J-MAGIC

I think I saw in one of the highlight videos Marvin Scott is wearing #21 now. I think he was wearing 24 last year.

I think it's a great sign they're adapting and I'm chugging the kool-aid as much as anyone! Just the article seemed to imply this was a significant change of philosophy and I don't really think that's what they're talking about. The concepts and style are the same, they just want to run them with bigger people (who don't lose that much speed) essentially. I think Frost has actually been fairly creative in deploying his TEs in the slot. I remember that swing pass Washington housed in the Colorado game we had Allen and Stoll split out in the slot and they crushed a couple CU corners on the blocks, and I remember at least a few times last year we had TEs split out creatively in blocking-specific situations (I think the Liewer TD against Purdue was one?) But, all due respect to Stoll and Allen, the goal is to have guys out there who can block like that AND hurt you in the passing game. I think that's how we'll see Fidone/Toure/Manning/Betts used this year in a way that's been different in the past.

Every single fanbase has fans like this. That's not to excuse the behavior and I wish it'd stop but pretending like it's specific to Nebraska is nothing but attention-seeking.

I really don't think they're talking about wholesale changes to the offense or personnel here. Dawson said they wanted to get more size "while keeping your athleticism". I don't think this is anything more than the coaches saying that at UCF they could only get small, fast guys, and now that they're in the Big Ten and can recruit at a higher level they want to get big, fast guys. I don't think the core concepts of the offense or style are changing, and honestly shouldn't because a lot of it has shown it can work well with good players. I also think any successful offense has a variety of types of receiving personnel who can do different things. We need the big guys to win down the field and we need the Washington/Wandale type of guys for the Duck-R spot.

Third option is AM plays well and chooses to go to the NFL instead of utilizing his extra COVID year and Smothers seamlessly takes the reins next year as a redshirt freshman! Just trying to be optimistic.

The QBs for the Kelly/Frost system on its most successful run were: Dennis Dixon (top-50 recruit), Jeremiah Masoli (unranked player from a JUCO), Darron Thomas (high three star), Marcus Mariota (low three star), Vernon Adams (FCS transfer), and McKenzie Milton (low three star). Recruiting over guys in their system doesn't mean signing five stars every year (1) because Nebraska's not capable of doing that, and (2) they've made their living on finding guys who fit their system.

Is Joe Burrow a better player than Adrian Martinez? Yes. But when Joe Burrow played with a bad offensive line with bad receivers in 2018 he had a worse season as a redshirt junior than AM did as a true freshman. Getting a good quarterback doesn't magically make all the other terrible parts of your offense good.

Joe Burrow made his living throwing a lot of downfield 50-50 balls to JaMarr Chase, Justin Jefferson, and Terrace Marshall while playing behind the Joe Moore Award-winning offensive line, handing off to a first-round NFL running back, and having his plays designed by one of the most sought after offensive minds in the NFL. So I think he probably would have been a lot worse here!

And our rating has been bad for years. Pelini's rating was never lower than the 30s, but he only cracked the top 15 twice. Riley's last team finished in the 100s. Frost's first two teams finished in the 50s. Then we jumped 20 spots back to the 30s last year. So I do feel the numbers pretty well reflect the trajectory of Nebraska over the last decade, and last season's numbers track with what I saw on the field last season: An improved young group playing a tough-as-balls schedule that is a better red zone offense, downfield receiving threat, and a few critical errors a game away from playing like a top 25 team. If you don't want to care about anything beyond the win-loss record, we can respectfully disagree. But a lot of the arguments on this board against the advanced stats seem to be some version of: "I don't trust this objective statistical measure because it contradicts my subjective preconceived notions", which is making me take some people not very seriously.

Bottom line is it's a lot easier to get 18-year-olds to want to live in Lincoln, Nebraska, if they know the team is going to be good and that they can develop into NFL players. Which they don't right now. I'm not that concerned, but I do think the honeymoon period with in-state kids where we could sell the program's potential is over. We need to win games now if we want to keep good in-state kids.

Listen dude, if you don't want to care about any statistical models I don't have a gun to your head. And the SP+ numbers were free for a decade until this season when Connelly moved to ESPN and they put them behind the paywall and made a lot of people angry, so I really don't know what nonsense you're on about in that second paragraph and frankly I don't care.

Honest question, can you show me where I've suggested anything otherwise? I have stated about a million times that the staff needs to start winning games. The numbers would say that the team has been better than its record and that the wins are coming. Here is how this goes: People come on here and drop a bunch of nonsense about how the team is an abject disaster and has never been worse. I post the numbers to say that there's some pretty solid, objective evidence that we're not that far away from being a top 25ish team and that things are improving. Then a bunch of knuckleheads reply "tHeY dOn'T hANd OuT TrOPhIeS fOr sP+." It's getting kind of old to have to keep doing this, homies!

We finished 32nd. Our opponents finished: 2 (Ohio State), 30 (Northwestern), 18 (Penn State), 89 (Illinois), 11 (Iowa), 42 (Purdue), 34 (Minnesota), and 101 (Rutgers). Against that schedule we'd be projected to comfortably lose three games (OSU, PSU and Iowa), comfortably win two games (Illinois and Rutgers), and play three toss-up games (Northwestern, Purdue, and Minnesota). So 3-5 tracks. Especially considering that in one of our comfortable wins our coaches decided to start a freshman wide receiver at quarterback who turned the ball over five times.

In SP+ we were 35th in offensive efficiency, 38th in defensive efficiency, and 93rd in special teams efficiency to finish 32nd in overall efficiency. The link to the final stats is below but its behind the ESPN+ paywall. https://www.espn.com/college-football/insider/story/_/id/30699420/college-football-sp+-rankings-truly-historic-season-alabama-crimson-tide I have no real interest in debating the qualities of SP+ again as I've done it already in a couple other threads, but generally I find it better because it adjusts for pace and quality of opponent whereas scoring offense, yards per game, points per play, and yards per play do not.

"Big Slots" have been rising in popularity in the NFL for a while (think Michael Thomas and JuJu) because they allow you to body a slot corner if they choose to play you small but still get separation if they choose to play you with a linebacker or safety. That being said it's kind of surprising for us considering so many of the slot guys in the Oregon/Frost system also have duties as a ball carrier, which doesn't seem like Toure's game at all. I wonder if we're going to see Toure in passing situations and Brown/Nixon in more of the Duck R role.

Our offense was 35th . You wouldn't know it based on some of the posters around here who only seem to watch Husker football anymore to get mad it's not the 90s. Have a nice evening!

Yes? I've explained why in my last few posts. I think we should all stop talking about K-State.

Some people here have made it clear they are only going to evaluate the quality of football teams based on the binary of their win-loss records with no other context or information. I think that is extremely stupid (and probably being used to make a variety of bad-faith arguments), but if you'd like to, more power to you. But by almost every advanced ratings system we would have been a double-digit favorite against K-State last year, and both of their wins against OU the past two years OU had an 80%+ postgame win expectancy. They are not indicative of anything other than catching the right breaks at the right time.

Callahan left Pelini an NFL defense worth of talent?

Yes. The defense showed it can be solid to good last year, and I think our offense isn't as far away from being a good unit as the common sentiment seems to be. I think we are very capable of playing at a Top 20ish caliber next year. That being said, we could be a Top-20 caliber team and still go 7-5 against our schedule because it's brutal.

Klieman inherited a development machine set up by Snyder in good standing, had an quality and experienced returning quarterback, and plays in a much easier conference. If he hadn't pulled off two of the most insanely lucky wins I've ever seen off against OU not a single person would be talking about him. K-State finished about 40 spots below us in SP+ last year at 70th. If they had played our schedule they would have been favored to win one game.

When people talk about youth with Frost it's not just the total number of freshman on the roster. It's that the first real class he put together has only been on campus for two years, one of which was during a once-in-a-generation/freak event global pandemic. And then when those players aren't immediately all-conference caliber some of our fans default straight to "This is going just like Riley".

Frost is recruiting and developing better talent overall, but if we say the transition class was a wash, his first "real" class is scheduled to be true juniors or redshirt sophomores. Next offseason will be the first that class is even eligible for the draft. I wish we would stop making wholesale judgements on things that we haven't even really allowed to play out yet.

I think the data has found that basically no transmission is occurring in outdoor areas where people are distanced and masked, so I don't really see what the issue is with allowing 30,000 or so people in Memorial with some common-sense measures about congregating/tailgating. That being said, I wouldn't fault anyone or any organization for not wanting to be responsible for an outbreak so close to the vaccine rollout, especially not over just a spring game.

We haven't made a bowl game in four seasons and are already playing one of the toughest schedules in the nation and you think banking a win "does nothing"? It was a chump move to try and cancel the game, but I also absolutely understand why we might have thought it better for the program to make a bowl game than to go get our brains beat in by a team we know we are not in the same league with right now.