McKewon: The Great Nebraska Talent Debate

[Red Five]

Paging Sam McKewon...

 

 

 

12 Former Huskers Begin Pro Careers This Week

 

 

 

 

Yeah, we are basically Alabama. They have 13 players starting pro careers this week.

[BigRedBuster]

The draft this year as proof of Nebraska not having talent is a farce.

 

We had one drafted. Yes, that is low.

However, Foltz would have been if it wasn't for a tragic accident and I'm confident that Westerkamp would have been drafted if it weren't for his injury. I still think he is going to catch on and have an NFL career as long as his knee is healthy.

 

Is there room for improvement in our talent? Absolutely. But, to look at only getting one drafted this year as proof, well.....not buying it.

[Enhance]

The draft this year as proof of Nebraska not having talent is a farce.

 

We had one drafted. Yes, that is low.

However, Foltz would have been if it wasn't for a tragic accident and I'm confident that Westerkamp would have been drafted if it weren't for his injury. I still think he is going to catch on and have an NFL career as long as his knee is healthy.

 

Is there room for improvement in our talent? Absolutely. But, to look at only getting one drafted this year as proof, well.....not buying it.

The draft certainly isn't the only indicator of talent, and there were some things out of Nebraska's control. But, I disagree with the notion that it's a farce. I think the proper reaction is somewhere in the middle - Nebraska's talent isn't and hasn't been good enough, but the draft is not the end all be all.

[Redux]

Who needs the draft to determine talent level? Isn't that what the regular season is for? Our talent ceiling was 9 wins and a couple blowouts, Par the course.

[suh_fan93]

The draft this year as proof of Nebraska not having talent is a farce.

 

We had one drafted. Yes, that is low.

However, Foltz would have been if it wasn't for a tragic accident and I'm confident that Westerkamp would have been drafted if it weren't for his injury. I still think he is going to catch on and have an NFL career as long as his knee is healthy.

 

Is there room for improvement in our talent? Absolutely. But, to look at only getting one drafted this year as proof, well.....not buying it.

 

 

Yep. Well said.

[Nebfanatic]

No one is saying we lack talent because of the draft, but I don't think you can use our undrafted free agent as a solid point to argue for our team talent either. Reality is it should probably just be left out of the argument all together because it isn't an indicator we have poor talent, but in no way is is an indicator we have good talent either.

[Guy Chamberlin]

The NFL draft isn't a perfect indicator of talent, but they do have scouts who scour the divisions for players who've been under-utilized and/or not playing a scheme that highlights their skillset.

 

But they have to bet someone else's money on it, which is why Undrafted Free Agent is a good option for everybody.

[Mavric]

Sorry I'm late to this party. Been a crazy week.

 

As I've said repeatedly, Nebraska doesn't have as much talent as we'd all like.

 

That being said, Sam has been trying to play the talent card since Riley got here. Not that he doesn't have a point to some degree, but he really likes Riley and really dislikes Pelini about the only trick he has up his sleeve to try to explain that Riley's best year (so far) is not better than Pelini's worst year is to beat the talent drum.

 

In this article, he does a decent amount of trying to have his cake and eat it too. He tries to whittle the list down to "Look! Only 12 out of those 52 guys are 'here and are regular starters'." Which is true but takes a convoluted path to try to make it look like less than 25% of those two classes really panned out. Which isn't really the case, but that's how he tries to paint it.

 

I'm not apologist for those two classes. The 14 class wasn't very good and the 13 class didn't pan out for any number of reasons.

 

But let's run through Sam's numbers again to see how he got down to 12:

- 16 transferred out. That's a pretty legit number. Although at least a couple probably transferred out because of the coaching change. Not that they were upset with it, just not a fit anymore. Particularly Stanton and Bush. Neither was great but might have given us a much better chance to win a couple games when Armstrong was injured (Purdue comes to mind) so could have still made a difference.

- 5 never showed up. Another legit number.

- 3 left early. Yes, and two of them left early because they were high (no pun intended) NFL draft picks. So he's whittling away at the number of contributors by excluding two of the most talented. Hmmm....

- 1 injury. Obviously this didn't help. But that doesn't mean it was a waste of a scholarship. But it looks that way in Sam's numbers.

- 8 have yet to be significant contributors. Yes, that's what happens when you're judging a class before they've completed their eligibility. Plus, way to throw out "other than special teams." But Gifford looks like a starting OLB this year and would probably have played last year if not for injury. Wilbon looks to be in the mix this time around. Newell and Joseph probably won't contribute a lot but an injury here or there could change that quickly as they're the next in line. And Darlington has a small but significant role and could still see time in a thin WR corp. So 2 out of the 8 will almost assuredly be significant contributors this year and it might be as many as 5 depending on how things shake out. But all 8 are on the scrap heap per Sam.

- 7 finished their career. Yes, that's what happens after four or so years. And they were all significant contributors. But since they're not on this year's team, they get discounted so Sam can get to the number he wants.

 

And that get's him to his talking point which is "12 out of 52." But it's actually 24 out of 52 that were significant contributors at some point. And quite a few have already used up their eligibility or been drafted by the NFL. And that number will be at least 26 - 50% - and might push 30 depending on what happens.

 

I don't know what that number should be but 50% has been thrown around for some time as about what you can expect from a given class. I don't know if that's true but I've seen that quite a bit over the years. It seems to be fairly true for Nebraska over the last nearly decade. Obviously there weren't many game-changers in those ranks but that's not what Sam was talking about. So I'd say the guys who "panned out" - i.e., were significant contributors - was in the ballpark for what would be expected. Maybe we should expect more. But there's also only so many spots available. With 85 scholarships and 22 starting spots (since Sam discounts special teams), barely over a third can be significant contributors any given year.

[suh_fan93]

Yeah that article was pretty chincy.

 

Sam should have also written the same article about Penn St. who also had only 1 guy drafted this year yet they're the Big 10 Champions.

 

O.k Sam.......

[Nebfanatic]

We are a little different than Penn State. Gotta remember they still had roster problems due to sanctions and this class for them was a part of that. Alot of their contributors from a year ago didn't leave. We had a huge senior class and alot of our key contributors left. Not very compareable imo

 

Basically I think using the draft for us this year is not a good way to judge our talent one way or another. With a very large senior class honestly we didn't have a great showing in the draft, but admittedly, I think some guys fare much better in an alternate universe where we don't change schemes. Alot of our talent is younger and will get better opportunities to showcase their skills during their time here than this particular senior class got to.

[The Dude]

https://mobile.twitter.com/swmckewonOWH/status/860247278812110848

Yuck

[The Dude]

The draft this year as proof of Nebraska not having talent is a farce.

 

We had one drafted. Yes, that is low.

 

However, Foltz would have been if it wasn't for a tragic accident and I'm confident that Westerkamp would have been drafted if it weren't for his injury. I still think he is going to catch on and have an NFL career as long as his knee is healthy.

 

Is there room for improvement in our talent? Absolutely. But, to look at only getting one drafted this year as proof, well.....not buying it.

Not sure I buy the injury thing. Every year several guys are drafted with the understanding that they'll effectively have to take a redshirt year due to injury issues. I'm not sure his injury is even that significant.

 

The thin draft classes only prove that we've been lacking in NFL-level talent on the roster. Which is true whether people want to buy it or not.

[84HuskerLaw]

NFL draft and signees, success in the NFL by former players, all conference, all American, post season awards, team wins and losses, side by side comparisons of teams as they play during the season, team and individual statistics, recruiting ratings, snaps played and seasons as a letterman/starter, etc. are ALL reasonably good, more or less objective measures of 'talent' (team and or individually). All interesting subjects to discuss and debate and maybe no single one is more or less indicative than another. The so-called 'eye' test can also be considered and of course the recruiting 'offers' from various other coaches, are surely good indicators of a given player's capabilities and potential if nothing more.

 

When you step back and look, more or less objectively, without the rose colored glasses, it is pretty clear to see and say that NU has not had 'top ten' talent as a team and very few individuals really, over the past 15 years. It is, quite frankly, pretty hard to argue we have put ANY top ten teams on the field over those years, atleast for an entire season. Now and then, for a game or two, here and there, one can find a handful of games where we played like a top ten team, but even then, it may have been only for a couple quarters.

 

One or two relatively highly regarded recruiting classes won't be enough to bring the program back to the place we all want it to be but it will surely help. As for the realistic % of a given class to 'pan out' and become successful, I would like to think that something above 50% ought to be expected (65% perhaps - on average over a few years). If we accept that half our scholarships are essentially prove to be somewhat wasted, then that would mean at any given time, about 43 of the 85 scholarship guys are not pulling their weight. Add in the walk ons which, presumably would be more like a 10% probability, then we better increase our walkon count big time. I would suggest you need a minimum of a true, honest 3-deep chart (3 X 22 starters plus a few specialists, etc) means we need about 70 performers on the squad and apparently we are well below that at this point. Say, for the sake of argumen, we presently have around 40 players who are sufficiently talented to be in the three-deep, then you need to break that down position by position.

 

Drew Brown is surely one. About 4 DBs, a couple LBs and DLs, perhaps 4 OL, 4 WRs, a TE, a couple RBs, and couple QBs are fairly obvious. That's around 22. I suppose one could find another 19 from the 'athlete' category that could be identified and fairly labeled as acceptable 2s or 3s. So, let's hope that Riley hits about 65% on his first class, 85% last year and 90% this year. That might get us close after taking out the graduations, transfers, attritions, etc. But, we will remain, I suppose, at a couple positions, pretty lacking in quality depth certainly. .

[Making Chimichangas]

All I know is that the recruiting at Nebraska is trending to be so significantly better than when Bo was here. We are killing it on social media, FNL is way more known of a recruiting product along with the spring game. It also doesn't hurt having the Williams' on our side.

 

Bo had two good years of recruiting in 7 years, but that was even overdone by the amount of top prospects not even getting or staying on campus which inflated his best year of getting talent. I feel like this talking point is overdone though (see below). He did however always pull together some solid 3 products like Abdullah, Dennard, Henry, Gomes, Enunwa, Bell, Valentine, Gerry, & Collins. Not to mention some amazing JUCOs along the way like David and Gregory. Burkhead and Westerkamp are the only 2 top end recruits that ever really panned out for Bo --crazy to think about.

 

2008

David Whitmore

2009

Dijon Washington

Chris Williams

2010

Chase Rome

Brion Carnes

Braylon Heard

Chase Harper

2011

Aaron Green

Todd Peat Jr

Bubba Starling

Ryan Klachko

Tyler Moore

David Santos

2012

Greg McMullen

2014

Monte Harrison

--------------------------------------------

2015

Jordan Stevenson

 

We very well could look back if Riley is around another 4-5 years and see the players who didn't finish in Lincoln. It happens at every school, and sometimes it has nothing to do with the coaches. I didn't however list the countless 3 star players who hurt Nebraska's depth a ton during the Bo to Riley transition either. Either way I can slowly see this Riley era coming into fruition. The biggest factor in all of this will be the play of the QB. For the past 4 seasons we had a player who was a career 53%. That will simply not cut it in the offense that Danny wants to run. The offensive line will be improved along with the defense under Diaco. At the end of the day we need to win the West and get to Indy. If not, everything else is just noise.

 

You know what I noticed about all those "4 stars" we signed over those years?

 

Only two panned out...Greg McMullen and David Santos. And of those two, they were only slightly better than average.

 

All the rest of those "highly touted" players were absolute busts.

[Making Chimichangas]

I agree that Nebraska's talent and depth across the roster was terrible under the former head coach. I also agree that Mike Riley and his coaches are recruiting at a much higher level.

 

But could people STOP equating the number of players drafted into the league as the measure of "talent!?" It isn't an apples to apples comparison.