Sioux94

Think I saw almost a little bit of an option play where Feeney pitched it out to the RB on the Facebook UND football story.

Can't imagine any school, even the UND hockey program gets to dictate the date of the Hall of Fame game, so that was already set. We had an open date on the football schedule that weekend that needed to be filled, should we have scheduled an away game that weekend instead of a home game and had one less home game?

The relationship with the coaching staff certainly is important. Bubba has been here 8 years....Fruend has been here since they were probably in diapers.....it has been stable. I have a hard time believing any recruit we get in this class would have chosen a different school if Bubba wouldn't have gotten a two year extension. Especially now with the transfer portal.

I hope so. I don't think Otis started starting until 5-6 games in his first full year playing. Will be curious to see what Ziebarth can do with some more carries this year.

It will be interesting to see if Smith is the starting RB for the first game. He seems to be the most dynamic back. Skokna is solid but from the little action we saw from Smith last year he looks like more of a playmaker than Skokna at RB. Wouldn't be surprised if they do what they normally do.....be safe an start Skokna. Then 5 games into the season...realize Smith is more dynamic and make him the starter. Either way I think a lot of RB's will rotate in and get carries. Hopefully Smith can stay healthy most of the year. That is the one thing about Otis, the kid was a rock in there.

Yeah I drove up for that game, was so damn ugly. But yeah glad it was as it finally got Rudolph fired. Never seen such a pathetic offense that had upper class men. Sad to see Brady and Santiago go out in that complete sh*t show of a game. If I recall, amazingly enough even after that pathetic performance it sounds like we were one of the last teams out. No matter if Freund doesn't call a perfect game, he is light years ahead of Rudolph and adapting.

If both Holinka and Freund are still there, I'm sure they would both want to move up to the head coach spot. Holinka has done a great job so far. Danny has had ups and downs, although I think a lot of the downs last fall were due to not being able to run the ball when we needed to, particularly in the red zone due to no push by the OL. If Bubba retired today, I think Freund would be the front runner but 4 years from now Holinka will have been our DC for 6 years. Let's hope by then they have both done so well that it would be a difficult decision.

Chaves apparently just has things on cruise control. He will make his 1 Million dollars over four years at UND and probably be gone by the time these contracts run out and moved on to the next school for his next paycheck. Would he have given an EWU football coach a 2 year extension after winning 1 playoff game in 8 years.......when there is still 2 years left on their existing contract?

A better solution to me was pretty easy, wait and see how the fall season goes before giving him extension. I am not a Bubba hater as there is enough of that already, I've defended him on the board a few times. However the facts are he has 1 playoff win in 8 years, and made one of the dumbest coaching decisions I've ever seen by going for it on 4th down against NDSU last year. I don't think he earned another contract extension when he still has two years left on his existing contract. What if we go 5-6 again this year, then we have 3 more years of that? If we make a playoff run this fall, give him the extension. This extension was premature in my opinion. It's my opinion and it's a fan board, I don't have to donate 750k to give my opinion, not referring to you on that one. For those saying for recruiting purposes, I could be wrong but I find it EXTREMELY unlikely a kid coming out of high school who wanted to come to UND and liked Bubba, would have decided not to come to UND just because Bubba was only under contract through the 2023 season.

Don't see why they couldn't have waited until we see how this fall season goes. I guess 1 playoff win in 8 years is enough.

Going into the fall I was hoping he'd come back next year. He is looking good though and it looks like he made the right choice, it's still a win for UND. Good luck to him.....we'll be watching. Been a while since we got to watch a UND guy in the NFL, need more of that.

No it's not 100% certain he would have done better, but I would absolutely bet we would have more than 1 playoff win in 9 years under Deboer. Bubba completely wasted 5 years with Rudy. We didn't have the 1983 Washington Redskins OL to run Rudy ball and make it work. At a minumum he kept Rudy 1-2 years too long. I can also pretty much guarantee Deboer wouldn't have run a fake punt QB sneak with 2 yards to go.....with the lead.....from his own 20 in a defensive battle...when the opponent was in a goaline defense. Deboer likely wouldn't be at where he is at if he came to UND. He would have spent at least probably 5 years or so at UND, then taken an FBS position somewhere. Fortunately for him he didn't get the job, pretty amazing how his career path ended up turning out after that. I agree though, you never know on the younger coaches......but in his case....we definitely missed out. I honestly don't know how it could be argued otherwise, and I'm not a Bubba hater.

Ok that's what I thought. But when he said.....would DeBoer accept the salary Bubba got....it made me question myself lol. Yes he would have accepted.....or why apply and keep yourself in the running down to the final 2.

I would think he wouldn't have applied if he wouldn't have accepted it, that would have looked dumb on his part. I'm sure it was quite a bit more than he was making at Sioux Falls. He might have already moved up to a better job by now though, but that also means we probably already had several deep playoff runs. Or did he not even apply? There is always so much talk about him, did people just want him but he never actually applied?

I believe it said minimum requirements was two years experience as an NCAA football coach. Pay was 45-48k

Is that the only NDSU player that entered the portal? Or is it less likely players would enter the portal right now because they would need to be enrolled in spring semester and it is kind of too late to get picked up so they would wait until end of semester?

In my opinion I think FBS should go to an 8 team playoff. There have been a couple of years there was quite a bit of debate about one or two teams that did not get in the top 4 and probably should have had a shot. The 8th seed is very unlikely to win but if a 5th seed plays a 4th seed I'd say that is almost 50/50 in most years as to who would win. If they were to go to 12 teams, I think they'd have to give the top 4 a buy so that there would be 8 teams in second round. I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to something like that, would make for some good first round games. I could see a #12 upsetting a #5 in the first round in that scenario. I wouldn't want it to get too watered down, but the nice thing about FCS and bigger playoff field is that it makes things a lot more interesting for a lot more teams right up until the final week of the season.

Agree. Would have liked to have seen Tommy not get hurt, but NDSU would have still won by 15-20 points. MSU and their Big Sky defense sucked. I guess Vigen didn't have the balls to go for it on 4th down on the first drive.

I agree, our coaching needs to be better. But also, all of these other coaches are getting schooled by NDSU and MSU looks silly today. Although I'm sure they would have at least put up some points if Tommy didn't go out after the first drive.

Agree. And also agree JMU would have played them at their house.....and possibly could have beaten them at home.

And all of those other coaches got their asses handed to them against NDSU when it really mattered. Do all FCS schools need new/better coaches? MSU is getting flat out embarrassed right now, even if their starting QB is out.

you mean so we could go toe to toe with NDSU like those other schools but still get our asses handed to by them when it really mattered?

I don't recall too many times where Tommy locked on his primary receiver and when he threw it I was like......what the heck were you doing. Did he do that a few times, probably. Did he throw it to his primary receiver many times yes. Is it possible that he read the defense very well before the ball was even snapped that the primary receiver he looked at was the correct read and therefore threw it to him? I do know though I have absolutely seen him go to his 2nd or 3rd read. The infamous interception at the end against SDSU, right when I happened I was pissed at Tommy as it looked like he threw it into triple coverage. Upon review, he made the exact right read IMO and the pick was due to WR holding up for a bit (don't want to get in that whole debate again). For the record I'm not saying Tommy is the best FCS QB in the nation or the best QB that we as UND football fans can ever root for. I just don't think Tommy locking in a primary receiver has been a big problem for him, but I could be wrong. I do find the audible question and discussion interesting though, as since it was brought up, I didn't recall times of him obviously audibling out of something so that was an interesting point that would be curious to know what they are allowed or not allowed to do on that one. I think Tommy has a fairly high QB IQ though, and I think Danny would allow him to do it if needed within the system constraints. Would be a good question for Tom Miller to ask Danny sometime though.

The first three drives against Utah State we definitely won that chess match and we had them guessing and wondering what the heck was coming next. Would have been on the first four drives too if they didn't run into each other on 3rd down. Not sure what the heck happened the rest of the game, their D schooled our O the rest of the game. I think a big part of our drop off in points and our poor red zone offense was due to below average OL run blocking when things got tight. I still remember the one game we had 3rd and goal from about the 4 1/2 yard line. We ran it three straight times and got half a yard total. I think it would be more common to get stuffed at the 1 yard line three straight times since that is obvious running down and they load the box. From the 4 yard line, that is run/pass distance.....especially on 3rd down and goal from the 4 yard line.

You forgot option D: I know Bubba did a crappy coaching job at times this year and probably won't change, but I realize we won't be buying out his contract. I will still bring up his game management and mistakes on occassion because it is a legit issue, but I won't post about it on a daily basis, in specific detail, about each poor game management decision (EVEN if somebody else remotely mentions something related to it like other coaches making bad decisions or poor game management choices)