Elf

This February will mark Riley's second class that is all his own. I think Bo and Riley share responsibility for the "transition" class. Incoming head coaches don't generally get much time at all to salvage a recruiting class. With dead periods, I'm not even sure how many days Riley had to recruit before signing day. That said, I think Riley did a pretty good job of saving the class and even adding to it. Eichorst said we had the talent to compete for championships right now, I think he was wrong and if you watch the Ohio St game again the talent gap is glaringly obvious. Somehow, we need to fix that.

It'll stop being brought up when people stop blaming depth issues on the current staff. When folks stop claiming it was his W/L record that got him fired, other folks will stop correcting them. When folks accept that Mike Riley is here for at least the next two years whether they like it or not, this board will be a lot more fun. Like Callahan, Solich, Osborne, Devaney and all the other coaching predecessors at Nebraska, Bo will always be brought up in our discusions of Nebraska football simply because they are all part of the history of the team we all love so much. I could have swore that they were hired to do....... .......something. I guess not. 2 years later and still worse than the last idiot. In another thread I posted how I would fix the depth issue on the offensive line, how would you do it? The game is won and lost in the trenches and we haven't consistently won those battles in well over a decade. Maybe longer. So, how do YOU fix it?

I'm not really disappointed, I didn't expect to beat OSU or Wisconsin anyway. I was hoping for 10-3 but we ended up 9-4. I really thought we'd be competitive. I thought we'd be more competitive against Iowa and Tennessee. And while I kinda expected a loss to Ohio St, I didn't expect to get boat raced like that.

It was actually a really good game. Michigan made a nice comeback.

I'm not really disappointed, I didn't expect to beat OSU or Wisconsin anyway. I was hoping for 10-3 but we ended up 9-4.

The offense came alive for a bit and then went to crap again. Our line seemed to get worse as the game went on and we finally gave that DE his sack to pass Reggie White. For years now we've complained about the lines, and the o-line especially. It's really hard to run a successful offense when your line isn't getting it done. Oh yeah, the line really struggled this year, as it in recent history. I know Riley and Cav wanted to redshirt the true freshmen and build for the long term, but I don't see how those young guys wouldn't have been better than the guys that have played for the last half of the season. I think that was an error by the staff this year. I understand the desire to have those young guys play, and, you're right, it's hard to imagine them being any worse than what we put on the field. If I was doing the recruiting plan and trying to fill the huge depth hole on the o-line, I wouldn't. Let me explain. We have a scholarship limit of 85, that's 3 deep at every position on the field plus room for specialists and a few extras. We can't recruit to many players at any one position or we leave other positions short handed. I would shoot for 4 o-line recruits per year and make red shirting mandatory unless your name is Will Shields. I would build for the future right now. You have to do it sometime because if you don't the pain never ends, so if not now, then when? Osborne did a crap load of things right for a lot of years and red shirting all incoming freshmen lineman was one of them. We didn't have poor line play when those guys got to come in, redshirt, eat at the training table, and be in Epley's S&C program for 2-3 years before starting. That's when we had the Pipeline and if we want that Pipeline again we're going to have to rebuild it with quality players and quality development. It isn't very likely that we will get back to that if we don't spend the time developing those young guys first.

That is sort of weird. I've never seen another team that slept through the first three quarters then came alive in the fourth like this team. Happened nearly every game this year. Weird. : Right?

The offense came alive for a bit and then went to crap again. Our line seemed to get worse as the game went on and we finally gave that DE his sack to pass Reggie White. For years now we've complained about the lines, and the o-line especially. It's really hard to run a successful offense when your line isn't getting it done.

Of course it is. Because if Riley fails, he fails and he is likely out of a job. Rarely do you see AD's get two chances to hire a head football coach if the first one fails. I don't think that is necessarily true. If Eichorst refuses to fire Riley when called upon to do so, then I could see him being fired. If Eichorst were to fire Riley because expectations are not being met, or because we regress, then I don't see Eichorst being fired, he'll get to hire another coach. Maybe, I guess it depends on the new chancellor if he wants to keep Eichorst around to try yet again. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Eichorst hire Al Golden at Miami? Golden was not hired by Eichorst. Riley is Eichorst's first hire as a head coach in football at the D1 level. It appears Eichorst was more concerned if Riley was a guy that he could get along with rather than focusing on his win-loss record. I guess I should have read down a bit farther before responding to Boneyard.

Of course it is. Because if Riley fails, he fails and he is likely out of a job. Rarely do you see AD's get two chances to hire a head football coach if the first one fails. I don't think that is necessarily true. If Eichorst refuses to fire Riley when called upon to do so, then I could see him being fired. If Eichorst were to fire Riley because expectations are not being met, or because we regress, then I don't see Eichorst being fired, he'll get to hire another coach. Maybe, I guess it depends on the new chancellor if he wants to keep Eichorst around to try yet again. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't Eichorst hire Al Golden at Miami? No. It was close, but no cigar. As I recall, Al was hired a couple of months before Eichorst took over as AD.

Of course it is. Because if Riley fails, he fails and he is likely out of a job. Rarely do you see AD's get two chances to hire a head football coach if the first one fails. I don't think that is necessarily true. If Eichorst refuses to fire Riley when called upon to do so, then I could see him being fired. If Eichorst were to fire Riley because expectations are not being met, or because we regress, then I don't see Eichorst being fired, he'll get to hire another coach.

It'll stop being brought up when people stop blaming depth issues on the current staff. When folks stop claiming it was his W/L record that got him fired, other folks will stop correcting them. When folks accept that Mike Riley is here for at least the next two years whether they like it or not, this board will be a lot more fun. Like Callahan, Solich, Osborne, Devaney and all the other coaching predecessors at Nebraska, Bo will always be brought up in our discusions of Nebraska football simply because they are all part of the history of the team we all love so much.

Harbaugh's team is getting boat raced right now. I think he should be fired.

So .... about #1 and #3..... Not sure about 3, but I now agree on 1. But you forgot about firing Langsdorf. We will never be successful with his offense. We went 9-4 this year, I'd say that's pretty successfull. Especially when you consider we don't have all the pieces in place for the offense yet, but it's getting there. 9 and 4 were failures under 2 of the past 3 coaches. Did you actually watch the offense the past 2 years? With the exception of Tommy it's been awful. No they weren't.

Those are the only two options? I'm not really a glass half-full or half empty kinda guy. I'm more of a 'the glass is refillable" kinda guy.

So .... about #1 and #3..... Not sure about 3, but I now agree on 1. But you forgot about firing Langsdorf. We will never be successful with his offense. We went 9-4 this year, I'd say that's pretty successfull. Especially when you consider we don't have all the pieces in place for the offense yet, but it's getting there.

I don't know if he'd be a good DC. But he's a really good recruiter. And he can't be any worse than the DC we have now. Cosgrove.

Depth is not the answer to poor tackling and bad technique. Nobody disputes that NU needs to upgrade talent, but todays game and the ones again Iowa and OSU is more than a lack of depth. Iowa...I believe we beat them if we are healthy on the O-Line and Tommy isn't beat up. Increasing our depth can fix the injury issue that exposed our lack of depth. Ohio St. We need better athletes overall if we want to compete with them. And depth.

Oh...don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, just wondering.

Game after game this year the team comes alive in the fourth quarter, sometimes after abysmal play in the previous three quarters. How can we play so well, blocking, running, passing, tackling etc etc, in the last quarter of the game but we can't put it together before that? Maybe this is just a quirk of this team?

It won't matter who we hire as coordinators if we don't have proper depth on both lines. Bottom line is that we lose the battle in the trenches far to often and once that changes we should do significantly better in the big games.

Even if we lose, which looks likely at this point, we still end the season at 9-4. We've seen improvement this year in terms of our overall record, and Riley seems to be doing the right things to keep moving us forward. So no, I don't agree that next year decides his fate, not unless the wheels come off the wagon in spectacular fashion. Next year we'll have a bunch of redshirt freshmen to help with depth issues. We'll see our first pro-style quarterbacks since the Callahan era. Fo Fiddy's influence on special teams will have faded to a distant nightmare. And we just signed another ace recruiter. Personally, I'd like every one of our coaches to be ace recruiters but I also realize that is probably not very realistic so maybe just 2 or 3 more?

Makes us look like surrender monkeys.

I agree, now lets gets these kids off our lawns!!!

Heh...I remember those. I think we ran out of tear aways for one of our running backs one time. I forget what we did to fix it in the game.