Sioux94

I'm pretty sure Texas fans are pretty adamant about wanting and expecting a championship, and they have averaged 5-6 wins going on 4 years now. Even fan bases that expect to be on top are not always there. I do agree though that we need very high expectations. We MUST get another Natty in football to overtake the the perception of UND football again. A Natty needs to be the goal every year, however there will be years where things do not fall into place. Doesn't mean you have to be happy about it, but it is going to happen. Montana is another fan base that expects to win, they haven't come close to a Natty in years now and may miss the playoffs again this year. There are certain things that need to be re-evaluated in the off season that is for sure, but to change everything and go in a completely different direction.....that sounds like what the Cleveland Browns do......and look where they are. Look at the Pittsburgh Steelers and their success over the years. They have some off years but they don't fire everybody and completely start over every time they have an off year.

Will Holm be back, that would be big to get him back.

You know what, I'm sick and tired of hearing you tell me I lack expectations for our football team. This is about the 45th time you've said that in the past month. If you are going to say that 5 times a week for the next 9 months, maybe you should start a separate thread for it and you and a couple of others can banter back and forth the entire off season about how low UND's expectations for all of our programs other than hockey is. #BrokenRecord

Two years ago when we had a young secondary it looked VERY similar.....50/50 balls were not that....they were 90/10 balls with the offense completing them 90% of the time. The next year with a year of experience we were one of the top teams in INT's.

Thinking our motto next year goes back to being "Day by Day".

We start by finding a way to knock of EWU next weekend to end the season on a good note.

I'm thinking they were hoping they would kick a FG, and didn't want to give them another chance on 3rd down to throw a TD pass against our secondary.

This team just can't get out of their own way.

Exactly. Even though we aren't officially in the Big Sky going forward, I'm hoping we can win an "Unofficial" Big Sky championship and take down both Montana and EWU in the same year. I'm already looking forward to playing Montana in our house next year, with hopefully a healthy team.

Out of the last two games of the year, really hoping we can pull at least one upset. Of the two I'd rather knock of EWU......but what the hell....let's make it two upsets and get em both!

You can be a run first offense and still be a highly potent and respected offense and offensive coordinator if the team is successful in running it.

We have to be Thankful we've had Studs the last several years, but he doesn't throw a great deep ball. If you get a guy like Zimmerman dropping those deep passes on target burning trams next year, I think that will really help open things up. If you start hitting on those consistently, teams have to be worried about it. Nobody is too worried about it right now. We have gotten a few long pass plays this year, which we should because they often are 8 in the box. Nobody right now is really too concerned with us beating them over the top consistently throughout the game. They are willing to maybe give up one during the game to key in and !@#$ down the run the other 65 offensive plays.

You are probably right, I like Freund but having never been an offensive coordinator before.....it could be good, or it may not. Not sure if I would want him "learning" on the job next year. I believe it was Mussman's last year and both of our offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator were new, both internal guys that got appointed to that position probably because we were cheap and didn't go out and look for somebody who had the qualifications. I remembered thinking, man both our O & D coordinators have never had this position at any level before, this doesn't seem good. Well we saw the results of that season.

So true. Sometimes I'd like to see more fire out of Bubba on the sidelines.....but Tony Dungy, Tom Laundry and other NFL coaches won Super Bowls while remaining pretty calm at all times.

I watched the second half of the game but was too busy to keep up on the game day blog during second half, finally reading it now after getting home......it was a hoot reading it.....especially knowing we got the win. Nice to see the team overcome the adversity at the beginning being down 14-0 even though our offense was moving the ball. I'm still hoping for an upset against EWU!

He has a couple runs and a catch on the second series.

I'm ok with the field goal there actually from 5 yards out yet. It would have been completely demoralizing if we wouldn't have gotten any points on that drive.

We must have about 125 yards of offense in the first quarter, normally that would be a good thing. We NEED to get a TD on this drive. At least we are passing quite a bit on the outside and that should open up the run, at least Rudy is doing one thing right today.

I'd like to see some coaches YELLING....or something on the sidelines......or somebody...this is ridiculous!!

Well at least it looks like I won't be late for the Halloween party I'm going to, won't have to watch the 4th quarter if we are getting our asses kicked by a winless team.

We have 1st and Goal at the 6 yard line, and we decide to bunch everyone together to run up the gut. Seriously Rudulph......you haven't learned yet we don't have the horses to play smashmouth......you freaking IDIOT! How about spread things out and call a QB draw or something, can you EVER do something a little less predictable??

That is 90% on Studs, 10% on WR.

Wonder how many reps Studs has gotten recently with being hurt, not sure if the snap was on him or the center. Couldn't really write much of a worse script to start the game.....as usual. When is this nightmare going to end.

I had posted that I was laughing how Montana fans were puffing their chest after their win against us....saying it was the best their defense has looked etc., and they sure thought they were something. I said I'm glad they had a false sense of greatness and was looking forward to watching them lose.

Exactly So if you look at the current roster and if you assume all players redshirted like we would want in a perfect world: Seniors - Mussman recruits (there are a few guys in this class like Studs and Dranka that had their shirts pulled of course because our cupboard wasn't very full, and would have normally been in the junior class) Juniors - hodge podge, Bubba didn't take over until like December 30th for this class we had no coach for over a month, we sucked as a team and our coach was just fired. Bubba's staff which wouldn't have been in place until sometime in January was filling out the class as best as they could and I would guess some of these guys may not have actually gotten offers from Bubba's staff a year later. I didn't say it at the time, but there was one player in this class that I was surprised got an offer but I think they were just filling it out with what they could. He also is no longer on the team, I'm thinking he was a good kid but he was just buried in the depth chart and wasn't ever really going to see the field which I believe is why he quit (but I do not know the reason for sure). This validated my initial thought in being surprised he got an offer. He got an offer because they needed warm bodies during this recruiting class. Sophomores - Full Bubba recruits, recruited during our 5-7 year. So these recruits were recruited to a a team that still had a losing record, and no recent success in the FCS. Given the last few years of Mussman regime, many teams still saw North Dakota as somewhat of a doormat at this time. Freshman - Full Bubba recruits , recruited during our 7-4 season Redshirt freshman - Recruited during our 9-3 season. Hero ranked this recruiting class at #26 in the FCS, so not top 10....but not bad either. Ott being rated the #24 overall recruit in the FCS, Noah Larson also looks to be a stud and had the size to play as a true freshman if he wasn't injured. To me these are the reasons why I'm not raising holy hell and saying Bubba doesn't know how to recruit. There may be some valid concerns that have been raised, but I think it is still too early to tell, and the verdict is still out.