’ athleticism and 4th/5th year playing, but unless we recruiting upticks this & next year, I think we look real bad depth-wise 2-3 years down the road. It’s easier said than done when you’re not the actual person firing people and hiring someone new, but I’d be OK starting over after this year, if you think you’re confident that you’ve found someone who will be a really good replacement (at the end of the day, no one really knows). My worry is we look marginally better next year, so we give him 2-3 more years, and we’re perpetually bad/mediocre with a decent season sprinkled in.
I guess we’ll see how it plays out
I’m starting to more and more think it’s about development as opposed to recruits anyway. A guy who is a four star in Iowa’s offense wouldn’t be a four star in a Mike Leach offense, if that makes sense. Hell, Luke Reimer is on his way to becoming an all-conference linebacker and he was a walk-on going to an FCS school.
Yeah, I get that and agree with the general premise that different recruits will do better in certain schemes.
But in general, I do hold a lot of weight on the recruits you’re bringing in. There’s very few teams competing with the teams at the top of the recruiting boards. That happens when you have a competent coach who coaches well and develops well. Getting elite talent and developing is always going to beat just one of the 2. And I don’t think under this regime we develop well among other things, so that’s mainly why I don’t have a whole lot of optism.
In regards to the Luke Reimer point, I hear you, but I do feel like that happens at any school, there’s always going to be hits out of nowhere or who were less recruited. Some schools definitely seem to historically perform above their recruiting, whether that’s identifying talent or development. But I think Ohio State and Georgia would rather have Rivals top 100 vs walk-ons to develop to compete for championships.
I’d agree. I’d rather get the four star that we beat out Penn State and Wisconsin for like the Davis twins or Benhart. But just look at what Nebraska did or is doing with those guys, something is off. And i’d rather get the highly ranked recruits rather than hope no one notices someone and we get them to walk-on like Luke Reimer. I certainly wasn’t saying that.
I was basically agreeing with you. The leading sack man in the NCAA last year was some dude at Georgia Southern or Georgia State no one offered. I think Cal or Fresno had one as well. There’s tons of players out here and Frost has brought in exceptional classes, they just haven’t produced yet.
What worries me is Wisconsin is 3-0 against this staff and 2021 is the first year they have a better team according to the 247 composite.
Yep, I hear ya. I don’t think we were that far off in our thinking, but we were highlighting different points.
I appreciate that it seems for the most part on here discussions and disagreements stay civil.
Yeah, if Chryst and their QB turn a corner and they develop their players like they have for the past 5-10 years, then I agree they could be fairly scary soon. Something has seen off with them this year, I’m interested to see if that’s a long-term slide with Chryst or a blip.
Ya so far it’s been civil here which surprises me. I don’t mind a good disagreement, I had a few over on the other site. Heck a couple people even reshaped my opinion on a thing or two.
I know we all don’t see practice and see all of the behind the scenes details, but what do you see as the reason the OL is underperforming? Do you think it is coaching? I feel like by now, as a head coach, you should know how good of a coach someone is. Why did we give Austin a raise and more responsibilities if he isn’t good? Is it the SC that isn’t fitting what we want our guys to do? How much can you say it’s because they are young and need development? Are they recruiting misses? I feel like these guys should be further along and playing better than what they are even if they are Fresh or Soph. How much weight do you give “they need time playing together to gel” to improve performance? It worries me that for game 6 of year 4 we are now focusing on pad level at practice. Shouldn’t that be a foundational piece of playing OL?
I do like the idea of moving Coach V to an analyst role and moving Busch to ST. I don’t feel we have seen the development out of the QBs for the talk of him being such a QB Guru. I think something has to change there and the sooner the better.
Thanks for all you do with the site. Really appreciate the insight.
I think it’s a combination. We’ve almost lost Austin at least once, and he didn’t agree with how we were running the ball in previous seasons. That was our olive branch. But our ppg have gone down every year our staff has been here. I didn’t agree with Duval and how he tried training our guys to be fast, but if we are truly moving to 2 TEs and power football, what he wants to do may just work.
In my opinion we aren’t seeing practice well enough as coaches. I make mention in my preview tomorrow of what we were hearing about the OL preseason and it makes zero sense if it were true that we are having these kinds of issues against Illinois and Michigan State. I just don’t think we are designing practice well enough or we are misevaluating it.
I really like the Verdu to analyst role but i’m not a Verdu fan so that’s a bit biased. The problem is that he becomes a 400k analyst for 2 years. You can typically bring in 3 dudes for that. Hell, Busch is making like 35k this year from us (because he’s still being paid from LSU but still). I think ST have been so bad you need someone in there now, and if you are making a change on the QB coaching next year make the move now anyway. I just don’t see us making a move there as Frost likes what he gets from MV and to be fair Martinez looks pretty good this year.
I just feel like something needs to change because what is going on now isn’t working. I agree with you about practice. I know it goes back further than Frost, but I get tired of hearing how good practice went that week only to see a different product on Saturday. I feel like something needs to change there to start with. I can see positives of morning practice, but if its not translating to games, do we need to move it back to afternoons? With not being at practice, I don’t know how exactly things flow, but I remember hearing one time that practice is push the reps and make corrections later. If that is how it goes, I would think corrections need to be made immediately and practiced the right way while its fresh. Do you have any insight to that or am I remembering wrong? Can I ask what would be some of the changes you would like to see to the practice design?
I can’t say I have been a huge fan of him either. I will agree Martinez is looking better this year, but was hoping for seeing a little more with accuracy. I still would like to see more roll outs to fit more of his strengths. That is a good point that the change would make for an expensive analyst. However, what is the price of wins if it can improve the weak spot of special teams and eliminate some of what is costing us games. I feel like your paying that this year anyway. To me its no different than mixing up the OL to get the best 5 out there.
Any chance we see a return of the fullback? A fullback will always have a special place in my heart and would love to see a walk on Nebraska boy blowing open a hole again. I think the 49ers are good example of how a fullback can still be an asset in today’s game. Even an expanded H-back role would be nice. I love how Brewington blocks and feel he would be a great fit for the role. Wish we had more like him.
The morning practice thing is interesting. I’ve had a rant about that but I have teams that used to practice in the morning then they decided getting enough sleep was actually better (plus they were practicing when they actually played so bodies were better acclimated).
I think you are seeing a bit of it with Allen and a little bit with that Brewington kid. I doubt we ever fully go there, but a guy like Yant could probably help there too.