Nebraska's Approach to "Getting Back"

[JJ Husker]

Kind of a chicken/egg problem. Frost can't win without the better athletes, but the better athletes won't come/stay unless he wins.

I say, put the money out there, get the 4/5 stars, and if we still don't win much, Frost is the problem. 

Well it’s a bit too late to test this theory. Frost is going to have to win this year with the players he already has. IMO there won’t be another year for Frost unless he wins quite a few more games, now.

 

[BigRedBuster]

This is completely false. We’ve had plenty good enough athletes to win a lot more games than we have. Sure, it will take better athletes to get on par with tOSU or the national top ten but the quality of our players has not been the problem in about 90% of our loses. It doesn’t require highly paid better players to beat the likes of Illinois, Minnesota, Purdue, Iowa, NW, Wisconsin, anyone in the B1G not named Buckeye.

Yes.....so many of the games we have lost, weren't lost because the player or players didn't have the athletic ability to make the play.  They were lost because of players just failing to do so....for whatever reason.

Prime example, the MSU game last year, the punter had the ability to punt to the correct side of the field, but didn't.  Yant has the ability to make a 2 yard TD with a hole wide open but didn't because he tripped.  Martinez had the ability to hold onto the ball in the Michigan game, but didn't.  It goes on and on and on.

 

[seaofred92]

This is completely false. We’ve had plenty good enough athletes to win a lot more games than we have. Sure, it will take better athletes to get on par with tOSU or the national top ten but the quality of our players has not been the problem in about 90% of our loses. It doesn’t require highly paid better players to beat the likes of Illinois, Minnesota, Purdue, Iowa, NW, Wisconsin, anyone in the B1G not named Buckeye.

Is “getting back” to you winning games against Purdue and Minnesota or is it competing for league titles? Because I do agree with you the talent level required to beat average football teams has been here for numerous years. Can’t say the same about competing for league titles- which is my version of “getting back”.

By the way- NU just finished 41st in the 2022 247 Team Composite Rankings and we currently have one singular interior defensive lineman worth a damn on the roster. Not a great sign for the future. 

 

[JJ Husker]

Is “getting back” to you winning games against Purdue and Minnesota or is it competing for league titles? Because I do agree with you the talent level required to beat average football teams has been here for numerous years. Can’t say the same about competing for league titles- which is my version of “getting back”.

By the way- NU just finished 41st in the 2022 247 Team Composite Rankings and we currently have one singular interior defensive lineman worth a damn on the roster. Not a great sign for the future. 

I would agree that we need better players to truly compete for league titles and natties again. So in that aspect YOU were not wrong. To really get back to where we were over 20 years ago will require some better talent. But to get there we have to first win the winnable games. Winning begets winning. It will take a lot more of that before the right recruits will really look at us. IMO Nebraska can’t simply buy their way back with NIL money. We have the players for those first steps. Our current problem(s) lie elsewhere.

But the other post I quoted which stated the coaches can’t win without better talent, well that’s just horses#!t. We could/should be winning a lot more already without better talent. The Purdues and MSUs and Iowas are not a NU talent problem.

 

[LumberJackSker]

They have signed with Texas A&M this year.  I don't recall seeing A&M in the playoffs.  They might not be a losing program but they haven't "won" and national championship since pre 1940.  They put the money out there and got a pretty good recruiting class

Texas am had a great recruiting class. There boosters spent a lot of cash. Texas am also has a nation champion winning coach and hasn't had a losing season in about 10 years. Asking nebraska boosters to do that with what frost has done the last 4 years is ridicules.

 

[SouthLincoln Husker]

This is completely false. We’ve had plenty good enough athletes to win a lot more games than we have. Sure, it will take better athletes to get on par with tOSU or the national top ten but the quality of our players has not been the problem in about 90% of our loses. It doesn’t require highly paid better players to beat the likes of Illinois, Minnesota, Purdue, Iowa, NW, Wisconsin, anyone in the B1G not named Buckeye.

I did not say that!  I said NIL has nothing to do with coaching and nothing to do woth winning or lossing.  Too many assumptions!!!!

 

[JJ Husker]

I did not say that!  I said NIL has nothing to do with coaching and nothing to do woth winning or lossing.  Too many assumptions!!!!

I think it would be safe for you to assume that everyone reading and commenting on these pages knows that NIL money doesn’t impact coaching.  Based on your comments (current and in the past) it sure looked like you were saying all we need is better players. My point is, we don’t need better players to get better results for the majority of our games. To be even more clear, player talent has not been and is not the primary problem.

 

[TheSker]

Texas am had a great recruiting class. There boosters spent a lot of cash. Texas am also has a nation champion winning coach and hasn't had a losing season in about 10 years. Asking nebraska boosters to do that with what frost has done the last 4 years is ridicules.

Funnily enough Frost is still around with the support of those boosters.

 

[SouthLincoln Husker]

I think it would be safe for you to assume that everyone reading and commenting on these pages knows that NIL money doesn’t impact coaching.  Based on your comments (current and in the past) it sure looked like you were saying all we need is better players. My point is, we don’t need better players to get better results for the majority of our games. To be even more clear, player talent has not been and is not the primary problem.

I disagree.  Talent is not where it needs to be.

 

[JJ Husker]

I disagree.  Talent is not where it needs to be.

And you would be wrong. Talent is not the problem.

Am I doing this right?

 

[JJ Husker]

I can't imagine boosters and fans doing that when the current head coach's greatest achievements so far have been close loses. People want to have something to show for their investment.

Has nothing to do with the coaches.  It's about get better athletes with money!

@SouthLincoln Husker

Since you are claiming you meant something different than the way I took it, can you explain the correct way to interpret your above reply to LumberJackSker?

He is clearly saying the same thing I have been, that our problems with winning obviously can be tied to things (like coaching) that NIL money and better athletes will not fix. If you weren’t disagreeing with him (us), what were you trying to say that I failed to take away?

 

[SouthLincoln Husker]

@SouthLincoln Husker

Since you are claiming you meant something different than the way I took it, can you explain the correct way to interpret your above reply to LumberJackSker?

He is clearly saying the same thing I have been, that our problems with winning obviously can be tied to things (like coaching) that NIL money and better athletes will not fix. If you weren’t disagreeing with him (us), what were you trying to say that I failed to take away?

I disagree!  For the third time, we need better players!

 

[JJ Husker]

I disagree!  For the third time, we need better players!

That’s what I thought you meant. Yes, we disagree. I mean sure I’d take better players and we do need better to compete against tOSU but we already have better players than virtually everyone else in the B1G. So logic dictates that isn’t what has been keeping us from winning.
 

Unless you are implying we need extremely better players than every other team in the country to overcome the actual things that are keeping us from winning. In that case, I might say you have somewhat of a point but I’d say there’s a more logical, and cheaper, fix.

 

[LumberJackSker]

What happened to everyone saying that Frost did such a great job recruiting those top 20 classes? I thought all he needed was more time for his recruits to replace all those do nothing bad attitude Riley recruits? Now all the sudden its his 5th year and the team isnt talented enough to compete in the west?

So the fix is for the boosters and fans to create a multimillion dollar slush fund to pay recruits and entrust the guy who in 4 years hasn't put together a team talented enough to even make a bowl game with it? I guess Nebraska has to since everyone else is i just dont know how you can think a coach with frost's record is going to realistically inspire people to donate that much money.

 

[Mavric]

What happened to everyone saying that Frost did such a great job recruiting those top 20 classes? I thought all he needed was more time for his recruits to replace all those do nothing bad attitude Riley recruits? Now all the sudden its his 5th year and the team isnt talented enough to compete in the west?

So the fix is for the boosters and fans to create a multimillion dollar slush fund to pay recruits and entrust the guy who in 4 years hasn't put together a team talented enough to even make a bowl game with it? I guess Nebraska has to since everyone else is i just dont know how you can think a coach with frost's record is going to realistically inspire people to donate that much money.

Eh ... everyone likes to be overly-dramatic and claim they have all the answers.

Frost recruited pretty well pre-COVID.  The problem was there were a lot of holes in the roster when he got here, especially on offense.  There was one legitimate RB on the roster when he got here.  There were two legitimate WRs.  Two were seniors and one didn't stick around.  The OL cupboard was pretty bare.

Then he had his own struggles trying to recover from that.  He struck out on a lot of WRs.  He got some talented RBs who didn't stick around.  It takes time for OL to develop then our best one blew out his knee.  

Now we've struggled to recruit/develop DLinemen.  And Nebraska hasn't been able to find a game-changing EDGE in nigh on a decade.

So there have been enough holes - and catastrophic special teams - that it overshadows the good players we do have.

Do we have some really good players?  Yes.

Do we have enough really good players to overcome this misses and miscues?  Apparently not.

We could use better players.

We could use to execute better.

Yet for all the complaining about how terrible we are, we gave the #10 team in the country all they could handle (at their place).  We had the #9 team beat and gave it away.  We had the #3 team beat if we fall down with the ball.  We played right with the #6 team in the country.

By some statistical analysis we were actually more likely  to be 11-1 last year than we were 3-9. 

People can laugh all they want.  Yes, at some point those have to turn into wins.  They aren't moral victories.

But we actually did a lot of things really well last year.  We just made the huge mistakes when we couldn't afford them.