Undone

For sure. Someone had shared a stat a few weeks ago about how NU is still something like 6th in the country in football net revenue. That's amazing. And the portion of that money that's funneled in from boosters/alumni/that sort of thing used to go to coaching salaries & facilities. "Hey, check out all these new amenities we have now!" That's not nearly as enticing as "check out this salary we can offer you by coming here." I do think we have somewhat of a leg up in that category compared to our competition in B1G West. Now it's just about having a staff that fully embraces being on the bleeding edges of it and pushing it to its fullest potential. And I think Rhule is probably down with that plan.

For sure. It's just way, way too early to tell whether Matt Rhule is actually that guy or not. This is an interesting talking point, but not for the reasons you're mentioning. This is around the time that parity really crept up in the B1G. Teams like Minnesota, Indiana, and eventually even Illinois slowly became games on a schedule that weren't automatic wins for the mid-tier teams like us. I'm a big Pelini fan, but I don't think he would have attained that 9 win minimum in the last 5ish seasons. But that's a different topic. But back to your point, the right coach could get us back to being roughly in that zone of wins now that we can basically pay players a salary. And I mentioned that as being one of the reasons we could still be a decent team again. I just think it's much harder than people think it is, and I also think there's some entitlement that's baked into most fans' concept of what Husker football is in 2023.

Not pictured: The seven points we spotted them on the first play of that game by letting them run the opening kickoff for a TD and being -2 in the turnover margin.

The big one I can come up with is NIL. I think that our foundation of boosters, fans, and where we rank in net revenue suggests that in this new era where the players basically get paid a salary as semi-professionals, we probably have a leg up in that area over most of the rest of the B1G West. We have to be on the bleeding edge of paying players and being an attractive spot for portal targets to land. And it kind of looks like we're doing that.

What makes you say that? Is it because Rhule is that much better of a coach than the others in the B1G West? Or just because we used to be good and we still sell out the stadium? Because I'd tend to say it's the opposite. Given the last six years for us, there aren't many reasons I can come up with that Nebraska can ever routinely threaten for a B1G Title and a playoff spot.

Yeah but Northwestern was a very different game one than Minnesota will be this year.

I've been thinking the same thing. No doubt that's pretty much his dream gig - and maybe he gets it if he somehow turns our dumpster fire into something great. He's smart enough to know that he isn't going to last 5+ seasons just because he runs plays out of the 'I' or sprinkles in some option. He also is clearly in the upper percentiles of motivated & driven people, because he turned down roughly $40M from the Panthers to come here. And even though he gets a guaranteed $66M if he instantly crashes & burns (which I think is just absolutely stupid as a paradigm), I know he's going to put everything he's got into this gig because that's just who he is. Going back to the topic of the thread, he'll be in the best place to be successful if he can change the overall psychology of the team to be confident in the practice & training they have under their belt and to step out onto the field believing they'll win. He needs to find the root cause of what's been causing the team to play scared, which makes the guys really mistake-prone.

He cares about Nebraska football being successful under his leadership. That's probably so obvious that it isn't even worth mentioning, right?. Although I will say...his contract is pretty much ridiculous; he could all of a sudden stop caring at any point and walk with $66M in total. But I was talking about caring about Nebraska football's history, etc. The stuff that Nebraska football entails/entailed before he stepped foot on campus.

Matt Rhule cares about Nebraska? I kind of doubt there's much truth to that. He has no ties to the program whatsoever. Frost cared. But he had no self-awareness for how many shortcomings he had as head coaching material to actually turn things around.

Yeah, Tim Beck is remembered with such vitriol by so many fans but I don't really get it. He had a good knack for running both inside and outside power. His formations, plays, and the execution he got out of his players were pretty impressive when you consider how much steam the Nebraska "brand name" had lost by the time Callahan had been fired. But then as @Loebarth mentioned, he also had the luxury of running backs named Rex Burkhead and Ameer Abdullah. I think Abdullah was possibly the fourth best Husker running back of all time (with Phillips, Rozier, & Green ahead of him). He was potentially even right there with Green. So...that gave the Bo era's offense a boost that can't be overstated. Swinging over into the Frost era, it seemed like Frost wanted to run quite a bit of outside runs when he had Maurice Washington for a brief stint, and then he sort of switched to favoring the inside zone attack, and we just didn't do it very well under him IMO. To bring it forward to Rhule, whether or not he'll run outside power consistently is something I'm pretty interested in finding out. I'd like to watch this team try that with Johnson.

I feel like I disagree with that actually. Doing it this way keeps a level playing field on who they were projected to be by analysts as compared to any other player. But I do see what you mean.

Yes. If the only major improvements on offense are not chronically fumbling and not chronically getting false starts/holds/away-from-the-ball penalties, we'd probably take a significant jump forward. There's a lot of talk about how Rhule will use big, bunched sets to run the ball out of, in an effort to help the offensive line by having extra blockers. There's nothing about that plan that absolutely means our running back productivity is going to be any better than it was in the last couple seasons at all; the players still have to actually isolate defenders & create holes. It'll take a ton of steps forward in execution for any of that to be better than it has been.

Not exactly sure what made you think I was talking about the Bo Pelini era. I was talking about the Frost era, and specifically referenced the 2019 - 2021 seasons.

Good stuff! So many teams are running what we'd call this 3-3-5. Whether you're a 4-3, a 3-4, a 3-3-5, you either have at least one physical & athletic edge rusher that can get to the passer or you don't. I think there's a good chance that if MJ Sherman & Jamari Butler are highly motivated, we're covered there. That's kind of what we've lacked on defense for the last several seasons (in addition to some bad tackling sprinkled in there). As far as running the ball goes, biggest thing to talk about there is how hard that's actually going to be, in my opinion. Just saying he's going to make it a priority doesn't mean much. We've had a problem getting our running back's to produce good YPC numbers. We had Martinez padding our rushing stats for three years (2019 - 2021), but we kind of struggled to get our base running game going.

What now? Expand on this, please.

Some good sarcasm there. It's funny though because Frost's system wasn't that different from Urban Meyer's zone read during his heyday. And I consistently felt like what Frost was trying to do here was an excellent approach and his vision was great - I think he wanted to really challenge the strategies of the other teams in the B1G West. But he & his coaches just couldn't buckle down and put it all together.

For sure, @admo. You always get an edge when you're playing great special teams in the B1G. Attention to detail on defense & special teams is something Frost didn't really do at all.

Buschini was at least measurably better than what we saw in '21-'22. In fact he had a 74 yarder against Wisconsin last year. We saw some unbelievably epic fails those seasons. With the best one being this:

Yeah. Coming off of being a struggling program and then this insane roster overhaul of basically 60 players leaving the team, it's crazy. Here's their schedule: So I guess I can actually see a scenario where their only wins come from maybe Oregon State & Arizona, or maybe Oregon State & Stanford.

Colorado's over/under is hilarious.

Well, Frost dialed up plenty of RPO plays for Martinez in his time here. And as far as max protect pass plays, yeah, Frost didn't have as much of that in his playbook. So Martinez's "decision making" always looked shakier when he was running for his life. And this is a rehashing of a ton of old conversations on this site, but I think Martinez would have had a lower turnover rate if the rest of the team had been more mistake-free. It wasn't just him making all of the mistakes; it was a constant train wreck of bad special teams, 15 yard penalties, false starts, and the list goes on. And we almost always ranked highly in offensive yards per game, but it was a lack of power in the red zone that often times left us failing to put more points on the board. And, he really only had one season where the defense was halfway decent (and even in 2021 it was deceptively bad in terms of overall quality when you looked at yards allowed). If we still have those problems this season, I think with Rhule's more conservative offensive style we could see 2023 being a thing where we score even fewer points than we did in the Martinez years.

We lost those games because of turnovers, dumb special teams gaffes, and terrible defense though.

Agreed on 2/3 of the snaps probably coming from the shotgun. What does "balanced" mean for you in this context? Curious on that. Like, referring to the run/pass ratio? Because I think we're going to run the ball a higher percentage of the time than last year for sure, and maybe even slightly higher than Frost's average over his time as coach here.

If Jeff Sims is somehow actually the third best "returning" QB in the B1G, then I'm going to say we definitely break the bowl-less streak this season. Might even break the streak if he merely doesn't turn the ball over like our previous two starters.

I think Minnesota had a deceptively good offensive line last year also, actually. They only return two of those five starters, and that hurts them. I'm not sure if they brought in any portal guys that will start though. But whether it's easy to admit or not, they're a well-coached team. Just hoping we can say the same about our team come late August.