Rumored play calling swap at half..??

[runningblind]

well if you look at who's playing right now if you are looking at stars then you could say recruiting is good. just from memory:

offense-

Palmer 5*

Washington 4*

Brown 3*

Grant 3*

Thompson 4*

Benhart 4*

Corcoran 4*

Teddy P 4*

Bando 3*

Hixon WO*

Not terrible

Defense is a little different

Hill 4*

Newsome 3*

Henrich 4*

Reimer WO*

Farmer 3*

Buford 3*

Mathis 3*

Robinson 4*

Nelson 3*

Feist WO*

Almost half of the starters are 4* athletes.  

Those stars are potential out of high school. The transfer stars after they'd played college ball were lower. Thompson, Palmer and Washington are all 3* transfers.  Anyone think Ty Robinson and Nick Henrich are playing like 4* right now?

https://247sports.com/college/nebraska/Season/2022-Football/TransferPortal/?institutionkey=24025

That's kind of the point, they have potential but rarely does it translate to the field for us.

 

[MyBloodIsRed16]

The star power for the composite Mav posted shows us at 24 IIRC.  Not bad at all.  Considering 4 losing seasons. The problem is we don't perform like classes rated as high as they have been. The earlier classes had a lot of misses/attrition.  Riley, per the article I posted left Frost an adjusted class thank ranked 70th.  Frost's first class has been adjusted out to 69th.  It's been talked about before, but attrition and transfer portal has hurt/helped NU as well.  We pull in beter ranked classes (initially) than the majority of the B1G, but fail to produce results of other programs who's classes are comparable.  So it's coaching or classes not panning out or combination of both.  I really have no idea.  Since Pelini, we have been floating in a sea of mediocrity at best.  That's two coaches and multiple classes and still can't right the ship.  

Yeah I think it comes down to getting those 4* having them pan out(as 4*'s) and playing at the same time.  Seems like we only get a few that work and don't play at the same time or on the other side of the ball.  

 

[MyBloodIsRed16]

Those stars are potential out of high school. The transfer stars after they'd played college ball were lower. Thompson, Palmer and Washington are all 3* transfers.  Anyone think Ty Robinson and Nick Henrich are playing like 4* right now?

https://247sports.com/college/nebraska/Season/2022-Football/TransferPortal/?institutionkey=24025

That's kind of the point, they have potential but rarely does it translate to the field for us.

I understand that but you wouldn't be saying that recruiting was bad if all those guys signed in a class or two.  I don't think most of our 4*'s are playing like 4*'s. 

 

[Undone]

Anyone think Ty Robinson and Nick Henrich are playing like 4* right now?

That's not the conversation we're having here though.

You have to go apples to apples on the original rankings and compare those rankings to other B1G schools - then also do the attrition-weighted versions. Because the conversation is purely about recruiting, not developing or properly using the recruits.

What you brought up there delves into a different topic about how the coaches do/don't develop the talent they bring in.

 

[runningblind]

That's not the conversation we're having here though.

You have to go apples to apples on the original rankings and compare those rankings to other B1G schools. Because the conversation is purely about recruiting, not developing or properly using the recruits.

What you brought up there delves into a different topic about how the coaches do/don't develop the talent they bring in.

There fair but who cares about a snapshot  in time recruiting ranking if it never pans out? It's relevant to the overall product, if not this one conversation.

 

[Undone]

There fair but who cares about a snapshot  in time recruiting ranking if it never pans out? It's relevant to the overall product, if not this one conversation.

Not sure who laugh emoji'd your post but it wasn't me.   

I probably have spent too much time looking at the recruiting rank comparisons. I looked up Wisconsin's D-line recruiting numbers lately to comment on a post about how we had a "lack of talent on defense." I still think comparing the numbers (especially to other B1G West schools) can be fairly helpful.

What we've really needed on our team was for Greg Austin & Tuioti to have coached up the 3 star players on the lines into something above their grade, and to have developed depth at some of those key positions. Obviously they're both gone and it seems like it didn't happen.

But I also think our coaches really do suck at hammering home fundamentals. And that's one of the things that makes players look like their original high school star rankings were inflated (or that the numbers are all just garbage to begin with).

We could take the Nick Henrich comment over to another thread about the defense. Maybe he was rated way too high for a Nebraska high school player, I don't know. We needed him to be the JoJo replacement so bad.

 

[runningblind]

Not sure who laugh emoji'd your post but it wasn't me.   

I probably have spent too much time looking at the recruiting rank comparisons. I looked up Wisconsin's D-line recruiting numbers lately to comment on a post about how we had a "lack of talent on defense." I still think comparing the numbers (especially to other B1G West schools) can be fairly helpful.

What we've really needed on our team was for Greg Austin & Tuioti to have coached up the 3 star players on the lines into something above their grade, and to have developed depth at some of those key positions. Obviously they're both gone and it seems like it didn't happen.

But I also think our coaches really do suck at hammering home fundamentals. And that's one of the things that makes players look like their original high school star rankings were inflated (or that the numbers are all just garbage to begin with).

We could take the Nick Henrich comment over to another thread about the defense. Maybe he was rated way too high for a Nebraska high school player, I don't know. We needed him to be the JoJo replacement so bad.

I fully agree.  It is the most annoying/admirable thing about Wisconsin and Iowa is how they squeeze every drop out of 2/3* kids and make them play like 4* talent.  That is absolutely what we need but aren't getting.  Fundamentals is an astute observation.  We seem to be lacking in that and situational awareness most of the time.  

 

[jager]

I fully agree.  It is the most annoying/admirable thing about Wisconsin and Iowa is how they squeeze every drop out of 2/3* kids and make them play like 4* talent.  That is absolutely what we need but aren't getting.  Fundamentals is an astute observation.  We seem to be lacking in that and situational awareness most of the time.  

This is the worst part about watching them play. It's also what will probably get Frost fired.

 

[BigRedBuster]

@Undone and @runningblind, what I don't get is why aren't we?  We have gone through multiple coaching staffs and multiple position coaches, and we have the same problem.

I look at recruiting rankings as a view of what kinds of kids are coming into the program.  Those can be off when looking at individual players.  But, when you look at an entire team over the course of 6-8 years with multiple coaches coming through, why doesn't Nebraska ever get out of this cycle of players not panning out like they should?  I don't believe, when you look at an team as a whole, you can really say..."well, the rankings were wrong".

I keep getting back to, somehow, it's a cultural thing within the program that multiple coaches have not been able to pull it out of.  I firmly believe Scott sees it and is trying.  But, why can't coaches change that part of the culture? It's baffling to me.  It's a big part of why Scott felt he needed to flip the roster so bad when he got here.  He wanted to instill his culture.  But....we are still fighting the same things we have fought for a long time before Scott ever got here.

 

[Mavric]

This was the 2018 class adjusted ranking.  What should be our 5 yr senior leadership.  That class after re-ranking was 69th.  One spot better than Rileys readjusted class of 2017 which finished 70th.  

Riley's staff had the biggest discrepancy between hype and signings probably in the history of football.  Not surprising that his 2017 class (that was touted as "could be special" by Rivals early on) turned out to be horrid.  Transition classes are almost always lacking and when Riley didn't leave much for Frost to try to salvage in two weeks (while doing two jobs), it pretty much meant it was going to be bad as well.

 

[Undone]

@BigRedBuster: It could become a really long discussion but I think the short version of it is Frost not understanding just how tough it is to beat even some of the lower-level teams in the B1G West. It's a deceptively good conference/division.

Although it's maybe become a bit exaggerated over the past few years I do think it's true that Frost came in cocky that his offense would be scoring 40 points per game and the specifics of strength, toughness, special teams, and basic fundamentals is something he started worrying about only after it was probably too late.

And somebody can correct this if it's wrong but I don't think his staff had any experience in the B1G. And while that isn't a total prerequisite, it just made those original problems above get worse.

That, and some of these coaches just haven't been that good. Mike Dawson is one of the ones that I think has flown under the radar there, and the others have already been fired (Walters, Jovan Dewitt...the list goes on).

 

[Undone]

So to follow that up, there's been a narrative that Frost needed to step away from the offense a bit. As if to say that some of his contributions were doing more harm than good on the offense and somebody more competent than him needed to take over.

I don't think that's what was happening or was the problem at all.

I think it was more that from that very first offseason in Year 0, he didn't really personally help get the ball rolling on the high-level deficiencies that the program had. He probably did focus too much personally on the offense - in the sense that he maybe wasn't managing things better at a high level.

I really do think he deserves that criticism 100%.

 

[Mavric]

So to follow that up, there's been a narrative that Frost needed to step away from the offense a bit. As if to say that some of his contributions were doing more harm than good on the offense and somebody more competent than him needed to take over.

I don't think that's what was happening or was the problem at all.

Totally agree with this.

I think it was more that from that very first offseason in Year 0, he didn't really personally help get the ball rolling on the high-level deficiencies that the program had. He probably did focus too much personally on the offense - in the sense that he maybe wasn't managing things better at a high level.

I really do think he deserves that criticism 100%.

People like to think that they have all the answers and if the coach would just do this one simple thing, all the issues would be fixed.

Frost stepping back from the offense and hiring a dedicated special teams coach hasn't stopped us from missing field goals, attempting ill-advised onside kicks, near giving back a blocked punt because we tried to pick it up, getting any punt return yards or gotten us more turnovers on defense.  But people feel better because he did what they thought he should do.

 

[Undone]

Frost stepping back from the offense and hiring a dedicated special teams coach hasn't stopped us from missing field goals, attempting ill-advised onside kicks, near giving back a blocked punt because we tried to pick it up, getting any punt return yards or gotten us more turnovers on defense.  But people feel better because he did what they thought he should do.

We don't know whether or not Bill Busch actually has the ability to fix special teams here. But his resume is at least decent.

As to the bold, I thought Frost hiring a dedicated special teams coach made so much sense because that's what so many successful B1G teams also do.

This again goes back to understanding the conference you play in, what kind of ball is played, and not overlooking the basics that when ignored wind up turning you into a really bad team.

Jovan Dewitt sucked at the job, Dawson & Becton clearly weren't getting it done, so I'm pretty sure it made quite a bit of sense that better coaching focus on the issue was probably needed.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

People like to think that they have all the answers and if the coach would just do this one simple thing, all the issues would be fixed.

Frost stepping back from the offense and hiring a dedicated special teams coach hasn't stopped us from missing field goals, attempting ill-advised onside kicks, near giving back a blocked punt because we tried to pick it up, getting any punt return yards or gotten us more turnovers on defense.  But people feel better because he did what they thought he should do.

Don't you feel a little better about the kicking game? Last couple years a simple extra point was a PTSD experience. 

And we know it was Frost who stepped in to call the onside kicks. And recruited, developed and stayed loyal to Wyatt Liewer.

Am I blaming Scott Frost for everything?

Yeah. Maybe.