Nebfanatic
All-American
I'm more talking about the young players I see playing on the field that I think have potential. Spielman, Jamies, Bryant, D. Thomas to name a few. The D backs aren't playing well right now but I think Bootle and Jackson have talent. There are more young players than that but the whole roster is pretty young. Next year we will be playing a lot more Sr. than we are this season. Not to mention I think guys like Guy Thomas and Avery Roberts can be good after a redshirt season. The numbers may look the same as Pelinis but I see Rileys recruits playing better or just as well as upperclassmen at a few different spots.I think you are giving more credit to Riley's recruiting results than he actually deserves. There has been a lot of hype. There have been some big time guys visit. But the actual results have been significantly lacking the hype they've received.
He's basically been recruiting at the same level Pelini was. Neither of his two classes have been nearly as highly-rated as Pelini's best two classes. This year's looked more promising early but has been languishing for months. When we had seven (or so) four-stars out of about 10 commits on our way to a class of about 15, it looked like this class was really going to be the significant improvement that has been advertised. Then we lost two four-stars. Then we took a couple mid-three-stars. Now we're probably going to be taking 19-20 instead of 15 which makes it tougher to keep pulling four-stars all the way through. Then the season started.
I'm sure the Riley apologists will like to say "well, if Riley hadn't been fired, this class would have been really good." But it's hard to recruit top classes to Nebraska when you're competing for conference championships. It's almost impossible when you're putting up .500 records.
This class would be solid if we would have had a decent season. But even then - by your statement - it would be another couple years before they would be contributing much (I don't agree with that but that's your story). Thus you'd be expecting a couple more years of this same type of seasons before we could expect improvement.
I don't buy that.