How would things have gone if we had retained Solich as coach?

[Hooked on Huskers]

[Redux]

I haven't questioned any of Riley's staff choices. I've mentioned that I think a focus on California, if it's at the expense of time within the region, is misguided. But other than that, I've never questioned his recruiting choices either, and certainly not regarding a specific player.

 

I think people pillory Frank and Bo because they aren't willing to admit their own unrealistic expectations, so they take every perceived shortcoming of theirs and amplify it as a justification for firings that were, in my opinion, wrong. My faith in frank and Bo wasn't so much about their system, but the systems they came from. Both had lots of history being parts of champions. Both had the intense fire a person needs to be a top professional. Both were off to outstanding starts as first time HCs when viewed in historical perspective and I thought both had a tremendous amount of upside potential for a variety of reasons.

 

I don't think Riley will ever achieve their level of success doing things the way he's done it for 20 years as an HC, but if he does, no way would I want him fired. But I do think a number of people who advocated firing Frank and Bo will want Riley fired even if he does well here, and that's concerning to me.

 

If getting a kid from California makes us better than getting a kid from Missouri, what was the harm? I would counter that winning games on the field will ultimately make getting 500 mile radius kids easier than actually spending months and months recruiting them. And for the record you have gone on many discussions about their coaching philosophies and styles of play calling, does that not count as questioning them?

 

 

Just to be clear, if Frank or Bo had put together a clunker of a first season like Riley's, I would have been immediately skeptical of their prospects, especially if they had 20 years of .500 results behind them.

 

They both posted good records for debut years. And yeah Riley has an almost .500 record, but you can't admit that what he did at Oregon State was actually fairly impressive?

If Frank and Bo had the attitude of Mike Riley they would probably still be here. It was Franks off the field issues and the leeway he allowed his staff that did him in, and it was Bo's poor attitude towards his superiors and multiple blowout losses that did him. As far as Wins and Losses go, both men posted pretty damn good records. I get that you don't want to look at it that way, but that's just the way it is.

[hskrpwr13]

Comparing Riley's first year with Solich's is apples to oranges. Solich was continuing a program. Riley is reshaping it. Comparing Riley's 1st year to Callahan's is more appropriate. I more appreciated Bo's approach (whether it was strongly suggested or not is irrelevant) of transitioning to an offensive style he preferred through recruiting, and eventual OC change.

[Enhance]

Comparing Riley's first year with Solich's is apples to oranges. Solich was continuing a program. Riley is reshaping it. Comparing Riley's 1st year to Callahan's is more appropriate. I more appreciated Bo's approach (whether it was strongly suggested or not is irrelevant) of transitioning to an offensive style he preferred through recruiting, and eventual OC change.

Ultimately, I thought Bo's approach early on (particularly in 2008) was correct. Focus on the defense and maintain some sense of normalcy on the offense. And then, as you said, recruit and retool the coaching staff based on the offensive direction you want to go. However, I think you could also argue this approach ended up hurting the team. The 2009 offense was woefully unequipped to succeed due to injuries, talent and coaching. The 2010 offense, without a healthy Martinez, also struggled.

 

I think it's fair to say Bo's early team may have been worse had he tried to revamp both offense/defense, but perhaps the overall product may have been better down the road had he done that. Just food for thought.

[Redux]

Bo's biggest setback was never having a good offense and good defense at the same time. This mainly a result of 1st time HC and a conference change.

[junior4949]

 

 

 

Frank wasn't the OC in 2003, but that's neither here not there.

 

I don't feel like getting into this debate with you because I doubt either of us would change our minds. I don't view a season or two of 6 as being indicative of overall performance. Kind of like I don't consider Devaney's 6-4 seasons as "tanking."

 

Anyway, I thought the okie st and southern miss stat was that they were the only 9+ win teams, not winning record teams. Because at least in addition to those two NU won its bowl game against a team with a winning record (or are you discounting that because Frank had been fired by then?).

Those two seasons are indicative because that's when he'd finally run out of Osborne's recruits and the recruiting momentum that goes with Osborne's success. He couldn't get it done on his own.

 

Those were the only two winning teams. And I didn't count the bowl game because Frank was gone, as you said.

NU was ranked 14th on rivals when Frank was fired. So he had some recruiting momentum. I guess I won't get into a debate as to how many TO ""leftovers" he was using to when NU went to an NC game 4 years after TO retired or a dissection of every NU season going back to the 60s when you could find that there were a number of years where NU didn't beat very many good teams (for example, in 1990, NU didn't beat any team that won more than 6 games, think only two had winning records and was blown out by an unranked Oklahoma team).

 

Stuff happens. In totality, I think Frank was a successful head coach at NU.

 

You don't have to agree. But a lot of football minds do.

 

 

In totality, fairly successful. But again, that includes a lot of time spent riding TO's coattails.

 

It's not just guys TO actually recruited. But who spent most of their high school careers watching Nebraska win national championships. We didn't have to go around convincing guys to be interested in Nebraska. They already were when we showed up at their doorstep. There were plenty of guys on the 2001 team who would have committed and signed within a year or two of winning the third national title in four years. There's a lot of residual there. As that memory started to fade, so did the results.

 

And say a recruiting class is highly ranked at any time other than signing day really doesn't mean anything at all. Did we have more recruits committed at that time than other schools? Would they all have stayed even if he wasn't fired? How many other schools would have passed us anyway? Would they have actually worked out? Way too many variables for that to mean anything.

 

The 2005 class was supposed to be the savior of the program. But it ended up being more hype than substance. And it was really only Rivals that thought it was that good. When you look at it in the 247 composite, it's nothing special. A large number of commits made it look a lot better than it was. There were some pretty good players (Slauson, Bowman, Lucky, Dillard, Potter, Taylor and Turner) plus one elite player (Suh) but out of 32 players that's not a great percentage.

 

 

Are you sure about the bolded part? One of the reasons for the poor 2002 season stemmed from the fact that our best talent on that team was either a true freshman, a redshirt freshman, or a new JuCo recruit. The Bullocks twins were redshirt freshman, Fabian Washington was a true freshman, Demarrio Williams was an income JuCo recruit, LeKevin Smith was a redshirt freshman, Porkchop and Incognito were both redshirt freshmen, Carriker was a freshman.

 

We had a lot of great young players in 02', but our upperclassmen is where things fell apart. The upper class would have been recruited well into those so called residual years. We had four players who were on the either the first team, second team, or fourth team All American list. Three of those four were freshmen. If we're going to stomp Frank's recruiting, it seems his poorest classes should have been his first two which came right off a NC.

[Mavric]

 

 

 

 

Frank wasn't the OC in 2003, but that's neither here not there.

 

I don't feel like getting into this debate with you because I doubt either of us would change our minds. I don't view a season or two of 6 as being indicative of overall performance. Kind of like I don't consider Devaney's 6-4 seasons as "tanking."

 

Anyway, I thought the okie st and southern miss stat was that they were the only 9+ win teams, not winning record teams. Because at least in addition to those two NU won its bowl game against a team with a winning record (or are you discounting that because Frank had been fired by then?).

Those two seasons are indicative because that's when he'd finally run out of Osborne's recruits and the recruiting momentum that goes with Osborne's success. He couldn't get it done on his own.

 

Those were the only two winning teams. And I didn't count the bowl game because Frank was gone, as you said.

NU was ranked 14th on rivals when Frank was fired. So he had some recruiting momentum. I guess I won't get into a debate as to how many TO ""leftovers" he was using to when NU went to an NC game 4 years after TO retired or a dissection of every NU season going back to the 60s when you could find that there were a number of years where NU didn't beat very many good teams (for example, in 1990, NU didn't beat any team that won more than 6 games, think only two had winning records and was blown out by an unranked Oklahoma team).

 

Stuff happens. In totality, I think Frank was a successful head coach at NU.

 

You don't have to agree. But a lot of football minds do.

 

 

In totality, fairly successful. But again, that includes a lot of time spent riding TO's coattails.

 

It's not just guys TO actually recruited. But who spent most of their high school careers watching Nebraska win national championships. We didn't have to go around convincing guys to be interested in Nebraska. They already were when we showed up at their doorstep. There were plenty of guys on the 2001 team who would have committed and signed within a year or two of winning the third national title in four years. There's a lot of residual there. As that memory started to fade, so did the results.

 

And say a recruiting class is highly ranked at any time other than signing day really doesn't mean anything at all. Did we have more recruits committed at that time than other schools? Would they all have stayed even if he wasn't fired? How many other schools would have passed us anyway? Would they have actually worked out? Way too many variables for that to mean anything.

 

The 2005 class was supposed to be the savior of the program. But it ended up being more hype than substance. And it was really only Rivals that thought it was that good. When you look at it in the 247 composite, it's nothing special. A large number of commits made it look a lot better than it was. There were some pretty good players (Slauson, Bowman, Lucky, Dillard, Potter, Taylor and Turner) plus one elite player (Suh) but out of 32 players that's not a great percentage.

 

 

Are you sure about the bolded part? One of the reasons for the poor 2002 season stemmed from the fact that our best talent on that team was either a true freshman, a redshirt freshman, or a new JuCo recruit. The Bullocks twins were redshirt freshman, Fabian Washington was a true freshman, Demarrio Williams was an income JuCo recruit, LeKevin Smith was a redshirt freshman, Porkchop and Incognito were both redshirt freshmen, Carriker was a freshman.

 

We had a lot of great young players in 02', but our upperclassmen is where things fell apart. The upper class would have been recruited well into those so called residual years. We had four players who were on the either the first team, second team, or fourth team All American list. Three of those four were freshmen. If we're going to stomp Frank's recruiting, it seems his poorest classes should have been his first two which came right off a NC.

 

 

Those were some good players. But they weren't necessarily the big contributors that year. The Bullocks were great athletes but even Daniel didn't make a huge contribution that year. Washington was a big contributor but both he and Josh B were NFL guys so you'd expect them to play early. Ross played but he was only our fifth leading rusher that year.

 

Upperclassmen included Ryon Bingham, Judd Davies, TJ Hollowell, Jammal Lord, Josh Sewell, Junior Tagoa'i, Dan Vili Waldrop, Demoine Adams, Thunder Collins, Dahrran Diedrick, John Garrison, Aaron Golliday, DeJuan Grose, Chris Kelsay, Scott Shanle, Wilson Thomas and Justin Smith.

 

Some of the best individual talent may have been younger but that doesn't mean there wasn't talent in the older group. And the younger guys definitely didn't carry the team. The bulk of the offense was upper-classmen with the top two rushers plus #4, the leading reciever, most of the TE play and most of the offensive line. The defense had some younger guys but the DL plus Shanle and Grose were older guys.