OWH: What Recruiting Says About Husker Offense

[Mavric]

Nebraska is going to throw the ball. A lot. They’re gonna throw it when Tommy Armstrong is the quarterback. They’re gonna throw it when Patrick O’Brien is the quarterback. In 2016, their best position group on the roster is wide receiver. In ’17, after losing Westerkamp, wideout might still be their best position group.


Yes, Husker coaches must be wiser about putting their quarterback in bad situations. The defense must be better, enabling the offense to play from ahead, rather than behind.

But it’s no accident that Riley is recruiting big-time receivers. The UCLA beatdown was glorious — for 80 percent of the fan base, that game will always be the ideal run-pass ratio — but the Riley offense will flourish or fail in the air with recruits like Keyshawn Johnson Jr.

In other words, it will continue to resemble the Bill Callahan offense.

From 2004-07, Callahan's offense ran 3,461 plays. What percentage were rushes? 52.1 percent.

In 2015, Riley's offense ran 954 plays. What percentage were rushes? 52.0 percent.

Yikes!

OWH

 

[Mavric]

I don't agree with Dirk's premise. That is, I don't think Wisconsin says "We're going to run the ball a lot so we're only going to recruit three-star receivers." You always recruit the best WRs you can get. You just have a lot better chance of landing them with a passing offense.

However, I do think he's correct that we want to throw the ball a lot. And we're selling WR and QB recruits on that.

The big question is how effective will that offense be. As you know, I don't think it will be very effective - in fact, detrimental - with TA under center. I'm more hopeful with POB going forward. We'll see.

 

[BigRedBuster]

In that case, good thing almost all of these recruits won't play much (if any) with TA under center.

With recruits we are getting and trying to get now, we need to be looking at how we think the offense will perform with POB, Gebbia, Coan...etc.

If recruiting keeps going the way it looks like it will, I like the chances of success.

 

[cm husker]

In that case, good thing almost all of these recruits won't play much (if any) with TA under center.

With recruits we are getting and trying to get now, we need to be looking at how we think the offense will perform with POB, Gebbia, Coan...etc.

If recruiting keeps going the way it looks like it will, I like the chances of success.

I simply don't see how people can conclude at this point that recruiting under this staff is any better than any of the previous 3 staffs.

But I guess it is spring and hope is, ya know, springing.

 

[BigRedBuster]

You just proved you haven't payed that much attention to recruiting in the last 4-5 months which includes what we potentially have coming in the next class.

 

[alwayshusking]

I'm fine with that moving forward, but they need to focus on the run more with TA at QB.

With all the talk about offense, we need to get better on D more than anything. That's been a big problem for us for years now.

 

[wanderful]

In that case, good thing almost all of these recruits won't play much (if any) with TA under center.

With recruits we are getting and trying to get now, we need to be looking at how we think the offense will perform with POB, Gebbia, Coan...etc.

If recruiting keeps going the way it looks like it will, I like the chances of success.

I simply don't see how people can conclude at this point that recruiting under this staff is any better than any of the previous 3 staffs.

But I guess it is spring and hope is, ya know, springing.

You're right that a lot of it is just that it's spring, but at least we seem be winning a lot of battles against other blue bloods, which it seemed (anecdotally) like we weren't doing very frequently under the previous regime.

Also, I posted this in another thread, just for reference. I don't think this really means much with only 2 years of stats for Riley. It will be easier to spot trends after the 2017 class is in

View attachment 10965

 

[cm husker]

You just proved you haven't payed that much attention to recruiting in the last 4-5 months which includes what we potentially have coming in the next class.

You do realize that each of the precious coaches brought in top 10/15 classes right?

And I've followed it about as much as warranted in March of the year before signing day.

I get it though, the powers that be have found a really cute way to monetize the offseason so the shininess right now is fun!

 

[cm husker]

A lot of battles against other blue bloods? NU has 3 verbals right now, correct?

 

[cm husker]

In that case, good thing almost all of these recruits won't play much (if any) with TA under center.

With recruits we are getting and trying to get now, we need to be looking at how we think the offense will perform with POB, Gebbia, Coan...etc.

If recruiting keeps going the way it looks like it will, I like the chances of success.

I simply don't see how people can conclude at this point that recruiting under this staff is any better than any of the previous 3 staffs.
But I guess it is spring and hope is, ya know, springing.

You're right that a lot of it is just that it's spring, but at least we seem be winning a lot of battles against other blue bloods, which it seemed (anecdotally) like we weren't doing very frequently under the previous regime.

Also, I posted this in another thread, just for reference. I don't think this really means much with only 2 years of stats for Riley. It will be easier to spot trends after the 2017 class is in

Thanks for the chart. I think that if you extend it to Solich, we'd see that NU's recruiting band is going to around 20-25 with some occasional outliers in both directions.

I think Riley will continue that level of performance, which should be good enough to win a B10 championship

 

[BigRedBuster]

There was a great discussion on this in the recruiting board and I'm not going to rehash this now.

I'm looking at the quality of players. Our average player rating has gone up. And, if you look at the ones we have good interest from for next year it's even better ( I know looking at next year is a crap shoot).

However, Last year's average player rating was higher than we have had in years. The class rank takes into account number of commits. A prime example of this is the highly taught 2011 class. It came in with 32 players but the average player rating was much lower than last year's class. In hind site, that wasn't really that good of a class. If you simply look at the OLine, the last year or two has taken a big jump.

Again, I'm not going to rehash this again. If you choose to ignore it and don't agree....I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise.

 

[wanderful]

In that case, good thing almost all of these recruits won't play much (if any) with TA under center.

With recruits we are getting and trying to get now, we need to be looking at how we think the offense will perform with POB, Gebbia, Coan...etc.

If recruiting keeps going the way it looks like it will, I like the chances of success.

I simply don't see how people can conclude at this point that recruiting under this staff is any better than any of the previous 3 staffs.
But I guess it is spring and hope is, ya know, springing.

You're right that a lot of it is just that it's spring, but at least we seem be winning a lot of battles against other blue bloods, which it seemed (anecdotally) like we weren't doing very frequently under the previous regime.

Also, I posted this in another thread, just for reference. I don't think this really means much with only 2 years of stats for Riley. It will be easier to spot trends after the 2017 class is in

Thanks for the chart. I think that if you extend it to Solich, we'd see that NU's recruiting band is going to around 20-25 with some occasional outliers in both directions.

I think Riley will continue that level of performance, which should be good enough to win a B10 championship

I tried to include Solich, but I found most of the recruiting websites broke down when you go that far back in their databases. Only 247 let me go back as far as I did without spitting out unreliable numbers. If you have the stats, feel free to send them to me.

 

[wanderful]

A lot of battles against other blue bloods? NU has 3 verbals right now, correct?

What I mean is that we seem to be winning recruits that are also being seriously targeted by Alabama, tOSU, Clemson, etc. The last few years of the previous regime, the players we were getting seemed to be targeted by (pulling out random schools here) BC, USF, Temple, ISU, etc.

 

[Redux]

I hope nobody thinks the UCLA game was a true blue print of how we will play moving forward.

We will run a bit more but it will be mostly a product of a better passing game and 1 main RB.

 

[cm husker]

A lot of battles against other blue bloods? NU has 3 verbals right now, correct?

What I mean is that we seem to be winning recruits that are also being seriously targeted by Alabama, tOSU, Clemson, etc. The last few years of the previous regime, the players we were getting seemed to be targeted by (pulling out random schools here) BC, USF, Temple, ISU, etc.

I'd love to see that actual analysis, though I also have doubts about the validity of many offer lists.

I have buddies who are assistants at 4 different DI schools and they chuckle about the supposed offers out to kids they haven't even head of, not to mention the "noncommitable" offers that shouldn't even be counted.