A few good plays but mostly not. Gonna be a long season. Crowd looks pretty small.
Mike Nolan
I’m there. It’s very ugly.
Regards,
Lou Martinaitis
And yet they’re one turnover and score away from a tie, so things got less ugly, sort of.
Incredible finish, Cats pull off their best two minute drive in years to get to overtime, the D holds Minnesota to a field goal and the Cats throw a quick TD pass to win the game!!
I hope you stayed for the end of the game, Lou.
Been a great sports day for me, the Cubs win, the Huskers win and now the Cats win in OT.
Now, can the Bears pull off the major upset against KC tomorrow?
A series of amazing finishes in the night games in the Big Ten tonight. OSU pulls off the late heroics in regulation in South Bend; IU gets lucky to go to OT against the Zips, but makes the most of it (in the 4th OT); and NU gets the walk-off in one play.
This is why I love football.
-Michael
It turned out to be a great game Mike!
Suddenly The cats grew up in the second half. That was so cool. it was a small turn out, but you wouldn’t have thought so as those there were rocking.
Looking forward to more😜
Regards,
Lou Martinaitis
Attendance was beyond awful. Majority of the students left at half time or just after. Dare I say, this might have been the WORST conference game attendance in my 25 years of season tickets. If not for the running of the freshman I would be confident in my assessment.
I actually thought other than the fumble even if we hadn’t come back there were a lot of positives. Our defense forced punts and our offense rarely 3-and-out even if they got behind the chains. Penalties were the biggest disappointment, but we overcame a lot of them.
Going into the season I expected 2 wins max, but based on the way the west is looking it will be competitive for 3rd place with likely Wisconsin and Io_a fighting for the right to get smoked in Indy.
Io_a has no offense. I don’t know when the last time Iowa had only 4 first downs and 76 yards of offense in a shutout loss was, but it’s probably been a long time. Pre Hayen Fry would be my guess.
The Cats win against Minnesota was great, but Minny got lucky against Nebraska, which was still in Scott Frost mode of finding novel ways to lose games. Illinois didn’t exactly impress anyone, including their coach, against the FAU Owls. Wisconsin may be the only for-real team in the soon-to-be-extinct Big Ten West, and I’m not even sure about that.
Not sure if this big come from behind win erased the memory of the 35-3 blown lead against MSU, but it sure helps. During NU’s record setting losing street in the 70’s/80’s, our first conference win was also a come from behind victory over Minny
What was also surprising to me is that we won with all of the mistakes we made ( particularly penalties) Typically we are outmatched in talent, but potentially can make it up on lesser mistakes than our opponents . Not the case yesterday
While I’m not optimistic going forward, I think we might be able to snag one more conference win along with a win over Howard
Harry
What was exciting to me was we *threw the ball. Wow!
49 attempts!
Amazing!
It’s like we decided we were going to be in the 21st century.
The only way we are going to win is if we throw the ball. You would think we would have figured this out after the 54-51 game long ago v. the detestable Wolverines. Every other team in America that knows the name “Mike Leach” figured this out. Except, apparently, us.
Let’s see whether we can keep matriculating the ball downfield via the forward pass. What a thrilling concept go Cats
Yesterday’s game got a mention in the weekly ‘winners and losers’ summary, but only because Minnesota got tagged as a loser.
Well the Bears are suffering a bad drubbing at the hands of the Chiefs. Unlike NU , they can’t seem to shake out of their blues coming out of the gate this season
Apparently A lot of local chatter about how the Bears front office really blew it trading up at a very high cost to get to draft Ohio States Justin Fields . Like NU it’s hard to tell if if Fields is the one at fault or his O-line , or a lot of both
Harry
IMHO if you look at how OSU won under Fields, he wasn’t the key to the offense, just another plug-in QB in a system that had already had been successful under several plug-in QBs.
In terms of awful trades in Chicago sport history, trading up to get Fields is on the level of Brock for Broglio.
And Chicago is, arguably, doing better than Denver did today. The Cubs probably have to win 4 of 6 from two division leaders (Atlanta and Milwaukee) on the road to get into the playoffs. :sigh:
Cats open as 26 point dogs at Penn State. Nebraska has to host Michigan, another tough day for them, too.
Good points about Fields, MIke. Interestingly, the Chicago sports media almost all view Fields as the Bears’ “Franchise Quarterback”. Many refer to him as “QB1” which is his uniform number.
I don’t believe that the Bears have had a franchise QB since Sid Luckman in the 40s. That may tell you something about their ability to recognize QB talent. The Bears have had 45 quarterbacks since they won their only Super Bowl in 1986.
Fields’ stats today against Kansas City were typical for him: a 56.7 QB rating on 11/22 passing for 99 yards. (he was in the teens until mid Q4 garbage time).
Fields is clearly an outstanding athlete, but an NFL QB? Probably not.
Let’s see if the Bears stick with him after this year.
Everyone thinks they can find the next multi task QB - the way the Ravens found Jackson - and ride the kids legs and arm to the playoffs.
They forget that when they drafted Jackson, the Ravens already had a top level O-Line that allowed them to also have a traditional running game. The OC’s added the spread-Option style of play to a traditional passing game to allow Jackson to play well.
Every time I read or hear about a former college star QB being drafted high, I remember the words of Gary B’s O-Line Coach: “It All Starts on the Offensive Line.”
When the Ravens first came to Baltimore, their first draft pick was an Offensive Tackle. Maybe that’s where daBares need to start?
Go B1GCats
rsl
And during the Cowboys “America’s Team” run, Tom Landry always stressed that the “Pokes” tried to draft “A-thuh-letes,” over what some thought were the team’s needs.
I think he also won a Super Bowl playing a bunch of Rookies, and in one game he started 4 Guards because all the tackles were injured.
Go B1GCats
rsl
I grew up a Cowboys fan living in Kansas. Tom Landry with Punter/Quarterback Danny White, Tony Dorsett RB, Drew Pearson WR, Randy White, and Ed “Too Tall” Jones(6’9").
After Landry was fired I pretty much gave up rooting for any professional team. After Northwestern I would root for the teams with the most Northwestern alums.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Landry
I knew I liked Landry for some reason and now I found out. He majored in Engineering. Go Tech Weens!
Tom Landry also had a NY Giants connection…
He was the Defensive Coordinator for the Giants before he took the Dallas job.
The Offensive coordinator was Vince Lombardi. This was before teams had 15 assistant coaches.
One of the D-Backs, Emlin Tunnell developed the zone defense that became part of Landry’s Flex Defense. Before that, most teams played man-to-man and a god QB could pick them apart.
One D-lineman under Landry was Pat Summerall… he was the Giant’s placekicker, but he was also a backup D-Tackle.
If you liked Landry, you need to read Summerall’s book about the Giants in the 1950’s - we old Giant fans can flash back to those days…
Go B1GCats
rsl
Coach
I remember my dad telling me that Landry had PLAYED for the Giants
Harry