The Lions' Pride

I think it's gonna be up to the DEs to work on their contain and make sure they don't overpursue Miller like Olaniyan did on the Colter TD (although that was a fantastic option). He's an athletic QB and judging from his 1st Half to 2nd half stats, it seems like if they wanna get to him, they gotta do it early. I haven't looked it up but just from seeing stats from the games during bottomline updates he is usually very poor early and gradually gets going.

As to the great defensive teams, where are you fitting OSU in that discussion? Shouldnt be in a great, or even good, to date, category.

4WR sets and quick throws, well, we do much more of that nowadays.

traditional sets are in our scheme, but far from our 'standard' currently.

I dont have Mich St. or Nebraska having the caliber front 7 personnel that we currently send out on the field. JMO but one I think can easily be argued.

I think it will be a great game, as even when one or the other(or both) have been a bit 'down', the games have often been solid. Part of that is certainly to do with Tres and Joe both playing a style that kept things a bit closer oft times. But I think it is also that the game has bread some excellent competitiveness through the years. jmo again there.

Sorry, I didn't answer your question...Our defense is struggling mightily with the 2 yard pass that turns into 8-30 yard gains....Until last night, the defense wasn't allowing a lot of touchdowns....No excuse, Nebraska is hard to defend and I guess the only "moral" victory would be holding them 10 points under their avg....

AS for our personnel, there is great talent on the DLine, but with all the quick passing teams (2 and 3 step drop) the DL has been neutralized...They dominated MSU and held them to 34 yards rushing...They played really well last night as well and got to Martinez several times.

Our DB's this year have been great and terrible at the same time....great in getting turnovers, terrible in tackling...too many going for knock out hits instead of tackling...Urban said that will be stopping or other players will be in the game...

Our LB's, wow, one (Shazier) maybe first true SEC type LB we've had..very fast, almost to a fault..he gets to the spot too fast and over pursues some...seems to be getting better in that regard last couple games...really is going to be a great one..Sabino...Senior, been playing steady but never lived up to the 5 star hype...Our MLB play has been non existent either by spread offense (not in the game) or by bad play when they are in...i'm betting we will have a freshman in there before end of year...Storm Klein can't handle that position but the young guys can't make the calls right now..

So, to answer you, I put our defense at part time sad, part time solid, glimmers of ineptness and glimmers of greatness......

Roby will be the best DB not named Adrian Amos on the field that night. He is good, and their secondary is athletic enough to capitalize if McGloin makes some of those inevitable head-slapping throws - something NW DBs aren't.
They're certainly not a suffocating secondary and they have plenty of flaws that can be exploited, but their athleticism is a threat whenever McGloin has one of those throws that reminds you he was still a walk-on.
Also, though, no matter what they say, Miller has not faced a front 7 of our caliber this year and won't for the rest of the year.
It will be a great matchup. The winner will be the team who makes the least mistakes.

I'm not bashing PSU, so please don't take it that way but honestly do you not think Nebraska and Michigan States defense are as good as PSU's?

I think it's safe to say the your front 7 haven't faced what Urban is just getting to gel for an offense either...Once again, I'm not bashing, I'm asking, what teams have you faced this year have had any type of great offense? The only team that has a winning record was Northwestern and they mainly just use a quick pass offense. Not a big running game..

I'd say MSU has a good D. Would say that they've been overrated so far, but as a team that is mostly on the offense.

I have no clue what would make anyone say Nebraska has a good defense. Who have they done well against? And frankly...what players do they have that are notable? As PK5 mentioned, PSU has some very good players.

I'm personally not sure that PSU's front 7 is as good as people are saying. Mainly due to youth at DE. Talent is there, thought, at each of those 7 positions. I will be very interested to see how the game turns out. I can see Braxton being flustered, but also breaking some big runs/passes. I think OSU will really test our safeties. Hope they're ready.

I wont speak to the Nebraska or MSU defenses, but I think you are misrepresenting Northwestern's offense.

They are currently ranked 16th in the nation in rushing yds/game with 231.8 and that's after Penn State held them to 112 last week.

Now I'm not making a direct comparison to OSU's ground game, or Miller. Just pointing out that the Northwestern game was a tougher test of Penn State's front 7 then you seem to give it credit for.

Did you watch UCLA/Nebraska? Or MSU fall behind to Indiana? No. They're defenses are not as good as Penn State's.

Taking obvious biases out of the equation, the analyst of our game three weeks ago (Cunningham?) said there is no reason to think we couldn't beat OSU (I believe it was the week OSU should have lost to Cal if Cal had a halfway decent kicker). Griese said yesterday the two best teams in the conference weren't eligible for the title game. OSU's defense has not shown it can stop a good offense. It's offense has been held in check by MSU. We can beat OSU, particularly at home. Will we, I don't know but I personally will be surprised if we don't and I've been saying it since before the season started.

Edit: say what you want about Northwestern but they put up 700 yards last week, something neither OSU or PSU has ever done in Big 10 play and we held them to less than 250. That is far more impressive than anything OSU has accomplished this year.

Roby is good, but he's one of four.

I skimmed a thread over on buck nuts and people were in consensus about extremely poor tackling fundamentals and bad angles to the football. Some thought it was worse than others, but still, they're not the OSU defense they have the reputation for.

I agree they are the most athletic defense we've faced so far, and probably will all season, and that they can make McGloin play. However they seem lost at times, and seem inconsistent in their positioning based on the very few times I watched a series of theirs.

Not to take anything away from y'all's win this Saturday, because it was extremely impressive to put up those kinds of numbers in basically three quarters. However, Pelini has done an awful job with that defense the past few seasons as a whole. They look lost against any solid or better offensive team.

I liked him a lot as a HC, but it is mind boggling that he can't get that defense figured out. They're not good. Terrible by Nebraska's standards.

Not sure what you are reading as "putting down" OSU. That was not my intent as I was addressing your comment about their defenses compared to ours. While you have not seen one of our games, I have seen a few of your games and have been unimpressed with the defense. I agree that OSU is probably more "athletic" across the board but the difference is not enough to dictate the result of the game.

Until Saturday Nebraska was leading the big 10 in ppg. And when was the last time any big 10 team put up 63 points on a ranked opponent? Michigan state did hold us to 17 on our first road game of the year but we shut down the best rb in the big 10. But you are somewhat correct, our defense is awful when we are spread out and they decide to only put 2 lbs on the field. We don't really blitz and our safeties are 20+ yards off the line of scrimmage. But in the red zone we scheme properly and allow more fgs than tds. And I believe I am correct when I say your team has had a lot of trouble when it matters in the red zone.

They gave up 38 to Nebraska despite getting to Martinez and having Taylor gift wrap 21 points for you. Michigan State's offense isn't good.

You have a veteran defense littered with juniors and seniors. They can have all the talent in the world, but it hasn't transpired on the field of play. That is the bottom line.