huskers1

Anyone know when he came in?

Best article I've read in a long time. Like one comment at the bottom of the page...I wish our local journalists would write an article like this. It seems like all of the articles from Nebraska have been all about how Pelini screwed up and our program is in turmoil blah blah blah. I'm glad one journalist has the marbles to do his job.

Haha yes I just saw the rivals teaser

Report apparently in...man this guy would be a HUGE addition going forward!!

I haven't watched a ton of wisconsins games from start to finish, but a fair amount. I would be careful to say that wisconsins OC would be that much better. From what I have seen their o line coach deserves as much praise as anyone. Every year they have mammoth o linemen and they always have a great running game. They lose their leading rusher and just plug in two guys and keep on churning. Thats one of my main beefs with Wats is that he seems to have to have the perfect personnel to be able to succeed. As long as we have Ganz or a freakishly fast guy at QB his offense struggles beyond belief. Yesterday is the first game in a while that I can remember him not having Ganz/T Mart and actually performing-and it game against a team that won't make a bowl game. He doesn't put guys in the best position to succeed whatsoever. Last year we would run jailbreak screens to Holt (all the while we have Brooks, Mendoza, Gilleylan, Paul, Bell, Cooper all standing on the sidelines) and just yesterday he runs a stop route to Kinnie. I love Kinnie but speed is not his forte. If he does break a tackle what happens? He runs for about ten extra yards and gets tackled. If you look at any successful team they run short pass routes to guys that can break one tackle and go the distance. That's just one example of millions that make me want to get rid of wats.

Chow would be a terrible choice IMO. We already started going towards the zone read/oregon O so I see no reason why they would hire a guy that has been a pro style/west cost coordinator for what I know, his entire career. I would also really like to have Frost come back at the very least to replace Gilmore.

The thing I took from the article? If this is the #1 rated crew why haven't we had them all year? Isn't that kind of odd that in a game between undefeated teams (twice-osu and mizzou) and a game that has the #8 and #18 ranked teams (I believe thats what they were) we don't get the best the league has to offer?

After watching T-Marts senior high school film another time I noticed that he has changed his throwing motion since high school. He used to have more of a motion like Tebow where he drops his arm a little then throws it. Now he keeps the ball high and releases it from there. I'm not sure what to think about it bc watching his high school film he's really freaking accurate. Earlier in the year he had a few games where he would literally throw the ball yards in front of the intended target. However, he has become more and more accurate as the year goes on. I really can't wait to see how he progresses throughout his career.

I completely think we can make the NC game and compete highly at that. If Bama beats Auburn and LSU loses to Arkansas combined with OSU and NU winning out and NU taking them out in the Big 12 CG I absolutely think we will be in the top 2 in the country. If OSU wins out they will have one loss coming to a top 5 ranked team. We will have also beaten Mizzou, A&M, OSU (twice), all who are currently ranked in the top 25. On top of this there's a lot of "we almost lost to ISU, there's no way we are ready to play top competition" or "we would be embarrassed". We didn't have our starting qb, whos also our biggest threat on offense. He just doesn't make great runs himself he makes the entire offense run. The very threat of him taking off opens up Helu and Burkhead along with our entire passing game. On top of that, we didn't have our potential all big 12 corner and for a little while we didn't have Gomes and replaced him w/ Thorell. I'm hearing oregon's outstanding and we wouldn't stand a chance, same w/ Auburn. Well let me ask, would Oregon be so unstoppable if they didn't have Thomas and James? Would Auburn be so unstoppable if they didn't have Newton? Those players make their offenses go just like T-Mart makes our offense go. Am I saying he is as good as those players? Not saying yes or no but he makes our offense tick. Freaking relax, we had a close game against a tough, hard nosed ISU team that has only lost to Iowa, Utah, OU and NU on the season, with our third string QB and third string corner.

agreed, this thread has no substance at all.

More and more as Pelini has been here I have come with the opinion that he is among the Herb Brooks camp..."I'm not looking for the best players, I'm looking for the right ones". I think he's trying to continue to build a culture, and knows what type of players are going to continue to build on it.

IMO will be a clear second string next year. Green, although had some nice passes today, is clearly not the dynamic qb we are looking for and on top of that might be slower than Zac Lee. I'm not sure how fast Carnes is but he sure can't be slower than Green. With that said, it sure wasn't Green's fault for our lackluster offensive showing.

If you're Harbaugh why would you want to leave Stanford for Michigan? You can't get much better from an academic standpoint and they are slowly becoming a player every year in the pac 10/12. with usc down they will probably be able to recruit caly better than they have in the past and Harbaugh is doing great at recruiting nationally anyway.

HUGE pickup!! Coming into the season I said that I thought we needed to get at least one big time corner commit I think we've seen this year what having lock down corners can do for a D. With Mitchell, Jackson, Evans, Green, Washington and Josh Mitchell we really have a solid foundation for our corner spots heading into the big ten. with Osborne, Cooper, Smith and Jackson at safety I think we also have a very good foundation at safety as well. I'd be ecstatic if we could just get Keith Lewis, Peat and Koa-Ka'ai.

SSSUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe we are also recruiting Poole out of Ohio aren't we?

wow lionsfan you must think really highly of Patrick. I see guys still available like Todd Peat, Wayne Lyons, Charles Jackson, Keith Lewis and about five more DE's that we need. I would love to get him too but there are a lot bigger fish to fry at this point than WR. I think we HAVE to get a top tier DE in this class. We didn't get one in last years class and with Allen gone we'll have Ankrah, Meredith and Williams at the end spots. I haven't heard anything about the frosh that came in this last year but none of them were too great on film-I'm holding out great hope for Okuyemi though.

Since 2008 I have been saying this will be our year. Combining the fact that Paul, Lee, Helu, Mcneil, Williams, Henry, Prince, Allen, Hagg and Gomes are all seniors with the fact that UT, OSU, KU and MU all lost most of their firepower I thought the stars aligned perfectly for this year. With only one loss and the potential to move up drastically with two huge wins the next two weeks I'm not ruling out the fact that this season still won't be very successful. With that said nobody could have predicted that T-Mart would be as explosive and start this year. He is obviously a great runner, but obviously struggles in his pocket presence, coverage reads and reads in the run game as well. He will only get better at those other things. An example would be Pryor. He was a great runner his freshman year and now he is almost strictly a passer-but has the potential to kill you with his legs. Add in the fact that we are completely stockpiling o-linemen and the hope that we will still get Green and Heard to join Burkhead in the backfield and I think our offense will be as explosive as it has ever been. Add in Reed, Baptise, K. Bell and Enunwa and on paper we should be very potent. A lot of this depends on if Wats keeps learning from teams like Oregon and other spread teams in the off-season and if Gilmore and Cotton can develop their players better than they have in the past. Ideally I'd like to see us hire Frost away to coach the WR's and Cotton keeps progressing.

I think Heard will absolutely KILL IT next year in this system. As much as I love Helu and Burkhead neither one of them is just a flat breakaway threat. I know, I know Helu has had a couple 60+ yarders this season but theres a difference b/t Helu's break away runs and someone like LaMichael James runs. That's how he will affect the offense IMO. The addition of Heard and Green with Burkhead and T-Mart is a beautiful thing to think of.

ya that is a good question. I don't know how you can take David off the field, but you also can't take Gomes or Hagg off the field either. Personally I would rather see David on the field in the dime than Compton if nothing else because I think he is a better blitzer and better in coverage, along with being a natural playmaker. On the other hand Compton knows all of the checks and can get the defense lined up a lot better. Never a bad thing to have too many playmakers though.

I have actually read Hero of the Underground twice and he never says once that he was addicted to painkillers while at nebraska. He in fact mentioned that it would be ridiculous to say that he was addicted to painkillers while at nebraska. the part you may be thinking about was the time that he was injured and the trainers gave him some painkillers and he took them and he said everything just seemed to glow and he found himself in a much better mood. he said he felt at that moment that he knew he was different and had the potential to become addicted.

To touch on the Cotton issue here as well, I just don't understand how our line can't be one of the best in the big 12, possibly country. Looking at other programs around the country and their o line recruits: Kansas State: 2006:Scott Kreihbal (3 star), Kenneth Mayfield (2 star), Patrick Turner (2 star) 2007:Cory Adams (2 star), Alesana Alesana (3 star), colten freeze (2 star), Ben Liu (3 star), Jake Roepke (2 star), Eldridge Simms (3 star) 2008:Ethan Douglas (2 star), Zach Hansen (unrated), Edward Prince (3 star), Wade Weibert (3 star) 2009:William Cooper (2 star), William Lawson (2 star), Cornelius Lucas (2 star), Keenan Taylor (3 star) Stanford: 2006:Joe Dembensky (2 star), John Kyed (3 star), Bret Mcbride (2 star), Andrew Phillips (3 star), 2007:Matt Bentler (2 star), George Halamandaris (2 star), Brad Hallick (3 star), Tyler Mabry (3 star) 2008:David Decastro (3 star), Jonathan Martin (3 star), Sam Schwartstein (2 star) 2009:Kevin Danser (3 star), Kalil Wilkes (3 star) Oregon: 2006:Jordan Holmes (2 star), CE Kaiser (2 star), Pat So'oalo (2 star), Bo Thran (3 star), Fenuku Tupou (4 star) 2007:Mark Asper (2 star), Charlie Carmichael (3 star), Darrion Weems (4 star), Carson York (4 star) 2008:Nick Cody (4 star), Hamani Stevens (4 star), 2009:Karrington Armstrong (3 star), Everett Beynard (3 star), Jamall Burell (3 star), Trevor Fox (3 star) Nebraska: 2006:Keith Williams (3 star), DJ Jones (4 star) 2007:Marcel Jones (3 star), 2008:Ricky Henry (3 star), Brandon Thompsen (3 star) 2009:Nick Ash (3 star), Jesse Coffey (3 star), Brent Qvale (3 star), Jeramiah Sirles (3 star) So obviously the depth is the first thing that jumps off the page but just take a look at the average stars of these teams. I picked these teams bc they have a pretty good running game the past few years. What's the difference? Scheme? Bad evaluations? Coaching/Developing?

I actually don't have a problem at all with the offense we are running this year. In fact, I really enjoy it and think it's the exact offense we should be running. I'm not really a watson fan when it comes right down to it but it's not his fault that Martinez would throw the ball yards away from the receiver. There was a lot of bashing, with good reason, for Callahan for forcing his system on players that couldn't run it, or the past few years w/ Rodriguez but at least they have a true system. It seems like Wats doesn't have a system at all. It's just whatever he thinks will work that year is what it seems. In the past three years we have gone from a west coast offense to a split west coast to power running to a true spread option running team. I know Bo likes the fact that he can adapt to his players strengths but give me a coordinator that has "his scheme".

Woah there buddy, I never said that this was for a fact happening. I said that I worry that sooner or later, if they keep playing well offensively and wats keeps taking all the credit, players are going to get fed up with it. Also I never once said that the "players deserve all the credit". How about you read the entire post and take it for what it is instead of reading it and paraphrasing it in your own words.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way saying that the players didn't play well on purpose. What I was and am saying is that Wats has been taking every last bit of the credit for the offense playing well the first three games. I don't know that I have heard him compliment the players mroe than once (outside of him praising Martinez for his passing skills). I think the players might get tired of playing well and then hear wats say "I did this", "this was my vision", "I saw their weakness here". Think back to when the defense plays a good game, you don't hear Pelini saying, "this was my doing". When it's a bad game he always says "it was my fault". I just wish he would be more from the Pelini school of when it's bad it my fault and when it's good it's because of the players. And I know he got it so bad last year that he probably just wants to blow his own horn to try to prove "he didn't go stupid overnight".