Saint Boseph

The classic Bo Pelini "What the f#*k am I doing here?" face, gets me every time. ^I chuckled. Sounds like something Faux Pelini would say/tweet. +1. On the night we get taken to the woodshed by IU no less

I live in New York and was watching this game while at the gym and started whooping and hollering quite loud when Saint Boseph randomly appeared on the screen. Needless to say a lot of people around me were startled and confused as to why I was cheering some random guy in the stand yet completely quiet for the rest of the game.

I think I remember reading that verbiage and concept mentioned in an LJS article a while go. Thanks a bunch for reminding me. As such, I agree with whateveritis1224 that projecting for a traditional FS-SS split doesn't seem to be the best exercise. Definitely agree that it would help to get some mass added to him, he looks really skinny. But I think the dude at 175 packs the wallop of a guy 15-20 pounds more than him. He seems like a well-compressed ball of energy based on what coaches and players describe and the limited special teams action I've seen. The guy stonewalled a couple KR's/PR's this year and has showed so far, even with a limited sample size, that he is a sound tackler. To your point, I do think that CJ at 175 would perform better as a safety that plays run-support in the box than Cooper, singleton, and harvey at 200+ (though to be fair, I haven't really seen much of Harvey or Singleton). I know that sounds pretty ridiculous saying a 175lb DB being better in run-support than a 200lb guy in any other circumstance, but that's really how high I think of CJ. I'm drinking the kool-aid big time on this guy and I've seen enough flashes of elite ability to conclude that he looks on course to develop into an elite DB. And If CJ gets to the 190-200 range without losing speed, forget about it. He'll be a blackshirt for a while.

it may be the case in our defense, I'm not sure as I've seen some interchangeable roles from Bo's safeties. But for the purpose of this exercise, I'm going off the traditional assumption that the FS is more of the roaming, ballhawk who stays deeper, while the SS is usually the hard-hitting run stopper who creeps pretty low into the box. Think Matt O'Hanlon (FS) and Larry Asante (SS) type of roles. MOH was definitely more of the ballhawk and Asante the hard-hitting run-stopper. Charles Jackson, by all accounts, is a hard-hitter in the Asante mold who's skill set would serve him better at SS than FS in my opinion.

Allen Iverson is widely cited by high school FB enthusiasts in the area as the best football player to ever come out of Newport News, Virginia. Considering Michael Vick, Marcus Vick, Aaron Brooks, and Ronald Curry all hail from the same town that is no small praise. I've been a diehard Philadelphia 76er fan since AI's rookie year. I bought a book about him called "Only the strong survive" and in it they talk about how AI was heavily recruited after his junior year at QB and DB/PR/KR. It's been a while since I read the book but if I remember correctly, Nebraska was one of the schools recruiting him. He got arrested later in his junior year and they said that virtually every school that was recruiting him backed off. John Thompson III only offered him a basketball scholarship to Georgetown after AI's mother went to him to plead a case for her son. Being that the only two sports teams that I am a fan of are the Huskers and 76ers I repeatedly fantasize about AI playing QB in that option offense under TO. With his deadly speed and the option to pitch it to Lawrence Phillips, my mind runs wild about what could have been. Though with AI's legal issues, him and LP would have been the biggest Risk management nightmare for TO. Check the man's highlights for yourself and let me know if you agree or disagree that he would have been the perfect QB to run the option at Nebraska under TO. I know we had a pretty good guy in Tommie Frazier, so even if not QB, would have been a killer WR/Returner or DB/Returner. As stated in the video, he holds the state record for interceptions in a game with 7 picks.

I highly doubt black players read that much into it, as for many of them I'm sure mascots/logo appearance is trivial to them. They're grievance would have to be directed toward the student committees from 100 years ago who decided the mascots. If some do feel offended, think about the flip side if, to appease them, a logo featured a mascot that you could discern for certain was black; There would be 100 times as much backlash, due to the sensitivity regarding animated depictions of black people i.e. "Little Black Sambo". The contracted artist hired to design it would face much more scrutiny so as to make sure there isn't a single pen stroke that could remotely be interpreted as an exaggeration of bodily & facial features and appear as a racist depiction of black people. Native Americans are just about as far as you can go, and even then, there's some controversy regarding mascots inspired by Native American culture. When it comes to mascots that are people, White mascots are just safer and a lot less people will get offended. I'm guessing Tommie Frazier never gave much thought to the racial qualities of Herbie Husker. He, like most of us, probably just took it at face value, which is a harmless cartoon that reflects aspects of the state's culture Along the same lines of Mascots and offensiveness, I was kind of disappointed when the overall-wearing blonde Herbie was replaced with the new one (even though I don't mind the current look) and that whole line of reasoning of not wanting to reinforce the stereotype that Nebraskans are backward, overall-wearing hicks. If people are making assessments of Nebraskans based on a cartoon caricature of a man, then their assessments don't matter.

My rationale for that is when Charles Jackson was first coming in, everyone said he was Alfonzo Dennard 2.0 the way he played physical press coverage, with a similar frame. I know he's been moved around a bit and worked at safety, but my hunch is that JP and Bo will see the best value out of him at corner. And when C. Cooper and Harvey Jackson first signed I think the idea was that CC, more of a ballhawk, would be the FS and Jackson, more of an aggressive hard hitter, would be SS. Obviously things change but thats my guess. From what I have heard, are those two are still learning how to adjust the secondary, as Charles Jackson is getting it down to the "T". He knows when to tell the secondary to press, play zone, when to back up for the deep ball and he isn't biting hard on the PA. These are the intangibles we have been missing at this position, since O' Hanlon. The Safety position is probably the toughest position to play here. A lot more responsibilites than the average Safety. I am not saying your wrong by any means Pure speculation on my part so I could definitely be wrong. The great thing about Charles Jackson, and what I'm sure is much more certain, is that he's a player who could be a starter at any secondary position. He'd be good anywhere and I would be just as excited to see him at safety laying the wood to receivers who cross the middle. If Charles J. does indeed get penciled in as a Safety, I'd peg him as the starting SS and I'd say Singleton at starting FS, with Cooper as second string FS and Harvey jackson backing up charles at SS and Mohammed Seisay starting opposite Jonathan Rose at the other Cornerback spot.

The title of this thread is now an invalid argument with the recent release of recruiting spending and costs. Our increase in spending was bigger than Wisco's total spending. Only the most cynical will deny that our recruiting has picked up visibly in talent, especially with the most recent 3 classes. It took a bit for Bo to get his feet under him and get the lay of the recruiting land (it is his first HC gig after all), but now I think he's found his niche but will keep up the sense of urgency. I like our strategy of cherry-picking slightly underrated recruits with elite athleticism from all the recruiting hotbeds (CA, FL, TX, and southeast). There is so much talent these days, that the big wigs in those regions can't scoop them all and there's more than enough talent for us to scoop up. I believe that Bo is a great developer of these kinds of guys to get them to play above recruiting services' expectations and I'm fully content with being realistic in spending energy on recruiting more overlooked 3-star guys and 4-star guys than wasting time on 5-stars who are locks from day 1 to sign with SEC schools. I don't think very many teams recruit as broadly across the nation as we do. Notre dame, as much as they make me wanna vomit, is the only one I can think of that is comparable.

My rationale for that is when Charles Jackson was first coming in, everyone said he was Alfonzo Dennard 2.0 the way he played physical press coverage, with a similar frame. I know he's been moved around a bit and worked at safety, but my hunch is that JP and Bo will see the best value out of him at corner. And when C. Cooper and Harvey Jackson first signed I think the idea was that CC, more of a ballhawk, would be the FS and Jackson, more of an aggressive hard hitter, would be SS. Obviously things change but thats my guess.

Our offensive line starters change so much throughout the season that it probably throws some peoples figures off. I think ESPN counts anyone who started a game, but I could be wrong.

I felt great about Santos' development throughout the season. He showed up and more than held his own against Georgia. He was one of the players I definitively saw get better and play faster as the season progressed.

No one's crafted an updated, post-signing day depth chart on here to my knowledge so far with all the new recruits and attrition. But since the offense is pretty set with a lot of returning starters, I'm more curious on what you guys think of my Defensive projections. DE: 1. Randy Gregory 2. Jason Ankrah DT: 1. Vincent Valentine 2. Kevin Williams DT: 1. Thaddeus Randle 2. Aaron Curry DE: 1. Avery Moss 2. Greg McMullen LOLB: 1. Thomas Brown 2. Jared Afalava MLB: 1. David Santos 2. Michael Rose ROLB: 1. Zaire Anderson 2. Marcus Newby/Josh Banderas/Courtney Love (2 will likely RS) LCB: 1. Jonathan Rose 2. Andrew Green 3. Stanley Jean Baptiste FS: 1. Corey Cooper 2. Leroy Alexander SS: 1. DJ Singleton 2. Harvey Jackson RCB: 1. Charles Jackson 2. Mohammed Seisay 3. Ciante Evans EDIT: If Charles Jackson is sticking at safety then my revised starters in the secondary would be LCB: J. Rose FS: Singleton SS: C. Jackson RCB: Seisay

And have her get her boyfriend to help amp up our basketball recruiting efforts as well.

^ This is a much better version of my post that is right before yours

And with that I'd like to commence the campaign to Bring Back Bill Callahan as Offensive Line coach

Please watch the performance of the Nebraska Offensive Line from 2008-2012 and tell me what pattern you see in the offensive lines play. The pattern is that there is no pattern. It's wildly inconsistent play. You'll see the Nebraska Offensive line dominating Ohio State from 2011 and MSU in 2012, yet you'll also see our O-line helping South Carolina's already all-world DL out with a god-awful sequence of 3 false start penalties in a row and against Georgia, Rodriguez's masterful two-play sequence of getting a false start to brace himself for Jones, then when that doesn't work he holds the living crap out of him. I remember a couple times where we held SC's DL in 2011 so blatantly yet they still got the sack. The point is, yes, the O-Line has had some good performances. But this is Nebraska, consistently elite O-Line performance is the foundation of this program. Our offensive line should not be talked about because they consistently dominate the opposition. The fact the O-line is a point of discussion is bad. At a big-time BCS school with the salary he's paid, he's not delivering anywhere near a satisfactory return on investment. It would be different if we were talking about the receivers coach but we're not. The nature of our program is that we value excellent offensive line performance over something like excellent Wide Receiver performance, and why somebody like Rich Fisher would get less crap from fans than Barney even if our WR's were worse than our O-line.

Did we watch the same O'Hanlon? Matty was athletic as heck. Rewatch his performance against UT in the 2009 CCG. His closing speed on Texas' outside plays was phenomenal. He sure looked more athletic than Damion Stafford and PJ Smith, who looked like they had lead in their shoes chasing Wisconsin's outside runs 10-15 yards past the LOS, where O'hanlon was busting up those plays anywhere from 5 yards behind to 2-3 yards past the LOS consistently. The VaTech debacle is the only bad play I can remember from him, and I can come up with many different instances where he made some serious plays. MOH probably provided the greatest return on investment of any player in NU history. The guy made the team through try-out and ended up being the quarterback of one of the best defenses of all time.

One more guy who gets reps with the top units but didn't play much that I'm excited about is Charles Jackson. Going out on a limb to say, I think by the end of the season Charles Jackson and Jonathan Rose will see more playing time than Ciante Evans, A. Green, and SJB. The key for evans to get playing time will be how much we need the nickel formation and the development of the third LB. should be interesting.

I could be wrong but I don't think we'd ever see Santos and Roach on the field at the same time. I believe Roach backs up Santos at MLB and I don't believe he has gotten experience at any of the other LB positions. This is kind of an out-of-left-field statement, but I think Roach might add more value to the team as an RB, barring complete ineptitude by Rose and this year's LB recruits. I played against roach in High school and he was an unstoppable hoss running over people. Roach is a poor-man's Imani Cross

I was bored so I watched the Elite 11 camp video series. If you have some time on your hands I'd recommend watching it. It made me feel really good about the kid after hearing Trent Dilfer talk about him. Johnny Stanton was ranked the number 1 QB in the country by their staff for the majority of the camp week. And that staff is nothing to sneeze at in terms of QB acumen; Trent Dilfer, Jordan Palmer, and George Whitfield (QB coach who tutored Newton and Manziel) to name a few. It also speaks to our coaching staff's ability to recognize and get looks from top prospects. I remember we were seriously being considered by three other QB's who performed well in these videos, Malik Zaire, Devante Kincade, and Anthony Jennings, all who would be perfect fits for our offense as well. But I'm glad we have Johnny. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmwYT0P5cys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBLaTG0KHKw

Drake does have the exact same frame as Eric Hagg. I'm sold on him playing a Nickelback/Peso role.

Best interviewer in Husker history. And the MVP on the 2007 defense, for whatever that's worth. But best ever might be stretching it, even though I love the guy.

D. Williams definitely showed out that year but you could make a case that Josh Bullocks represented that 2003 D more than anyone. No way he gets the INT record without Bo's help. It was ridiculous watching him snag one out of the air every week. it was also pretty cool that he got his record breaking INT against some hot shot freshman quarterback named Vince Young.

Not enough love for Terrell Farley on here. He was Demorrio Williams before there was a Demorrio Williams. And I think Thomas Brown and Jared Afalava are of the same mold from what I've seen of their HS film. EDIT: Nevermind, saw two mentions of Farley after I posted this. carry on

Nebraska did not have the benefit of seeing Afalava at his best. He had lost some weight when he got there and it took time to get his feet wet. A year of conditioning and comfort will do wonders. He looked to be the best LB prospect last year. What a terrific problem we have. Its going to be interesting, and probably the most interesting position battle during spring. Makes me wonder how much we will see formation changes and how much we will go 3/3/5, 4/3 and this 3/4 that we sold Gregory on. I don't believe we will be a base 3/4, but I think we will see a great mixture of defenses on the field. It will be nice if we do, because it will be harder for offenses to come up with a game plan. Oh God, not the 3-3-5. The 3-3-5 gives me nightmares of 2007.