HuskerWisdom

You are correct. He really has freakish ability and speed. He was the fastest kid at NU's camp prior to his senior year. Unfortunately, he then blew out his knee going into his senior year, and then hurt his knee again when he got to campus as a walk-on. Yesterday he looked like he had his speed back and just showed great natural quickness and a feel for running the ball. I think he can do big things as a change-of-pace back in this offense. Of course, he can also catch the ball a bit, giving Beck a lot of options for getting him the ball in space and letting him create.

I believe he had a hamstring pull. For an UDFA trying to make a camp, that is the end of that chance. It's unfortunate, because the Bucs were apparently giving him reps and giving him a real chance. Best case scenario for him would be to find someone who wanted him on their practice squad this year. First, he needs to get healthy, and then he needs to figure out where he might have that opportunity. I still think he can make it. His measurables aren't incredible, but they are well within the NFL range for a safety.

Either that, or he's scouting out schools for Jr. to transfer to after Texas Tech fans run them out of town after getting Leach sacked. God forbid, I really doubt his kid could play for Bo. In any case, it doesn't matter what he says about us anymore, getting rid of Leach was a gift enough to us

May had a groin injury that will require surgery after the season and had problems with pinched nerves in his shoulder all year. When healthy he'll compete to start. Holt played as a true frosh and will be in the mix - at the very least he's a valuable situational guy due to his ability to move and cover in space.

Caputo will start and will be a stud - he's better at the point of attack than Hickman was this year and I think he'll be an engine for our interior running game. Thorson is the likely backup - another walk-on, he's an excellent run blocker with good quickness and technique in side. He's a RS Frosh this year. Ash is competing with Thorson for the backup job. I think Thorson is a bit ahead, but both have the potential to be nice players. According to what I was told, he needed a year of S&C. He was one of the award winning scout team guys this year. Not sure about anyone behind that for the center position - if they weren't practicing at center this fall, then I wouldn't be optimistic about them playing next fall. Center takes a while to learn.

He got moved from DT to OG earlier in they year, but he was beaten out for the 105 man roster by Choi and Thorson IIRC. He did have a lot to learn about playing OG and did need a full year of S&C after his shoulder injury last year. I haven't heard much, but we'll know more in the spring.

Smith was really banged up this year, ankles and back and really would have taken time off to heal except for the fact that we didn't have anyone else there - I think the injuries hurt his run blockign more than his pass blocking, although he wasn't nearly the player he could be because of the injuries. He could use another 10 lbs (remember, he's a DE convert), but has built himself up to probably be one of the stonger guys on the OL during winter testing last year - unfortunately the injuries didn't allow him to show it this year. In terms of protecting the blind side, he's the best guy we have right now, and the only tackle who we can leave w/o a TE covering. He is the only guy we havre right now with the athleticism and experience at LT. Another year, some good health and another 10 lbs will make Smith look pretty good. Hardrick is a guy who a lot of people think should only a RT. I don't want to go into a season with an inexperienced guy playing LT. In my scenario, I see him getting snaps as the backup at LT to learn the position for 2011. Thompson got moved to OG, but then was moved back to OT (from what I heard). I probably should have listed him as one of the backup OG's, but am not really sure where he'll fit right now.

We should be much better next year - maybe not where we want to be evantually, but much deeper and improved from this year. Even with Hardrick I think Smith is the best LT on the roster next year - I think Hardrick may be a LT someday, but this year I want to see him at RT. Injuries and an utter lack of depth killed us this year. With Burkes, our depth is excellent, without him we had no RT that we could depend on, and with MJones as our backup LT the injuries to Smith and MJones were crushing. As it was, Williams played with a torn pec (not a great season, but he was hurting), smith had ankle and back injuries and could have used about 2 weeks off to heal, but never got them, Caputo will likely have surgery off season, MJones had numerous injuries, and Hickman was banged up a lot also. I see: LT: Smith; Hardrick/MJones/Sirles or Coffey LG: Williams/Qvale; Choi C: Caputo; Thorson/Ash RG: Henry/Qvale; DJ Jones RT: Hardrick; MJones/Sirles or Coffey

The fastest back we've ever had was Keith "End Zone" Jones who ran 4.33 electronic on the old astroturf. Ahman Green ran 4.35, IIRC. It is a bit more difficult for the kids now because of the field turf which is slower than astroturf was back in the day. A standard measure is that a hand to electronic conversion is .15 - that works almost perfectly for Green who reportedly ran a 4.19 hand-timed in a workout which was about .16 off from his electronic NU time. Most of the "fastest" times recorded above are pretty much BS.. .sorry. Ginn, for instance, ran a 4.38 hand timed at OSU (they have a notoriously fast track), Combine times are somewhat electronic, but misleading. 3 times are taken. 2 are hand times and 1 is electronic. It varies which ones are released to the public, some teams want the hand times, some want the electronic, others do their own times. So there is often confusion around the times at the combine. Johnnie Lee Higgens, for instance, ran a hand-timed 4.19 at UTEP, but then ran a 4.43 or 4.48 at the combine, depending on who you talked to - I think someone else reported a 4.34 and 4.39 - Pretty much the only numbers I trust are Nebraska Electronic numbers.

A couple of quick notes on Reeves, he's a big kid obviously, but is also an excellent athlete and one who has great technique for his age (his father played OL and coaches OL). IIRC, he also went down to a camp in Texas and was one of the best kids there. He's the real deal and projects as an interior lineman. Expect to see him ranked highly on a national scale as well.

I did some quick numbers on this and it isn't entirely off the wall: If we assume 21 scholarships a year, and 25 walk-ons per year. Add in attrittion of 4 scholarhips players per year and 12 walk ons. That equation gives us a 150 person roster over a 5 year period. If we assume that 23 out of 25 walk-ons are from Nebraska and assume that 6 our of 21 scholarships are from Nebraska we end up with 63% of each incoming class being from Nebraska. That is IF we assume that none of the walk-ons move to scholarship to take roster spaces for non-NE players who leave the program. If we assume the scholarhip ratio is 8 NE players per year, we see get 67%. The actual number of kids from NE who deserve scholarships is probably between 5-7 (about what Osborne used to offer). . But we get those percentages w/o calculating the effect of attrition: If we assume an attrition of 4 scholarship players per year (could be higher, but some walk-ons might move to scholarship), assume an attrition of 12 walk-ons per year). Because the walk-ons will leave at a higher rate than scholarship players, and because they are made up of more NE kids, that will push the percentages lower. - If we assume 6 scholarship kids per year from NE that puts us near 57% of the roster being NE. If we assume 8 scholarship kids per year from NE that puts us at 63%. So with those assumptions we are below 2/3, but if we assume 2-3 kids a year move from walk-on to scholarship and that they are likely NE kids, we get pretty close to 2/3 number. It's probably a little high, but tt's actually not bad for an off-hand comment about the roster.

I think the difference is that most programs recruit within 200 miles of their home and up to 500 miles - about the distance a player's parents can drive to see the game. All of the schools you list have rosters that recruit enormous recruiting bases in their own backyard. Virtually all of USC's roster is within driving distance. Michigan has their homestate kids and the big Ohio base nearby. We aren't limiting ourselves so much as understanding that we can't build relationships with coaches all over the country. So we start nearby and then extend outward. Outside of that region we have to pick 1 or 2 key areas (Texas and maybe Ohio) to concentrate on, otherwise we are spread way too thin and will have inconsistent results.

I think they looked at the current roster, and at the commits they have + the walk-on commits and decided they had enough for this year. One of the things I think Bo wants to do is to get more for less from the OL, that means fewer scholarships than Cally spent on the OL, but with better results - part of this is moving to shorter, quicker offensive linemen who can be recruited as walk-ons to augment depth and even get starters from that program. As others pointed out, Thorson and a couple of the other walk-on recruits can play there and develop.

I don't think we will do radical changes next year. Keeping people comfortable with what they are doing is the most important thing. Take what we had toward the end, but add in more running and more consistent committment to the running game and some play action passing and you have what I expect for next year. I think that Bo would sacrifice a few points for more consistency game-to-game with the offense and the ability to get the tough yards when they count on short yardage. Longer term, I think a hybrid offense that fully utilizes a dual threat QB is where we are headed - a bit of power, a bit of option, a bit of spread and short passing to balance it out. As others have hinted at, calling something a spread, or spread-option, or even WCO doesn't really describe what the team is doing anymore given that there are so many variants of those offenses.

C. It's great to be a top 5-10 class but it isn't a necessity, same with top 15. However anyone who still has this misconception that T.O. won NCs without top 15 recruiting classes is out of their minds and needs to get there head out of their collected arses. You have to have talent to win and the truth of the matter is there was less than 3 team that had more talent in the mid 90's than what nebraska had. Callahans great recruiting and mediocre results have some people solified on this idea that Nebraska can do great things with nothing, and that stars don't mean anything but it isn't really true. You can find a lot of diamonds in the rough but not enough to build a high caliber team. If Nebraska happens to return to dominance we need to be steady in the top 20 at the very least. Actually, you might want to tell SuperPrep to "get their head out of their collected arses". They ranked the averages of the classes leading up to the '94 and '95 championship teams at around 18th to 19th. There were a few top 15's in there, but not exclusively. We had great talent, but it wasn't necessarily talent that would be recognized under today's Rivals ratings nor was it entirely recognized by the services at the time.

You hit it right on the head. I was just wonder what team will be the first to use it in the NFL. GBR!!! Probably the same team that used the option first. Interesting that Bill Walsh, THE WCO inventor/guru, implemented the option during the strike season and won his strike game 41-21

You hit it right on the head. I was just wonder what team will be the first to use it in the NFL. GBR!!! Yep, NFL teams are incredible risk averse and usually only adopt change after it has been beaten into them by teams doing it at the college level. At some point, you have to figure a team will get desperate enough to just run it - pick up a Seneca Wallace type (or 2 or 3 guys like him) and set out to annoy defenses all over the league. The key is that the team has to be desperate enough to go against the NFL's dislike of change, so it would likely be an awful team.

Interesting some of the same stuff gets posted on other boards about Cotton also. It gets a bit tiresome to refute stupid comments about him and his past. Anyway, I put together this information on his performance as the OC at Iowa State: "I put together some numbers from Barney Cotton's days as OC at ISU. To give some context, he was there from 2004 through 2006. 2003 and 2007 numbers are added to show how the team did prior to his arrival and after his departure. PPG 2003: 14.4 2004: 20.5 2005: 28.2 2006: 18.8 2007: 18.2 as offensive coordinator in 2003, scored 1 TD per game more than the 2003 team did, and 2 TD's a game better in 2005. Had a down year in year 3, but still outscored last year's team. I don't see how an offensive line can do a lousy job and somehow manage to score 2 TD's a game more than the previous OC did. Rushing Average / Adjusted Rushing Average (minus scrambling yards by the QB): 2003: 3.2 / 3.27 2004: 3.2 / 3.49 2005: 2.7 / 3.37 2006: 3.0 / 3.95 2007: 3.1 / 3.15 The rushing numbers on this team are a bit misleading as Meyer had a propensity to scramble looking to make something out of broken plays. While he was a scrambling QB, he was not a 'rushing' QB. Take his yardage out of the equation and you see that the offensive line performed better under Cotton than it did before or after him. Key here is answering the question of how well the OL did on plays that were designed to be rushing plays - not how good they did on plays that were passes turned into scrambles. Yards per attempt: 2003: 5.6 2004: 6.4 2005: 7.8 2006: 6.9 2007: 5.8 This statistic is a critical number for understanding how effective an offense is, and for understanding what the offense was doing. In another thread, someone argued that sacks/attempt was a sign of a poor offensive line - when in reality the kind of routes the team runs has a bigger impact on the number of sacks. If you support that theory, you would have to argue that the offensive line of the 2005 SuperBowl champions, the Steelers, was in fact a lousy offensive line because they ranked near the bottom of the league in sacks per pass attempt and under Cowher they almost always had a poor number of sacks per pass attempt. Why? because they ran longer routes that forced the QB to look downfield for a longer period of time, and that statistic alone tells you nothing about the types of routes the team is running. This number can fluctuate a lot if a team is running a different style of passing offense, but for more basic styles, if a team is able to protect the QB enough to get 7.8 yards per pass attempt, that team's OL is doing a excellent job up front. One final number that was interesting to me. In 3 years as their OC, ISU was held to one TD or less twice - and that took place in 2004 (Cotton's first year), but were never at 7 or less in 2005 or 2006. By comparison, they were held to 7 pts or less 4 times in 2003, and 3 times last year."

Saw him play last year at least once and he looked very, very good at his safety position. Don't know about his boxing career.. LOL, but he would have helped us on D last year even though we would have had to move him like ND did.

I do think he will. He's a multipurpose backup RB who can fill a lot of roles and has shown he can carry a bigger load as well. He also does a lot of the little things that many of the pro offenses are going to need, blocking, catching the ball etc. That said, his height will be a problem, he has good, but not great speed which will also hurt. I think he can go in the 5-7 range on day 2.

There was some talk about the surface being faster this year and the 40 times looking better. Even so that is a pretty good time for him.

I agree with you. Freeman might win the job by the end of the year, but I'm not betting on it. Everidge is a pretty good QB and will win some games for him if they let him mature and play next year.

In a quick look, they lose the following -both starting safeties -one starting CB -2 starting LB's -1 DT (Leaders) -both DE's (Berryman due to team rules violations) The safeties taking over are pretty highly regarded and probably more athletic than the ones from last year. Similarly, they seem to be high on their LB's. I would think they should worry somewhat about their DL, We might be able to take advantage of them up front, and it will be a key for their game plan to control the football, I imagine. The guys coming in seem very athletic, maybe more athletic than last year's bunch, but they are losing a ton of experience. I suspect they could be better at LB and DB than they were this season, and it would probably be better if we played them earlier than we do (to take advantage of the inexperience and the jitters), but at least we aren't seeing them at the end of the season.

ISU seems to take a "shotgun" approach to their recruiting. They always bring in a big mix of 2 and 3-star athletes and then keep the ones that they like the next year. I think they are pretty aggressive about quickly weeding out the guys that don't work out. In general, it works for them. They can't recruit head to head with Texas or even NU for the most part, so they need to get an angle that works. Over the past few years they've been: year/rank/average 2006: 63 2.50 average stars 2005: 58 2.52 average 2004: 42 2.43 average 2003: 46 2.46 average 2002: 30 2.77 average So they've been recruiting about the same level of players every year and their 2.5 average this year is right in the middle of what they've been doing. Whatever they get ranked seems to be separate from how they are recruiting and they seem to be recruiting the same type of athlete as before. Either way, when you start evaluating 2 and 3 start players (and Juco's especially), I think the level of certainty starts to fall off quickly.

I'm guessing this is directed at me.. let me see if I can recreate what has been written just so there aren't too many misunderstandings. 1. Stuck in Chicago posts the list of honors athletes by the big 12. some commentary in between... 2. Husker Rob posts, "Lets see about the recruits benard. Crag Roark Zach Potter Harrison Beck Jordon Congdon Lance Brandonburg J.B. Phillips" 3. I reply "Brandenburg was originally recruited by Solich, but signed with the new staff and Callahan in the 2004 class. Phillips signed with Solich in 2003" Note the lack of commentary in this post, I was simply replying to what I thought was his question on these players. Brandenburg and Phillips were associated with Solich in some way, the others were Callahan's, obviously. 4. DJR313 replies to me, "What difference does it make who's recruits are who's? They are all Huskers and since Callahan has become head coach, the team's Grade Point Average has improved. FACT. End of story." Always nice to get a bit of vitriol thrown at you when you reply to someone's question 5. I reply to DJR313, "I don't particularly care. Given what grade inflation is at NU and other state schools, I'm not that impressed by most of the GPA's that these athletes put together. It's just that if someone is going to make a thread about how wonderful Callahan is, they should at least get their facts straight." I probably shouldn't have put in the last sentence, as I wasn't really questioning StuckinChicago's facts, rather just answering Husker Rob's question. On the other hand, I was PO'd about how DJR replied to me, so i replied in kind. At this point, people should ask themselves if I have said that the players today are less intelligent, or more intelligent. It seems obvious to me that I said that, "I don't particularly care" 6. DJR replies, "Is there anyway you can prove or disprove that? Or is that just an off-the-cuff remark based upon opinion? I don't understand how you could possibly quantify what you just said. Like you just said, if you are going to post, get your FACTS straight. " 7. I reply to DJR with plenty of information on Grade inflation in our university system. The intention here wasn't to make the point that Callahan's players were the beneficiary of grade inflation so much as to say once again that a 3.0 GPA isn't terribly impressive when the school's average GPA is 3.1. I also point out that any comparison between Callahan and Solich would require showing that, "The only way to accurately say they were doing BETTER is to show that they were at a higher rank versus their peers than under Solich and/or that they were selecting more difficult degrees." BTW, it doesn't matter whether or not the school added or subtracted POSSIBLE degrees - the important test would be the difficulty of the degrees that were SELECTED by the players. Again, I haven't said whether or not Callahan's players are more or less intelligent than Solich's. 8. DJR replies, and explains that he apparently doesn't understand the clearly stated references for the data I posted. Seems to think that better college preparation is what is responsible for a average college GPA in 1969 being 2.6 and to it being 3.36 today. 9. I reply by once again saying that these lists don't impress me. Shouldn't an "honors" list at least list those students who are ABOVE AVERAGE at their respective institutions. I also noted that my reply was merely in response to someone asking about the 6 recruits above, and that I received a vitriolic reply to my answer. 10. I reply again to tell DJR that the sources were clearly noted, and that a simple google search would give him more than enough information on grade inflation. 11. DJR replies by stating that I misinterpreted the third article link I posted. (suggest that people read this and decide for themselves) 12. I post again with supporting information on grade inflation. 13. DJR replies by saying that apparently there is no grade inflation.. ever. Says that it doesn't reflect the rise in GPA on the team (my posts never suggested that and even laid out a course of research to see what was really responsible for the rise in GPA - see #7 above) 14. StuckinChicago jumps in with, "that if the hypothesis that Callahan is bringing in dumber recruits who wont do as well academically as the Solich recruits is true, than everyone should benefit equally and Solich recruits should have higher GPA's than Callahan recruits." Did I ever say that?? " You attacked the author of the thread, which was me, in your post." Didn't mean to do this and it was a poor choice of words when I was PO'd at another reply. So I apologize for that. "Now you have me to contend with as well if you are going to continue on this rediculus line of logic that somehow grade inflation has anything to do with the Callahan Solich debate in the time span specified." Again, I never said that. However, I think I give very effective reasons for suggesting why the GPA might not mean much in the context of all the things that were happening. cheers, Alan...