Sipple puts the talent argument to bed

[Spooky Tooth]

 

 

Back during Miami week, Di Nardo made the claim that Miami was much closer to its championship form and Nebraska was no where close. So where does Sipple get this crap? I wouldn't believe or give credibility to anything that guy writes.

 

2011 2nd in Big (questionable due to drop outs and busts)

2012 4th in Big

2013 3rd in Big (questionable due to drop outs and busts)

2014 6th

2015 4th

 

Nebraska is currently in 5 or 6th place in the conference in recruiting. If this continues, we will be conference doormats forever. WE are a small state, we have to out recruit the oppositiion.

"Questionable"

 

Do you realize other teams have busts too?

 

NU had the third or fourth best attrition rate coming into this season. The 4th or so attrition adjusted talent ranking (neck and neck with MSU and the only team with a significant lead was Ohio St).

 

I'm so tired of the misinformation.

 

If seeing this misinformation posted by some of these guys makes you tired, you should be in a coma.

 

 

 

Virturally anything you post has that effect on me.

[Mavric]

 

 

If the talent is there then we wouldn't be starting a record number of walkons. End of story.

You sure it's a record number of starters?

Almost 40% of our travel roster last week were walkons. Again there are some that are talented and deserve a shot. But if you look at top teams they're consistently recruiting top 15 classes, and actually have a two deep.

 

 

And how does that compare to previous Nebraska teams?

[JJ Husker]

http://journalstar.com/sports/huskers/sipple/steven-m-sipple-nu-record-doesn-t-jibe-with-talent/article_71d259d3-d321-529d-95de-8ad9cd2c852d.html

 

 

I trust Big Ten Network analyst Gerry DiNardo's evaluations. He was Colorado's offensive coordinator from 1984-90. He was a head coach at Vanderbilt, LSU and Indiana. Each August, he tours preseason camps. Here's what he told a Lincoln radio station in mid-August:

"We go to Illinois, we go to Iowa, then you walk on Nebraska's field and they just look so much more physically imposing at the line of scrimmage," he said. "That obviously was impressive. I think (the coaches) feel pretty comfortable with 10 offensive linemen in the two-deep.

"And you'd have to say the defensive line is one of the strengths of the team. You get the same feeling when you look at the line of scrimmage as you do at Michigan State and Ohio State. That's pretty impressive company. I think Mike Riley starts his first year with a pretty strong line of scrimmage."

DiNardo also tweeted praise of the development of Nebraska's linebackers.

What's more, he tweeted that "at least 16 of the young players looked very impressive either physically, performance or both."

DiNardo understands football better than a large percentage of Americans. His assessment illustrates that Nebraska's talent isn't as subpar as some suggest.

 

He's said basically the same thing for 2 or 3 years now. He's been wrong everytime. IMO he's not a good analyst. Whiffs on most all of his observations and predictions.

[cm husker]

 

 

 

If the talent is there then we wouldn't be starting a record number of walkons. End of story.

You sure it's a record number of starters?

Almost 40% of our travel roster last week were walkons. Again there are some that are talented and deserve a shot. But if you look at top teams they're consistently recruiting top 15 classes, and actually have a two deep.

 

 

And how does that compare to previous Nebraska teams?

 

 

Exactly. All of this complaining about talent is interesting to me, because it almost universally lacks context.

 

For example, Shanle (who should know better) tweets some drivel about Purdue being as or more talented than NU. Of course what the original author and Shanle fail to mention is that according to the same (flawed) methodology, Michigan St and Nebraska are equally talented (or NU is even slightly more talented).

 

Same goes for a lot of the claims that Bo just lived off of Callahan's recruits. It fails to acknowledge that NU actually didn't have, relative to historic trends, that many kids draft, especially among top draft picks, during Bo's first 4 years (and that 33% of those top 3 picks were Bo signees).

 

Lots of misinformation being used to prop up rationalizations.

 

And that's dangerous, because if we don't acknowledge and understand the unique circumstances around NU football, we aren't going to overcome them (or properly take advantage of them).

 

that ignores that NU is

[Thanks_Tom RR]

Talent is one, and only one part of the equation. Coaching scheme is another part. Coaching nuts and bolts is another part. "Want to" is another part.

 

Way back when, I was in the Armored Cavalry, tasked with being the first line of defense if the damned Rooskies decided to invade Western Europe. When I got there, my first Captain was a 'Nam holdover. When we trained, he would get livid at the slightest failure. He'd literally threaten you with physical violence if you didn't execute properly. We'd score 98-100% on the quarterly DoD proficiency tests. To the man, we privately despised the Captain. But we were skilled and we performed well over regs.

 

Then the Captain rotated out and a new one took his place. He was a book born officer, no combat experience and generally a nice guy. Our first DoD test with the new Captain we graded at 73%. A failing score. The Captain told us we'd need to improve. Training was lackluster. Our second test, 77%, failing. The new captain took us to the training range and addressed us all. "I know your past scores, you are all top notch soldiers, capable of excellence. We don't train to get high scores on tests, nor to make me look good. A good score won't matter if the commies come through the gap. You will fight like you train. I am a captain in the Cavalry, I will be at the front of the charge and most likely to die. You train so that the man on your left and right can have confidence you will be able to do your job, and they can be confident you will do yours."

 

We got the message. Next testing...98%. He never yelled or raised his voice. He just made it clear that it was on us to perform.

 

Somehow I don't think the coaches and this team have made that connection.

Damn! Great story. This fits the state of the Husker team perfectly. Bo was a good coach (maybe not elite coach) and the team's success was built from his fire. Take that external source away without replacing it, and the team is underperforming with Riley. Riley, as an obvious internal competitor, is not going to be the fire, so he needs to find a way to convey to this team that they need to self-police and hold their peer's accountable. Let them know their success with demand on them.

 

The other major aspect of this issue, is that the coaches have designed a scheme that does not allow their talent to succeed. There appeared to be much more buy in at the beginning of the season, but as the results on the field did not match the effort level being put forth, you could see some guys fade. More followed as the season has worn on.

[cm husker]

That's an interesting story; thanks for sharing.

 

One important distinction: the tactics and grading systems didn't change from one captain to the next.

 

In football, the actual tactics have changed quite a lot, so it's not just a matter of leadership style and motivation.

[Bowfin]

If the talent is there then we wouldn't be starting a record number of walkons. End of story.

 

Playing football well, is a skill, not a "talent". Skills can be taught, or in this case, coached.

 

When everybody yaks about "talent" they are trying to tell me that 18 year old can be taught to field strip and reassemble an M-16 blindfolded, design and maintain a website, pilot a plane, run a dairy farm, frame and finish a house, and rebuild a '69 Hemi Cuda because those are skills, but looking back for the ball or maintaining leverage on a block is a gift from God, like prophecy or working miracles.

 

So my take is that the walk-ons are more teachable and have mastered college level football skills better than those recruited. It doesn't mean that Nebraska has less proficient players, it means that they came from a different source.

[cm husker]

That second paragraph nails it, Bowfin. Nicely said.

[PaulCrewe]

There was enough talent on this roster to sleep walk to a six win season and go to a bowl. This lack of talent crap is a joke.

[Harriedhusker]

http://journalstar.com/sports/huskers/sipple/steven-m-sipple-nu-record-doesn-t-jibe-with-talent/article_71d259d3-d321-529d-95de-8ad9cd2c852d.html

 

I trust Big Ten Network analyst Gerry DiNardo's evaluations. He was Colorado's offensive coordinator from 1984-90. He was a head coach at Vanderbilt, LSU and Indiana. Each August, he tours preseason camps. Here's what he told a Lincoln radio station in mid-August:

"We go to Illinois, we go to Iowa, then you walk on Nebraska's field and they just look so much more physically imposing at the line of scrimmage," he said. "That obviously was impressive. I think (the coaches) feel pretty comfortable with 10 offensive linemen in the two-deep.

"And you'd have to say the defensive line is one of the strengths of the team. You get the same feeling when you look at the line of scrimmage as you do at Michigan State and Ohio State. That's pretty impressive company. I think Mike Riley starts his first year with a pretty strong line of scrimmage."

DiNardo also tweeted praise of the development of Nebraska's linebackers.

What's more, he tweeted that "at least 16 of the young players looked very impressive either physically, performance or both."

DiNardo understands football better than a large percentage of Americans. His assessment illustrates that Nebraska's talent isn't as subpar as some suggest.

 

[GBRedneck]

Talent is one, and only one part of the equation. Coaching scheme is another part. Coaching nuts and bolts is another part. "Want to" is another part.

 

Way back when, I was in the Armored Cavalry, tasked with being the first line of defense if the damned Rooskies decided to invade Western Europe. When I got there, my first Captain was a 'Nam holdover. When we trained, he would get livid at the slightest failure. He'd literally threaten you with physical violence if you didn't execute properly. We'd score 98-100% on the quarterly DoD proficiency tests. To the man, we privately despised the Captain. But we were skilled and we performed well over regs.

 

Then the Captain rotated out and a new one took his place. He was a book born officer, no combat experience and generally a nice guy. Our first DoD test with the new Captain we graded at 73%. A failing score. The Captain told us we'd need to improve. Training was lackluster. Our second test, 77%, failing. The new captain took us to the training range and addressed us all. "I know your past scores, you are all top notch soldiers, capable of excellence. We don't train to get high scores on tests, nor to make me look good. A good score won't matter if the commies come through the gap. You will fight like you train. I am a captain in the Cavalry, I will be at the front of the charge and most likely to die. You train so that the man on your left and right can have confidence you will be able to do your job, and they can be confident you will do yours."

 

We got the message. Next testing...98%. He never yelled or raised his voice. He just made it clear that it was on us to perform.

 

Somehow I don't think the coaches and this team have made that connection.

CSB and a plus 1 for you, sir!

[Blackshirt_Revival]

The talent or lack thereof on this team is one thing, but I thought one of the big points of praise for Riley was his ability to maximize talent and get the most of the teams he coached? Riley himself even made comments that this was one of the more talented teams he had coached, and that the team was particularly deep in talent on both the offensive and defensive lines.

 

Do these comments now amount to platitudes? The comments about working in their system and tailoring it to the talent we had on the team, do those amount to platitudes as well?

 

Bottom line is Riley took over a program that won 9 games the year before. Nobody in the local or national media, nobody on this site or any message board I'm aware of, and no Husker fan I know in real life predicted this team to be this poor right now. So what is the issue? Could it be coaching?

 

Maybe the issue is this staff is not at all a fit for Nebraska or right for the job. Maybe if talent matching such a different scheme is such an issue, we should have brought in a coach who ran a scheme that did match the talent we had on hand, or was legitimately interested and able to tailor schemes to fit that talent, and/or didn't try forcing a square peg in a round hole so much.

 

There is no evidence to suggest Riley can or will have success here, and we have decades of evidence to utilize for this conclusion (beyond that, the man is 62 years old). While we don't have a lot of examples (of a coach taking over a solid winning team after a firing or non-retirement related resignation), there are literally no examples to my knowledge of a coach doing substantially worse than his predecessor in his first year and then going on to have a successful tenure at that school.

 

If you were to objectively look at the coaching hires made this past offseason, which would you had said was the biggest head-scratcher and had the highest probability of failure? If that seems too daunting or difficult a question to answer at this point, simply look objectively at the coaching carousel between us, Oregon State, Wisconsin, and Pitt and tell me who do you think pulled the shortest straw?

 

When I see teams like Navy, Air Force, Memphis, Temple, Kansas State, and Pitt who I don't feel are more talented than us, but I think would beat us, that whole lack of talent thing kind of goes right out the window.

 

I think Nebraska fans have a right to be concerned and even outraged. I really think we are looking at a very small window of time to get this train back on track before it goes completely off the rails. We haven't won a conference championship since 1999. There are literally 2 generations of fans who have little or no memory of Nebraska ever being a very good team. Think what we may now, but I personally believe Nebraska is much closer to Minnesota, circa 1978 than it is to Alabama, circa 2008.

[Harriedhusker]

If this assessment is true, it does not speak well for our current coachs.

I know we have had an inordinate amount of injuries.

I do not know if it is lack of talent, poor player development, injuries, or just sub par coaching but I do know this program is currently in shambles.

You have to go back to the Jennings era to match this disaster.

[GBRedneck]

 

Bottom line is Riley took over a program that won 9 games the year before. Nobody in the local or national media, nobody on this site or any message board I'm aware of, and no Husker fan I know in real life predicted this team to be this poor right now. So what is the issue? Could it be coaching?

 

Another board has a season record prediction contest. They've been doing it for about 15 years. This year they had about 140 entries. 2 guys picked 7-5. 1 guy as a half-hearted jab picked 6-6. He was declared the winner last week as no matter how many more losses there are, he will be the closest. It's the first time in the history of the contest that it didn't go down to the last week and require the use of tiebreakers to determine the winner.

[Red_October]

 

Back during Miami week, Di Nardo made the claim that Miami was much closer to its championship form and Nebraska was no where close. So where does Sipple get this crap? I wouldn't believe or give credibility to anything that guy writes.

 

2011 2nd in Big (questionable due to drop outs and busts)

2012 4th in Big

2013 3rd in Big (questionable due to drop outs and busts)

2014 6th

2015 4th

 

Nebraska is currently in 5 or 6th place in the conference in recruiting. If this continues, we will be conference doormats forever. WE are a small state, we have to out recruit the oppositiion.

"Questionable"

 

Do you realize other teams have busts too?

 

NU had the third or fourth best attrition rate coming into this season. The 4th or so attrition adjusted talent ranking (neck and neck with MSU and the only team with a significant lead was Ohio St).

 

I'm so tired of the misinformation.

 

Go look at the classes, instead of just proffering your opinion. I know you hate facts but you can't alter them. The ratings are skewed because they do not back out the busts and transfers after they occur. Do your homework instead just offering up lame opinions about other schools.

 

Did anyone think Bubba was going to give up millions to play at Nebraska?