cm husker

My issue with that approach is that if you're twisting your system from year to year, you're going to be pretty mediocre because you're asking players to learn and relearn (or forget) things they maybe worked on the year before. I think you have to figure out who you want to be, which is based a lot on your set of circumstances, and then recruit to fill those demands. If you can get the pieces from afar, that's all well and good. But I don't think you go out and say "oh, we have a good line on an RB recruit this year, so for the next three or four years, we'll do XYZ in the running game" and then decide after that back is gone that you're going to shift to a WCO passing attack and then back again. There's a lot of value in top to bottom clarity around who you are and what you're trying to do as a program. Alabama, despite a lot of coaching churn, has maintained that because Saban's core philosophies are based in athletic, hardnosed defense with a similar mindset of a power rushing attack fueled by dominance on the lines. The rest flows from there on the peripheries. This probably belongs back in the 2017 offense thread, but I'd love to understand what Riley's 5 principles to running an offense are. With TO, he laid them out regularly - there's even a video around - I'll try to find it. With Riley, it's much more wishy washy.

The recruiting sites want you to believe there's a massive difference in the amount of talent at the top 10 programs versus, say, the 20th to 40th program. There simply isn't. So while talent helps, only average coaching will produce, at best, only slightly above average results. Because a 30th ranked roster can easily beat a 5th ranked roster if the coaching at #30 is great and the coaching at #5 is only average. What is dangerous is when you have a top 20 roster and top 10 coaching. That's the recipe for a lot of wins. And of course a top 5 roster with top 10 coaching (e.g., Alabama) is a recipe for dominance .

It'd require an extreme suspension of disbelief to believe that every Husker coach going back to at least Jennings hasn't had some "mean" things to say about a contingent of Husker fans.

It's obvious that you would think that. Let's focus on 2009 - 2015 when we had Martinez/Armstrong at QB running a power run scheme out of the zone read. Martinez arrived in 2010, but was playing under Watson's system - a system that was stagnant that he definitely sparked. The staff was gone after 2014. Therefore, I addressed from 2011 to 2014.

Obviously I'm not against out of state talent. I would love for us to recruit well nationally, but my central contention is that we shouldn't concern ourselves with running a system that's supposedly appealing to the "best talent" because very few kids are that fixated on scheme. Rather, we should run a system that maximized production from our most readily available and retain-able talent. And yes, the OL is a major factor because there are 5 of them on the field, so the allowable margins for missing is much smaller. I don't think Burkhead, Abdullah or even Helu Jr chose NU because of our system - all were also low to mid level 3* recruits - Abdullah was mainly recruited as an athlete/defensive player. Martinez and Armstrong both chose based as much on the opportunity to play QB as anything related to the specific system. My point is, continue to recruit who we can, but don't cater to the perceived desires of the 5* recruit . If they come, great. If they don't, then you better have a system in place that can run without them.

Although Bo's national team rushing rankings weren't obviously as good as Osborne's, we regularly were at least in the top 10 in rushing under Bo, correct? And since I assume you want us to be based around the power run game, how does that jive with your quote above? From 2004 to 2010, we were running what I think is an ill fitted system. We especially squandered some great local talent in the mid 00's just when our B12N brethren were pretty bad. By '11 through '14, we were shifting to a better system and we saw better results. I thought considering the injury situations in '13, they did a good job overall. That's a small sample size though. And Bo wasn't perfect by any means. He didn't get many NE recruits during a few years - there will always be fluctuations in available talent, but averaging 2 or 3 NE recruits during a rolling period is too few, imo.

It was definitely a special time

I think TO changed his defensive scheme, which put more speed on the field at one time due to a LB and DB over a 5th man on the front. But TO always tried to recruit the fastest, biggest, strongest guys he could. He's talked about that even - how he didn't wake up one day and think "I need to start recruiting fast guys." I do agree that he changed his defensive tactics though, kind of like how he tweaked his offensive tactics during the late 70s. So I'm not trying to claim TO was static. Just that he never deviated from his core principles. As for local talent, I'd contend that maybe we aren't seeing quite as much production on the field from NE natives because we haven't been running a system that produces. I look at "unbalanced system" based coaches like Briles and Leach among others and notice that they get a lot production out of average athletes. If we ran an unbalanced system, I think we'd see more production out of local talent (and all talent in general). It's hard to say how we would think of guys who'd had better or less disrupted coaching staff's? That said, since 2002, NU has had a number of very talented NE kids go through: Herian, Horne, Leflore, Mann, Jay Moore, Dane (all earned multiple letters) Green, Mueller, Bo Rudy, Teamer Christensen, grixby, huff, Steinkuhler Potter Henry, Jones Crick, Paul Fisher, okafor, Steinkuler Zimmerer, pensick Rodriguez, cotton, Evans Sterup, davie, reeves etc A lot of those guys were highly regarded recruits and or played at least some professional football. So, is it that we aren't producing talented athletes in NE or that we aren't utilizing (or even recruiting) them as well as we used to?

I missed the part where Mike Riley is doing anything different. Unless you want to go ahead and explain that "coastal talent" is your code word for a pass-first offense, a skillset that somehow eludes the millions of football players in the middle of the country. You could also come to the coast seeking the best running backs in the country. California is full of them. Florida has dual threat quarterbacks. New Jersey has speed and talent on both sides of the ball. Every offense will need good players at every position. Tom Osborne knew this. MIke Riley does, too. Probably because it's not a secret. There's no discernible geographic speciality when it comes to football, but there are high school football hotbeds. Mike Riley getting traction among prized California recruits who take to social media bragging about coming to Nebraska is nothing but good. Unless you want to be a dick about it. We've been around and around on this, so I won't rehash it again. I'll just (THREE PARAGRAPHS OF REHASHING)) I'll stick with post #20, which you've done nothing to refute. But as long as I'm here: Tom Osborne actually did listen to his critics, and nearly 20 seasons into his head coaching career he changed his recruiting philosophy, focusing more on speed, more on defense and more on faraway high school football hotbeds. As you may recall, this led to "championship" football, although I'm not sure why you put the word in quotes. By the way....didn't this used to be a completely different thread? Guy, is it your contention that TO didn't recruit nationally before the 90s? Would you be surprised to learn that the % of depth chart players from NU and the 500 mile radius was higher in the 90s than in the 80s?

Yes. And that's interesting about JW. I hadn't heard that before.

I'm sure on Xbox Nebraska can be great running all types of offenses. But when I look at NU's history and the history of the college programs in our border states, they have been best when employing power rushing/option looks (e.g., CU in the early 90s, KSU throughout Snyder's career). An exception might be KU during their brief stint of offensive success under Mangino. But during their other successful stint in the 90s, they were run heavy and had a QB that had some mobility. Again, in theory, any offense could work anywhere. But it's probably prudent to examine what's actually worked in practice.

And we are back to the crux of the issue. Many of us don't think the program had "gone to sh#t" prior to 2004. We had one bad season, finishing 7-7 against a tough schedule. And before people start with "2003 was an illusion," ask yourself if 2016 has been an illusion by the same measures.

Osborne ran very little triple option. I'm starting to understand now that a lot of people aren't really that familiar with NU football before 2000.

We are not running TO's offense in any shape or fashion. Between 1980 and 1997, NU had more seasons (3) where our offense averaged less than 100 yards passing than more than 150 yards per game passing (2). In no season did NU average more than 156 yards passing per game. Contrast that with a rushing attack that was never outside of the top 5 in the nation (and led the nation 11 times during that span). In no way, shape, or form is NU stilling running a similar offense, in principle or otherwise. And we aren't employing many of his other principles, either, at least in terms of recruiting. It's encouraging that Riley has recently talked about the importance of recruiting locally, but as of now, he's signed or has committed the lowest % of "radius" recruits of any NU coach as far back as I can find. Lower even than Callahan, who launched the first "callibraska" movement.

Joel Wilks need all this time in the program? Is that why he was playing a redshirt sophomore and earned three letters? Because he needed so much time in the program? Hoskinson played as a redshirt freshman, too. He played in 7 games as a redshirt sophomore. By the 90s, at least the top 40 programs in the country were using S&C as well as Nebraska. To the rest of your post, why are you offsetting Schlesinger with Green? Both were on scholarship. Both were from Nebraska. Wistrom is from Missouri (300 miles from Lincoln and an easy regional flight from Joplin). By the way, no one has ever argued that NU shouldn't be recruiting nationally. But at least half of our guys are realistically going to come from NE or a border state (probably two thirds will come from that region plus a state from our conference territory). A recruiting strategy that tries to pull 50, 60, 70% of our talent from far away locations is a recipe for failure. And that statement about tailoring an offense to attract "top talent" from the coasts being wrongheaded (not "loodicrus" (sic)) was in response to an earlier poster's statement. Interestingly, most of the people having a conniption about that statement seem to actually agree with it. Your posts are always bordering on unhinged, but that one was really amusing.

These boards are incredible to me. NU had an AD come in who wanted to chase the "other guys' way of doing things" and as a result we suffer massive losses and set the program back literally five decades - and what do people want? More of the same. Then they dismiss TO's "outmoded principles" as being no good in today's game and, recently, even blames Frank's recruiting for the current state of the program. Pure foolishness.

What are you talking about? Most of your post is tenuous at best, but the bolded is pure nonsense.

I missed the part where Mike Riley is doing anything different. Unless you want to go ahead and explain that "coastal talent" is your code word for a pass-first offense, a skillset that somehow eludes the millions of football players in the middle of the country. You could also come to the coast seeking the best running backs in the country. California is full of them. Florida has dual threat quarterbacks. New Jersey has speed and talent on both sides of the ball. Every offense will need good players at every position. Tom Osborne knew this. MIke Riley does, too. Probably because it's not a secret. There's no discernible geographic speciality when it comes to football, but there are high school football hotbeds. Mike Riley getting traction among prized California recruits — who take to social media bragging about coming to Nebraska — is nothing but good. Unless you want to be a dick about it. We've been around and around on this, so I won't rehash it again. I'll just summarize by saying that if you come from a low population place, you are going to struggle to run an offense that requires elite talent at every position. And yes, while every offense benefits from elite talent, certain offenses definitely disguise or account for weaknesses at certain spots. TO talked about that frequently - about how the system he chose was reflective of the types of players he had most readily available. Of he wanted the best players he could find anywhere, but the bulk of his depth chart were players were from the 500 mile radius that were complimented by guys on the coasts. He recognized that was who he'd most frequently be able to recruit and retain successfully. It's not luck that caused him to be a HOF and imo the GOAT. He made a lot of important strategic decisions along the way - and ignored a lot of critics in the 80s and early 90s who said he needed to change his system to attract "championship" talent. He also talked about the weather having a major influence on his choices, but that's a whole other (uncomfortable) topic.

Maybe the reason people are being "thick" is because the idea that Riley's plans for his offense have anything to do with attracting talent from a certain geographical location is stupid. He's not doing that anymore than TO did. Agree. Go back and tell that to the person who suggested he should do that.

Guy, stop being thick around me. TO didn't tailor his offense to attract coastal talent. But he certainly recruited the coasts. And rightfully so. But until '94, offense had "passed him by" at least per the "experts." He wasn't changing his O to fit what the pros and the 5 stars wanted. To argue otherwise is revisionism.

Yeah, if only we'd learned from Osborne's mistakes. He definitely should have stayed away from guys like Frazier, Phillips, Muhammad and Wiggins. Should have stuck with local guys like Benning and Sims. So your contention is that TO tried to shape his O to attract coastal talent? Of course he didn't. Considering I said nothing of the sort, no, that wasn't my point. Then you clearly didn't follow mine.

Yeah, if only we'd learned from Osborne's mistakes. He definitely should have stayed away from guys like Frazier, Phillips, Muhammad and Wiggins. Should have stuck with local guys like Benning and Sims. So your contention is that TO tried to shape his O to attract coastal talent? Of course he didn't.

"Solich's recruiting is what has led us to what we are now" That's hilrious.

Building an offense around what will supposedly draw talent from California and Florida is wholly wrongheaded.

Harbaugh brings a lot of things to the table as a coach. A dynamic offensive mind is not one of them. I'm not overly impressed by Michigan's offense. They've built their numbers against some horrendous defenses. That said, they've run it quite a lot more than they've thrown it this year (63/37 split). More of their yards have come on the ground than through the air, and 39 of their TDs are on the ground, versus only 17 through the air. Their starting QB is averaging 23 attempts a game. Compare that to the Maryland game plan where Fyfe attempted to throw it 40+ passes (three sacks in addition to his 37 attempts). Compare that to 40 carries by non-QB carriers. Those are not similar approaches to offense. The offenses aren't at all similar.