cm husker

Him and another older guy left after the change that would have been in line to contribute this year, but I may be remembering that wrong. NU has three or four 4* recruits starting on the OL, iirc (gates, farmer, foster and maybe knevel). If the staff is having a hard time finding a guy to replace Utter from the remaining pool of recruits, that either indicates that Utter isn't as bad as the cherry picked clips indicate or there's a problem with the way staff is sorting out their OL options.

The coaches have to start 5 players on the o-line. Utter is not good, but he's the only guy who can do the job this year. That's why he's been starting for 2 years.How can he possibly be the only guy who can do the job?The previous staff didn't build any depth along the offensive line. Pretty obvious. Look at NUs recruiting on the OL during the past few years. Compared to most other P5 schools, it's been very good from a recruitnik perspective. This staff isn't really changing the approach/numbers, so if they don't have enough depth to be successful today, I'm left wondering why anyone thinks they'll have enough 4 years from now.

The coaches have to start 5 players on the o-line. Utter is not good, but he's the only guy who can do the job this year. That's why he's been starting for 2 years. How can he possibly be the only guy who can do the job?

So blame the guy who posted the video instead of Utter? It's not about this clip. It's about the way he's operated on Twitter for a while now. And yes, posting a single f up or two while not posting examples of strong play is douchey.

You need to do things to put your guys in a position of advantage. I don't see that much from this staff. In watching the other clip people are all over him about, I think he's tripped. Pass pro is hard. Its why OL who can do it well can play 10+ years in the league.

R Kay strikes me as extremely douchey.

I'd need to see the tape. But it's kind of incredible that a guy so supposedly bad would start about 23 games at this point. People see a couple of bad plays and jump all over a guy while ignoring what is done well. If we are so weak in passpro, maybe we should give these guys a better shot by running more and using true play action. That would take a lot of pressure off guys like utter.

People who think this is good for most of America are not following the thought through. Driving up the cost of a good is exactly like imposing a repressive income tax. This is a tragic path we are taking.

You could have made the same claim before the 90s run. The notion of needing to recruit well is not new. People criticized Osborne's recruiting too. In the end, A+ coaching with B+ or better talent makes you nationally competitive. And frankly, if we don't believe that, we should pack up the program or adjust our expectations, because NU won't consistently be a top 10 recruiting team.

It's pretty absurd that something that's being legalized across the country can still cost a guy millions of dollars. I get it, I get it - he should be able to button up the behavior. But it's still an absurd policy.

Using average star ratings doesn't make sense to me (among many things related to the pretend science around recruitnik sites). If we have a class of 20 that is an average of 4*, but want to add 5 3*s, that would bring the average down. But that would also improve the depth of the class. Seems like that's more important than having fewer recruits that are theoretically better prospects.

If "you have to recruit in the top 5 to 10 for 5-7 years" is a condition precedent to competitiveness at the national level, then NU will never be competitive at that level again. Personally, I don't believe that's true. And i'm really tired of people framing things as "we don't deserve this or that" on behalf of the team. The team deserves whatever they earn, including a berth in the CCG if that's what happens. Reminds me of people's hand wringing around NU making the NC in '01.

the problem is, although we can look at some high profile break downs, there were plenty of examples at OSU and against other teams of this Husker line executing pretty darn well. Langs has just repeatedly said and demonstrated by, for example, throwing and ball on 2nd and 3rd and short that he has no faith in his guys.

That explanation makes no sense and the implied mentality is extremely odd. "Two or three plays that always get yards." In what world does a team have such a thing, and if they have it, why would they go away from it? If he just means a couple of plays that are executed very well, why would that be limited to 2 or 3? This all goes back to the "modular" or "package" oriented nature of pro style offenses. In the pros, you change out what you're doing frequently based on schematic and personnel match ups. You can do that because you have professional players and a lot of prep time. But, even there, they retain a "core" package week to week - which I think is what Langs may be referring to with his comments about a bread and butter package. I personally don't think this approach works in college. Yes, you need to tweak what you do from week to week based on schematic match ups (e.g., even versus odd front defenses), but the most successful offenses keep their system/packages the same. Successful College football offense is about creating big plays by keeping D's out of position. Pro offenses are generally about offensive efficiency through exploiting match ups. It's a subtle but important philosophical distinction that flows from the varying skills, experience and practice times between the levels.

Embarrassing. Truly. We need to change the way we nominate and elect the president. This is a really awful result. A trade war would be disastrous.

Cubs win, Trump wins, skersfan agrees with me. Batten the hatches, it truly is end times.

And your claim that we somehow can't sign a significant number of NE kids because of scholarship limits, which spurred the discussion, doesn't wash either. I suppose we can spend some time looking at the rosters to see whether '89 was the exception or the rule.

Teams often oversign with an expectation that they will not get everyone to campus or someone will leave, so I'm not sure why you discount that factor. I think you still aren't addressing the central point, which is that TO brought in fewer scholarship athletes on a rolling average than several teams do today. And this is all against a backdrop that through the 80s, a team could only carry 10 more scholarship players each season than they do today. Not a major difference - it's basically the question of whether you can honor a commitment or move a guy on as a "hardship scholarship." I agree that the scholarship rules would be detrimental to walkons. It's one of my several issues that I have with the scholarship limits that hurt atheletes' opportunities but had very little impact on "leveling the playing field." I wish we had better data about how many w/o's were in scholarship each year under TO. I haven't been able to find much.

Still not understanding why people would want a redshirt preserved if POB offers the best opportunity to win games. Several goals are still out there - NU could still sneak into the CCG. The team, especially the seniors, deserves to have the players play who give them the best opportunity to win. Unless POB is demanding to redshirt, you pull it if he's your best option to win. Unless you fear you can't effectively recruit a QB during the next several years (not to mention the option to redshirt him next year). For another thing, reps this year will be very beneficial to him if he's going to make a push for time next year.

Sigh. I'm really not trying to be confrontational on this point - I gave you the data I had time to gather at that time. Since then, I updated the list to show the two other classes. That added 9 guys who weren't on the team as of the '89 roster, so, it brings the number to 85. Granted, that's right up against the limit, but TO brought in fewer recruits than many P5 programs are doing lately. Yes, there may have needed to be more attrition than what we saw traditionally saw under TO, but his base recruiting numbers were in line from what we see today. I know you started at 1989 and went backward, but have a look at the 90s - the classes that constituted the championship teams. From the '90 class to his last class in '97, the Huskers signed an average of 22 recruits a year. By comparison, the following teams have signed the following numbers during the most recent recruiting cycles: Alabama - 126 (25.2) Ohio State - 124 (24.8) Oklahoma - 124 (24.8) Nebraska - 109 (21.8) - this low number of scholarship players is an oft criticized "failure" by the last staff One can't look at TO"s recruiting classes and reasonably conclude he was signing more kids in the 80s and early 90s than what is allowed under today's rules. Perhaps he wasn't booting them as quickly as some other schools do, but he wasn't starting with more scholarship athletes than what he'd be allowed today. Nebraska Classes 1990 - 20 1991 - 22 1992 - 24 1993 - 21 1994 - 21 1995 - 28 1996 - 18 1997 - 22

If you need to fire your two coordinators, guys you brought with you, you have a lot more than heartburn.

Well, it's your assertion that TO was - for unknown reasons - self-imposing a 10 scholarship reduction on himself. I think it would be up to you to prove that. So go ahead and show how 31 of the 116 players signed from 85-89 were no longer on the team in 89. And some reasoning for why Osborne was not using his full compliment of scholarships would be handy. I didn't have time to do a full check of all years but wanted to reply based on what I found using these links: http://www.huskermax.com/rosters/1989.html http://www.huskermax.com/recruits/1985.html http://www.huskermax.com/recruits/1986.html http://www.huskermax.com/recruits/1987.html At least 22 scholarship players from those classes weren't on the Husker roster by '89. I limited the quick count to only those players that never received a letter, so there may have been a handful more who had left by '89, including guys from the '88 and '89 classes who never made it to campus or left early for other reasons. As for the reasons why TO maintained a roster like he did, I've never read his specific thoughts on it. I do know there's a lot of mythology around powerhouse teams signing giant classes - from what I've been able to gather, (A) that was generally way overstated and exceedingly rare, and (B) NU didn't engage in the practice. Generally, TO used to talk about how finding scholarships wasn't the problem - it was finding guys qualified for the scholarships (I seem to remember that from around a 1990 recruiting press conference). EDIT: Added a few more players who had left by '89 from the '85 class. The list: 1985 scholarship class Avant (no letters) Ching (no letters) Deshazer (no letters) Trenton Flowers (no letters) Hinson (no letters) Lamb (no letters) Moore (no letters) Murrell (no letters) Novacek (no letters) Rice (no letters) Davis (2 letters) Etienne (4 letters) Taylor (4 letters) Thomas (4 letters) 1986 scholarship class Hasley (no letters) Hroza (no letters) Lair (no letters) Miller (no letters) Darwin Snyder (no letters) 1987 scholarship class Herman (no letters) Keneipp (no letters) Lohmeier (no letters) Jackson (2 letters) 1988 scholarship class Jeremiah Clark (no letters) Bart James (no letters) Vic Stachmus (no letters) Chris Ybarra (no letters) 1989 scholarship class Marvin Callies (no letters) Howard Carter (no letters) Daryl Green (no letters) Chad Hunter (no letters)

Kind of like how Tom Osborne was a perfect hire for NU in 1972. While Osborne wasn't a NU grad, he was a native Nebraskan who was in the right place in the right time to take over for Devaney. NU has been trying to fill those shoes for 20 years. Umm what? Tom was with the program since '64, was a proven OC by '72 I understand that Tom was with the program in the 60's and was a proven OC, but it was still somewhat of a controversial hire by Devaney, as there were more seasoned assistant coaches on his staff. My point was that sometimes it's pure luck to have someone with ties to the state or program that turns out to be a great coach and is a good fit for the program. I was alive back then but I don't recall ANY controversy on Osborne being named the head coach. I mean come on, he was just put in that postition by a God, Devaney. Not only did Devaney make Nebraska relevant again but he won back to back national titles. The man was revered in the State.Are you familiar with Monte Kiffin?

If you do this, then who is your back up next year? Gebbia? I don't think that works well at all. Don't pull O'Briens redshirt this year unless Ryker goes down. That way next year Tanner Lee can start (assuming he beats out POB) and POB can be his backup while Gebbia redshirts. +1. We have to break this cycle we're in with quarterbacks. No successful team does what Bo brought about to get us where we're at. Successful teams have a guy there that can actually get you by until your starter comes back. Let's start trying to at least *try* to do this. Bo's a real SOB for not leaving Riley more pro style QBs...

Maybe rhey are worried he'd use a future redshirt to cover a transfer?