Fire Satterfield

[BigRedBuster]

To me, having a label helps tremendously in what Rhule is selling to recruits and transfer portal guys.  He had the luxury last offseason of selling the dream and he did a damn good job getting some high quality talent to come to Lincoln.  If I'm an offensive skill player recruit in 2025, surely I have some questions as to what I'm committing to when I just witnessed a full season of question marks.  

Your short list is spot on.  If I may counter the running the ball point- we're still way too over reliant on qb runs.  If you remove the massive qb runs we had on broken pass plays (there were quite a few) our rushing totals dont look so great.  If you look at our average yards per rush, essentially 9 progrums in the big ten fared better per rush.  I feel like 80% of the past decade we've been boom or bust with the qb play and this reliance has to end.

Screenshot 2023-11-28 at 2.20.39 PM Medium.heic 16.12 kB · 4 downloads

Really?

QB….hey, we want to win games. We need a QB that can read defenses, make good decisions and is accurate. If you come, we can win a lot of games and you get drafted. We can design the offense around your strengths. 
 

RB….Look, we are committed to running the ball.  If you’re good, you could rack up a lot of yards/TDs and get drafted. 
 

WR…. Look at the great QB we have coming in.  Look at the WRs we had running wide open all year.  This QB is going to get them the ball. Also, look at the WRs Nebraska has gotten drafted recently.  
 

I don’t get why it has to have a label. 

 

[gossamorharpy]

Really?

QB….hey, we want to win games. We need a QB that can read defenses, make good decisions and is accurate. If you come, we can win a lot of games and you get drafted. We can design the offense around your strengths. 
 

RB….Look, we are committed to running the ball.  If you’re good, you could rack up a lot of yards/TDs and get drafted. 
 

WR…. Look at the great QB we have coming in.  Look at the WRs we had running wide open all year.  This QB is going to get them the ball. Also, look at the WRs Nebraska has gotten drafted recently.  
 

I don’t get why it has to have a label. 

lol, well when you put it that way, it sounds dumb.  But just to play devils advocate- Im a qb, couldn't tell ya exactly what strengths this progrum is looking for.  You wanna be a power run team and protect the ball yet the qb is taking the lion share of the rushing attempts and getting beat the hell up. If I have any aspirations of going to the nfl, this isnt an ideal scenario.

If im a RB- you havent had a rb drafted in close to 10 years now- I look at your neighbors up north in wisconsin and other big ten programs that do that on an annual basis- why am i committing to a place who has devalued the running back across 2 coaching staffs?

WR- Who exactly has gotten drafted? 2 WRs who spent the majority of their careers elsewhere?  What I see on the field this year is question marks at QB, the guy who gets me the ball.  If im on the fence, i sure as hell am not going to a place where theres a question if I can even get the ball delivered to me.

Obviously extremes, but yeah, i think it would help us tremendously if we could sell something based off what is seen on the field to recruits.

 

[BigRedBuster]

Im a qb, couldn't tell ya exactly what strengths this progrum is looking for.  You wanna be a power run team and protect the ball yet the qb is taking the lion share of the rushing attempts and getting beat the hell up. If I have any aspirations of going to the nfl, this isnt an ideal scenario.

No, they aren't.  We had 478 rushing attempts.  QBs accounted for 191 of those.  RBs accounted for 270.  And...it would be pretty easy to explain that the reason for that was we went to more of an option game with more QB runs because, most of the year, we had QBs that were better at running than passing.  And, our top RBs got hurt.  Our QBs accounted for 40% of our runs.  LSU (with possibly the best QB in the land) the QBs accounted for 34% of runs.  Not a big difference, and they had a good passing attack.  This is actually evidence that we are willing to mold the offense to your strengths.  And, how many of those QB runs were actually pass plays that ended up in scrambles because the QB couldn't see open receivers and scrambled earlier than he needed to.

If im a RB- you havent had a rb drafted in close to 10 years now- I look at your neighbors up north in wisconsin and other big ten programs that do that on an annual basis- why am i committing to a place who has devalued the running back across 2 coaching staffs?

And, if those top RBs hadn't gotten hurt (and the injuries weren't the scheme's fault), they would have had good years setting themselves up to show they are good enough to have a chance.

WR- Who exactly has gotten drafted? 2 WRs who spent the majority of their careers elsewhere?  What I see on the field this year is question marks at QB, the guy who gets me the ball.  If im on the fence, i sure as hell am not going to a place where theres a question if I can even get the ball delivered to me.

Yep, the two WRs playing in the NFL from the previous two years were under different staffs.  But, we had WRs running open last year and a good QB would have gotten them the ball.  We had a true freshman WR almost matching 50+ yard catches with the best WR in the country.  And...this is why I said we need to get a good/decent transfer QB committed early.

 

[gossamorharpy]

No, they aren't.  We had 478 rushing attempts.  QBs accounted for 191 of those.  RBs accounted for 270.  And...it would be pretty easy to explain that the reason for that was we went to more of an option game with more QB runs because, most of the year, we had QBs that were better at running than passing.  And, our top QBs got hurt.  Our QBs accounted for 40% of our runs.  LSU (with possibly the best QB in the land) the QBs accounted for 34% of runs.  Not a big difference, and they had a good passing attack.  This is actually evidence that we are willing to mold the offense to your strengths.  And, how many of those QB runs were actually pass plays that ended up in scrambles because the QB couldn't see open receivers and scrambled earlier than he needed to.

And, if those top RBs hadn't gotten hurt (and the injuries weren't the scheme's fault), they would have had good years setting themselves up to show they are good enough to have a chance.

Yep, the two QBs playing in the NFL from the previous two years were under different staffs.  But, we had WRs running open last year and a good QB would have gotten them the ball.  We had a true freshman WR almost matching 50+ yard catches with the best WR in the country.  And...this is why I said we need to get a good/decent transfer QB committed early.

Hot damn, I'm sold. Can you just join rhules staff in place of weger and help satt on the recruiting trail?

 

[Undone]

We didn't have a scheme this year. You know that because if you have a scheme then half of opposing defense isn't waiting on the QB on every option play because they have to account for the other plays/components that make it an actual scheme. A big reason so many plays ended up as QB runs was the scheme as such didn't exist to force defenders to account for someone else. About the only symmetry this offense had was to hope they over-commited to the QB runs enough that eventually you could drop one over the top for a big play.

I think this largely happened because it turned out that we didn't have a QB that could reliably find open receivers and/or hit them in the passing game. Sims couldn't do it and Haarberg couldn't do it.

I thought the best conference game on offense was against Wisconsin from a play mix & execution standpoint. I'm not going to count the Purdue game because they're just a horrible team.

We got a dynamic QB in there in game 11 against a decent opponent (obviously Wisconsin is way down from where they've been), and then things looked different when Purdy was finding guys as they were breaking open and actually hitting them.

I mean, hey...the criticism over "no good QB is going to want to come here out of the portal" maybe has legs. Maybe. Iowa is currently in this doom loop with offensive skill player recruiting.

 

[Undone]

128th in passing attempts per game. We did not abandon the run.

I hear you. Couple things though.

I imagine "total plays per game" ranks towards the bottom of FBS either way with how we run the play clock down on every damn play and then also had so many drives get killed with turnovers. So you combine that with not having a QB who can even remotely reliably throw the ball until game 11, and yeah, not surprising that's where we ranked.

Sometimes we asked our QB to run the ball on third down when 1st down was a pathetically executed "stand in the pocket and scan the field on slow-developing routes" plays that resulted in incompletions or sacks. I noticed this happening a lot. I guess we'd file this under 'play calling.' So it's not abandoning the run, but it's situationally bad.

 

[KCBuc]

I hear you. Couple things though.

I imagine "total plays per game" ranks towards the bottom of FBS either way with how we run the play clock down on every damn play and then also had so many drives get killed with turnovers. So you combine that with not having a QB who can even remotely reliably throw the ball until game 11, and yeah, not surprising that's where we ranked.

Sometimes we asked our QB to run the ball on third down when 1st down was a pathetically executed "stand in the pocket and scan the field on slow-developing routes" plays that resulted in incompletions or sacks. I noticed this happening a lot. I guess we'd file this under 'play calling.' So it's not abandoning the run, but it's situationally bad.

They are consistent at it. I’d say it’s their identity but some here get ruffled up about labeling what NU does. 

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

We've had the "what is our offensive identity discussion?" for years, often led by people who think it should come with a nice clean label, like "Air Raid" or "Triple Option" although they really don't want Air Raid and just want our identity to be 1995 Nebraska. 

The word "multiple" gets tossed in like it's a cop-out or weakness, when in fact it's what every good offense does. Schemes are great when they work, but you need to make adjustments when the other team does, and scheme games differently against certain defenses every season. Rhule's first season was always going to be an experiment based on whatever talent stepped up or got carted off the field. I was a little surprised that he went all in on featuring a running QB, although it played to our history and perhaps had an advantage in this particular Big 10.

Although we started off horribly, we did get to see our QBs break off big runs while getting a dozen or so called QB keepers. Those QB draws work great when you have a drop back pocket passer to sell it. I think it still could have worked with a 50% passer, but no offensive identity works when you lead the entire NCAA in turnovers.

I don't know how coaches coach turnovers. It's not like the schemes and playcalls themselves are demanding and risky. It's not like just one player is the culprit. But as mentioned, a s#!tty 1-11 Northwestern team is now 7-5 and going to a bowl game, having cut turnovers down from 30 to 9. What do you do in the off-season to make that happen? 

 

[gossamorharpy]

128th in passing attempts per game. We did not abandon the run.

We didn't abandon the run but we sure as hell abandoned a RB run first offense.  Our QBs need to cut their rushing attempts by half, imo.  Seemingly every year since 2010 this board b!^@hes about qb health and injuries yet every season we rinse and repeat and have an offense built around qb run as our first option who inevitably doesnt move the same come oct/nov, or play at all, because they get the s#!t beat out of them every week

Ive posted ad nauseum on these threads about how our rushing stats were a mirage this year.  You take away the massive runs Sims, HH and purdy had on broken plays and our numbers look average at best.  You look at RB avg per rush across the big ten and we ranked towards the bottom middle of the conference.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Sometimes we asked our QB to run the ball on third down when 1st down was a pathetically executed "stand in the pocket and scan the field on slow-developing routes" plays that resulted in incompletions or sacks. I noticed this happening a lot. I guess we'd file this under 'play calling.' So it's not abandoning the run, but it's situationally bad.

I wondered if this was a function of QBs who weren't the best decision makers, good defensive secondaries, or young receivers who just weren't skilled at getting open. Then figured it was probably all three. We forget that the passing game actually did keep us in a lot of games, and on a yards per attempt basis it was hard to recommend any play as the obvious choice. Passing on first down and running on third down are slightly less expected, so that can work when everyone executes well. But we just weren't that good. Good enough to string together three or four solid series of downs before sputtering out. People wonder why we don't stay with what's working, but nothing works consistently. I also think opposing DCs consistently make better adjustments than Nebraska's OC, and that feels like it's been going on for awhile now. When Nebraska gets in the Red Zone, or god forbid Overtime, defenses seem to know exactly what we're going to attempt. 

 

[Undone]

Passing on first down and running on third down are slightly less expected, so that can work when everyone executes well. But we just weren't that good.

The question I asked myself and others when this would happen though is, how many times does Satterfield have to see it to say to himself "you know, maybe we should just take the 3 yards on 1st down and go from there."

If things like this happen again next year and we're losing games 14-13, it's going to be a new level of suck.

 

[DrunkOffPunch]

I hear you. Couple things though.

I imagine "total plays per game" ranks towards the bottom of FBS either way with how we run the play clock down on every damn play and then also had so many drives get killed with turnovers. So you combine that with not having a QB who can even remotely reliably throw the ball until game 11, and yeah, not surprising that's where we ranked.

Sometimes we asked our QB to run the ball on third down when 1st down was a pathetically executed "stand in the pocket and scan the field on slow-developing routes" plays that resulted in incompletions or sacks. I noticed this happening a lot. I guess we'd file this under 'play calling.' So it's not abandoning the run, but it's situationally bad.

You’re not taking into consideration what the defense is doing. Stacked boxes. We ran tons of quick routes. Problem is, HH consistently misses high over the middle on them. Easy turnover. There’s a reason he was catching passes instead of throwing them at the beginning of the season.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

Ive posted ad nauseum on these threads about how our rushing stats were a mirage this year.  You take away the massive runs Sims, HH and purdy had on broken plays and our numbers look average at best.  You look at RB avg per rush across the big ten and we ranked towards the bottom middle of the conference.

I don't think anyone is arguing that our rushing stats weren't sad and unfulfilling, just that Satterfield never abandoned the run. Yeah, there were plenty of QB scrambles, but there was also a higher number of called QB runs, probably the most since Jammal Lord. Those got scaled back a tick during the season and given to the RBs, the most prolific of them, Grant, getting 413 rushing yards for the season. That's one homely mirage. 

And yet....that magic combo of 4.4 yards per rush and 6.2 yards per pass attempt might have won all but two games this year if Nebraska didn't lead the world in turnovers. 

 

[gossamorharpy]

I don't think anyone is arguing that our rushing stats weren't sad and unfulfilling, just that Satterfield never abandoned the run. Yeah, there were plenty of QB scrambles, but there was also a higher number of called QB runs, probably the most since Jammal Lord. Those got scaled back a tick during the season and given to the RBs, the most prolific of them, Grant, getting 413 rushing yards for the season. That's one homely mirage. 

And yet....that magic combo of 4.4 yards per rush and 6.2 yards per pass attempt might have won all but two games this year if Nebraska didn't lead the world in turnovers. 

How crazy is that lol.  Is it ok to be both very optimistic about our future but pissed off as hell about the opportunity we just “fumbled” away to go 8-4/9-3 in year 1? 
 

 

[soup]

We didn't abandon the run but we sure as hell abandoned a RB run first offense.  Our QBs need to cut their rushing attempts by half, imo.  Seemingly every year since 2010 this board b!^@hes about qb health and injuries yet every season we rinse and repeat and have an offense built around qb run as our first option who inevitably doesnt move the same come oct/nov, or play at all, because they get the s#!t beat out of them every week

Ive posted ad nauseum on these threads about how our rushing stats were a mirage this year.  You take away the massive runs Sims, HH and purdy had on broken plays and our numbers look average at best.  You look at RB avg per rush across the big ten and we ranked towards the bottom middle of the conference.

Well, of course if you take away a team's best plays then their stats will suffer.  Seems like a bad argument to make.  The reason why the RB game wasn't as successful this year as it could of been, is because we had no passing game what so ever.  The QB runs work, because he is the only one that can run free.  The few times other teams "spied" our QB we were able to hit a few big pass plays to get them right back out of that, but it didn't happen nearly enough.  That's also the reason why HH's running wasn't nearly as effective as the games went on.