Nebraska's roster Talent (graph) or: "At the Base of the Mountain"

[knapplc]

This thread is weird without cm telling us talent doesn't matter and we need to only recruit within 5 miles of Lincoln and use Navy or GT's offenses as a model.

 

After watching that movie you went to a dark room & shouted "Beetlejuice!" three times, didn't you?

[Husker_in_Austin]

@IA State Husker

 

That a good graph. However, looking at that graph, there are some schools ahead of us which have as many, or more, losses as we do, so clearly talent alone is not the answer.

 

While talent wise we're certainly not at Alabama or Ohio State's level, I sincerely doubt we're as far behind as your graph implies.

 

Football is the ultimate team sport. And in this ultimate team sport, individual players heart, drive, and will to win determines how a team does. There are also a myriad of other factors:

• players staying healthy through a season
• academics staying on track
• coaching decisions, in week leading up to a game, and in game
• lucky versus unlucky bounces of the ball
• referee calls that go/don't go your team's way
• girlfriends and family situations which can affect a player's focus
• schedule, having say Iowa, Ohio State and Wisconsin in Lincoln versus the Huskers being on the road

 

And these are just other factors I can think off right off the top of my head.

 

My point here: Yes we certainly to need to recruit better, higher end talent. Everyone wants NU to recruit the best talent possible. But talent is simply one ingredient in the winning a championship recipe.

 

 

Crap, Tennessee is halfway up the mountain . . . lets hope their girlfriends are all giving them trouble . . .

[Saunders]

and plenty of those teams at the top of the mountain have, and will lose to teams at the bottom of it. It really is all meaningless

Sure there will be occasional upsets, but to have sustained success, it absolutely matters.

[NoLongerN]

The team that jumps off the charts to me ... that also reflects what Nebraska has lost ... is WISCONSIN! That team is ranked 33 in talent and has performed as a Top 15 team for a good 5 years. Wisconsin has a "old school" football mindset that Nebraska has lost. I can't recall any recruiting class of theirs that has been anything worth sneezing about ... yet they beat the crap out of folks ... or just play solid football until most teams fade via mistakes or implosion. This is the aspect that I wish Nebraska would recapture. Everyone seems to talk about the need for better recruiting classes (who wouldn't disagree) ... but until our mindset and identity really changes ... I won't buy in.

[Enhance]

I'd like to see graphs like this for each of the last say 10 years and compare it with final season results. I would guess 9 out of 10 NC teams are in the elite talent category

I don't remember the specific numbers/stats, but I do remember reading this last year that every single team who has won a national title in the last 10-15 years also recruited a Top 10 ranked class the year prior to their title (or in the 1-3 years prior to the title).

 

That would also suggest (to me at least) that those teams probably recruit in the 10-15 range because there isn't a lot of parody in the recruiting rankings. Positions may shift but it's almost always the same teams at the top.

[84HuskerLaw]

I think several have hinted at this point but I have said a number of times elsewhere that the overall talent is important but the critical aspect of the 'talent' question is where that talent lies. You need great lines, a great QB, excellent LBs, great seconday play and good WRs and RBs at a minimum to get into and remain 'top ten' or better. Measuring overall class strength is good but you have to assign 'weights' in coming up with the talent assessment by player position and depth as well. You can have lots of 5 star WRs and even a 5 star QB who can throw (Payton Manning looked very average vs. Nebraska, for example) with an NFL arm but if he doesn't have time and or can't find a place to safely pass the ball, it is all for naught.

 

Win with power more than finesse in my view. Control the line of scrimmage, avoid penalties and turnovers and basic fundamental mistakes, and you will compete with almost any team, game after game, year after year. Build the 'pipeline' and recreate the real "Blackshirts" and kick the dam ball well and you will win 11 games and not be blown out by anybody (with a once a decade exception for the true 'fluke' game).

 

"Where's the beef?" is the quick way to ask the question really.

 

Iowa and Wisconsin have better lines than we do and this is why they won the games of late. They also compete with the big boys more often than not

 

Also a fundamental truism: football is a game of blocking and tackling. Do it better and you will win alot. Who blocks and who tackles - your talent focus.

 

It would be a ton of work but I suspect that if you were to take out the WRs, RBs, QBs from the grading and then recompute and rechart the teams, Wisconsin and Iowa go way up and Nebraska drops about 20 spots. Just my opinion.

[mnhusker]

Great post and illustration. It not only shows that we need to get a some more horses to increase the odds of being a top ten team year in and out but it also illustrates the expectations that we should have, as in not getting beat by Wisconsin and Iowa year in and year out.

[VectorVictor]

Every ranked team will have a mix of Elite, Great, Good and Above-Average talent. I think the real difference is depth. The powerhouse teams can keep bringing in fresh legs and injury replacements where lesser teams -- like us -- get real thin, real quick.

 

And let's also not overlook the SEC's gaming of the rules, where they forcibly run off players perceived as underperforming to get the scholarship back into play, have high numbers of recruits in their classes, and ultimately cheat the system in place currently. Wash, rinse, repeat until they've got teams that are stacked from top to bottom.

 

If Alabama were to actually recruit like the rest of the teams in FBS and were stopped from running off underperforming kids (not sure if this has been done yet, since it was a conference-wide thing and not just an Alabama thing) then you'd start seeing depth issues in their roster again.

[Making Chimichangas]

@VectorVictor, exactly right.

 

Alabama is able to be so dominant year after year because they do exactly what you describe: they over-sign and then run off the players who they missed on.

 

There was an article posted years ago by someone (can't find the link or article now) in which he detailed quite nicely the exact methodology of how Alabama and indeed the rest of the S$C over-sign. It was this article which serves as the basis for my over-signing example below:

 

If Alabama only has 15 open scholarships for 2011, and still signs 21 players in February, that's 6 extra players to pick and choose from.

If Alabama has 18 open scholarships for 2012 and signs 27 players, that's 9 extra players

If Alabama has 17 open scholarships for 2013 and signs 25 players, that's 8 extra players.

If Alabama has 20 open scholarships for 2014 and signs 28 players, that's 8 extra.

 

Over this ^^^^ imaginary 4 year recruiting cycle, that equates to Alabama essentially signing 5, possibly 6, recruiting classes in 4 years. It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude at how that type of practice gives them a blatantly unfair advantage.

[Big red surfers]

interesting.

[GBRFAN]

Hopefully you can see the detail. If not, use your desktop. I wanted to see the whole B1G, so I had to go pretty far back.

 

The main thing I thought was interesting was the steepness of the slope ahead of us, or above us, and the shallowness of the slope behind us.

 

In other words, we are at the "base of the mountian" and it will be harder to move ahead than fall behind.

 

I know that this isn't exactly how it works - however, think of it this way.

 

If the best 25 recruits go to school A and the next best 25 go to school B and so on NU would be around Y..... (in some ways this is true with Alabama and OSU - any way) We have moved to the edge of the mountain and if we can show kids that we deserve to be 10 spots better then we currently are, like N - look what kind of talent we would get. Where as if we are 45th and move up 10 spots the talent level really isn't any better.

[Kiyoat Husker]

 

Hopefully you can see the detail. If not, use your desktop. I wanted to see the whole B1G, so I had to go pretty far back.

 

The main thing I thought was interesting was the steepness of the slope ahead of us, or above us, and the shallowness of the slope behind us.

 

In other words, we are at the "base of the mountian" and it will be harder to move ahead than fall behind.

 

I know that this isn't exactly how it works - however, think of it this way.

 

If the best 25 recruits go to school A and the next best 25 go to school B and so on NU would be around Y..... (in some ways this is true with Alabama and OSU - any way) We have moved to the edge of the mountain and if we can show kids that we deserve to be 10 spots better then we currently are, like N - look what kind of talent we would get. Where as if we are 45th and move up 10 spots the talent level really isn't any better.

 

 

Yeah, here's another way to look at it:

 

If you were to see this graph as it changes over time (kind of like stop-motion animation), you would see the lower and mid-ranked teams shuffling around frenetically, but the closer you get to the top, the slower teams move up and down. The teams at the top change, but more slowly.

 

It's like, the matrix, man.

 

[Making Chimichangas]

 

 

Hopefully you can see the detail. If not, use your desktop. I wanted to see the whole B1G, so I had to go pretty far back.

 

The main thing I thought was interesting was the steepness of the slope ahead of us, or above us, and the shallowness of the slope behind us.

 

In other words, we are at the "base of the mountian" and it will be harder to move ahead than fall behind.

 

I know that this isn't exactly how it works - however, think of it this way.

 

If the best 25 recruits go to school A and the next best 25 go to school B and so on NU would be around Y..... (in some ways this is true with Alabama and OSU - any way) We have moved to the edge of the mountain and if we can show kids that we deserve to be 10 spots better then we currently are, like N - look what kind of talent we would get. Where as if we are 45th and move up 10 spots the talent level really isn't any better.

 

 

Yeah, here's another way to look at it:

 

If you were to see this graph as it changes over time (kind of like stop-motion animation), you would see the lower and mid-ranked teams shuffling around frenetically, but the closer you get to the top, the slower teams move up and down. The teams at the top change, but more slowly.

 

It's like, the matrix, man.

 

 

I stared at this ^^^ for like two minutes as if it was Hypno Toad from Futurama.

[84HuskerLaw]

@VectorVictor, exactly right.

 

Alabama is able to be so dominant year after year because they do exactly what you describe: they over-sign and then run off the players who they missed on.

 

There was an article posted years ago by someone (can't find the link or article now) in which he detailed quite nicely the exact methodology of how Alabama and indeed the rest of the S$C over-sign. It was this article which serves as the basis for my over-signing example below:

 

If Alabama only has 15 open scholarships for 2011, and still signs 21 players in February, that's 6 extra players to pick and choose from.

If Alabama has 18 open scholarships for 2012 and signs 27 players, that's 9 extra players

If Alabama has 17 open scholarships for 2013 and signs 25 players, that's 8 extra players.

If Alabama has 20 open scholarships for 2014 and signs 28 players, that's 8 extra.

 

Over this ^^^^ imaginary 4 year recruiting cycle, that equates to Alabama essentially signing 5, possibly 6, recruiting classes in 4 years. It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude at how that type of practice gives them a blatantly unfair advantage.

I know its not exactly the same but in years past Nebraska used to 'oversign' in a way by having preferred 'walk ons' who were, I think, promised a chance for a future scholarship after a year or two if the guy does well. In a way this is 'over signing'. Of course, I assume the SEC teams are oversigning and then renegging on the scholarship as they absolutely KNOW that a set number of players promised current scholarships will NOT get them. This is basically fraud in the inducement (in legal terms). It would be interesting to see a group of those players actually file a lawsuit for breach of contract for not honoring their promise. It is a binding contract I believe as I think I read that NCAA now requires schools to honor the scholarships for full four years. ???

[lo country]

The team that jumps off the charts to me ... that also reflects what Nebraska has lost ... is WISCONSIN! That team is ranked 33 in talent and has performed as a Top 15 team for a good 5 years. Wisconsin has a "old school" football mindset that Nebraska has lost. I can't recall any recruiting class of theirs that has been anything worth sneezing about ... yet they beat the crap out of folks ... or just play solid football until most teams fade via mistakes or implosion. This is the aspect that I wish Nebraska would recapture. Everyone seems to talk about the need for better recruiting classes (who wouldn't disagree) ... but until our mindset and identity really changes ... I won't buy in.

 

This. So much this. NU was the B1G, before the B1G existed. Power football. Physical in the trenches. A definitive identity. Practices harder than games....I look at Wisky, PSU and Iowa and see NU of old. Relentless. Full of fight until the last second. Playing inspired from snap to whistle.....I miss those days.

 

Until we embrace who we were, and quit running from it, we are doomed to continue to repeat the sameness crap that's plagued us for better than 10 years......