If anyone thinks Nebraska is in any shape to compete with Ohio State, Michigan, or Penn State right now, it's a very skewed perception. We don't recruit or have the athletes we had in the late 90's and early 2000's. when Bo arrived, Callahan had stocked the cupboard with NFL talent and mismanaged it. Bo inherited a crazy amount of talent. When he started to hate his job 4-5 years in, his recruiting efforts dropped and the talent they signed went way down. His last few years here he was miserable. He was not focused on recruiting, the entire staff was disorganized. This is why you see a major drop off in 12,13,and 14 talent. His 11 class looked good on signing day but half of them transferred out or never made it to campus. Those last fe years Bo was here set us up for several years of depth issues... which we are feeling now and have been the past couple of years. Bo's talent that he did recruit, were players who wanted to play in the system Bo ran. Some of them did not have the skill sets or want to play in Mike Riley's system, which was the complete opposite of Bo's. Yes we had some talent... but it was sporadic and not enough to gel together to really make a great team at each level.
What Mike Riley has done, is get guys to play together. Get them to work hard with good attitudes. He's created consequences for drugs and academic failures (Randy Gregory had been allowed to fail multiple drug tests and then we were told he was injured when he was really suspended. We had been lied to about TMartinez's injury and media noticed his boot wasn't always on the same foot. Etc)
Mike has built his culture and hired guys to recruit hard. He's rebuilding. And that is going to take at least a couple more years. He is just now getting quarterbacks who can run his system. The skills players he needs are just now redshirt freshmen and sophomores. He realized he had a defensive line issue and made changes to accommodate. Parella has really only signed one class so far. They are young and need time.
I find what Mike Riley has done so far to be a great job with improvement each year. That's all you can ask for. Nebraska is not going to dish out $5-6million a year for a coach. We never have and just won't. Mike is a really good option for his price point. His assistants like working for him and work hard for him. We are slowly restocking the DL, DB's, QB's, WR's, and TE's. OL and RB need to be strong now to get some players in there.
I do have concern about Cav... he has several 4* players on his line (5 I think), yet he can't get any of them to play at a next level caliber. Why is that? He has talent on his line, but they struggle so much. It may be a mental thing. They may be thinking Cav's teachings aren't working. I dunno. But it's definitely something to keep an eye on. In an NFL Pro Style Offense it is essential to have a good line. If we don't have a good line, we just check down all the time and then the defense plays the checkdown because we can't let plays develop downfield. The NFL quarterbacks who look great are the NFL QB's who have great lines... look at Carr with Oakland last year, look at Prescott with Dallas, etc. If we can't get this line playing with dominance then we can't have an explosive offense.
Nice post, I agree with most of it. The issue of the offensive line and Coach Cav is a dicey one and one that requires patence.
In 2016 Nebraska was set to start 3 sophs a walk on and a Jr that played only a couple of years HS ball in Canada. One player gets hurt (Foster) before the season starts, they move the back up walk on senior transfer left tackle into that spot a week before the first game. They actually don't play too bad not great, but are making progress. Then the injuries start. The right guard (Farmer) goes down and misses a couple of games with and ankle injury causing a little used 5 year senior (Whittiker) to be used. The rt tackle (Knevel) goes down with an ankle injury and is hobbled the rest of the year. A walk on Sophomore (Conrad) with very little experience comes in and plays pretty well all things considered and ends up starting 5 games. The Lt tackle (Gates) hurts his ankle misses the rest of the game, doesn't miss a start, but is pretty limited the rest of the year. The starting Rt guard (Foster) actually makes a fantastic recovery and plays in the last 3 games of the season.
That is last years offensive line in a nut shell.
Playing injury free or relatively injury free is most important on the offensive line. Ankle injuries are killers on the offensive line. Look back at the great offensive lines NU had in the 90's and they were starting the same guys the whole season and they were old guys. In 1994 considered one of the greatest O-lines ever they started 4 5th year seniors and a 4th year junior.
The next year the line was younger but they were still guys that were om third 3rd year of learning from upper classmen and from a legendary O-line coach that was working the same basic system that had been done since 1962.
Everyone loves what they do at Wisconsin and Iowa on the offensive line. I sure do. Those offensive lines have been doing the same thing since 1990 at Wisconsin, that was Alvarez's first year, and 1999 for Iowa, Ferentz first year. For the most part they start older Jr's and Sr's that have been in the system and learned from the older players about how to do things and things don't very from the system in place.
Cav is trying to do this exact thing. Build depth and gain experience working as a unit. Offensive line is the hardest position in football to play and the hardest position to coach. If we don't see steady improvement this year than I will start to worry, but if they can keep the injury bug down I do expect the line to be better and to improve as the season progresses.
