Roster management and development

[tmfr15]

Just a couple questions here about over signing and it's effect on roster management and player development. Over the years, I have heard more than one Husker head coach talk about creating a balance of players with fairly equal representation, freshman through seniors.

 

When you over sign and create a big class comprised of mostly freshmen with a few jucos, don't you upset the balance? Obviously, only a certain number of the freshmen will develop into regulars in the line up and stars. If you have bigger classes instead of balance, guys can't wait their turn because a good percentage of the guys they're competing with share their eligibility status. Wouldn't this make people frustrated enough to transfer and then you feel the need to over sign again and again and again?

 

I didn't know if past coaches were unwilling to over sign because of the negative effect they believed it would have on the team or if they were just unable to do.it and using roster balance to excuse this deficiency as an HC.

 

Thoughts?

 

[Mavric]

I guess I've never really heard of much talk of "balance".  You don't really want any one class to be really small because that limits your recruiting class for that year but I don't think it's that big of a deal.

 

We are looking at two pretty big classes because we've had a lot of attrition in the past 11 month due to the coaching change.  I'm pretty sure we'll see less attrition in the coming years so the recruiting class sizes will return to a more normal level.

[Nebfanatic]

Another thing to consider is this balance you speak of is a good goal for a coach who has been running the program for a few years and has their guys in place. For Frost, the goal is to get this roster flipped as quickly as possible.

[Undone]

From a talent perspective, our situation is so bad on defense that there is really no other choice but to recruit as hard as possible for a large slew of defensive guys and then just be patient for that class to hopefully turn out well.

 

It's hard to overstate just how important the 2019 class is to actually turning a corner with our program.

[Moiraine]

If I was looking at this without knowing much about it (which is actually the case), and if we assume every cycle has the same # of players and amount of talent, I’d say you’d want the same # of spots to be open. Otherwise if you have a class of 14 you have to be super picky and might not have spots open for some talented players you would have otherwise gotten. Conversely with 26 spots you might be picking up some less than ideal players just because you can.

 

But when you get a new coach I think all of that goes out the window. Frost needs as many of his style of guys as he can get as soon as he can get them. He can fix class sizes later if he thinks it matters.

[tmfr15]

I guess the only consideration is roster development when opposed to over signing. And by that, I mean you want to create a system where you have guys come onto campus, learn and then play instead of expecting every player to hit Lincoln and appear on the two-deep tomorrow.

 

I totally get what everyone is saying about the importance of this class of players in turning things around. But to have a big group of guys in one year creates the situation that Moiraine refers to where you are picky some years and lose out on talented guys and then not picky some years and pick up guys that aren't as good. It also forces guys into the line up quicker, which might in turn stunt their development.

 

We all knew that Scott would need time to turn this around.

 

If he needed to recruit in a balanced fashion and have walk on players bridge the gap in creating depth for practices and games, I would be OK with that. We would not get it turned around as quick, but when we did, it might be better long term.

 

Only super duper talented studs would be playing significantly in those first two to three years of eligibility. The rest of the guys could develop as a red shirt and then as frosh and start giving us a little bit as soph then major work as junior and senior players.

[GBRFAN]

1 hour ago, Nebfanatic said:

Another thing to consider is this balance you speak of is a good goal for a coach who has been running the program for a few years and has their guys in place. For Frost, the goal is to get this roster flipped as quickly as possible.

 

This seems spot on - guessing SF will focus for 3 years on type of players with high quantity of recruits to "flip" the roster.  Then years 4-8 will focus on balancing out class size and position groups so that "upperclassman" equal "underclassman" - to achieve this long term balance.

[BigRedBuster]

Class balance isn't a complete non-issue.  But, I don't think it's a crisis if you have a really big lass and at some point then you have a small class.

The problem is if that really big class doesn't perform.  It's also more of an issue when you start nailing it down to specific position groups.  You want a decent balance within your linemen or your RBs or QBs...etc.  But, even that can be remedied in the future if one class is heavy in one group.

 

Looking at this year, let's say we are going to take 30 players.  I honestly, wouldn't mind seeing that made up of something like 25 HS recruits and 5 good JUCO players that can contribute right away.

 

 

[ScottyIce]

2 hours ago, tmfr15 said:

Just a couple questions here about over signing and it's effect on roster management and player development. Over the years, I have heard more than one Husker head coach talk about creating a balance of players with fairly equal representation, freshman through seniors.

 

When you over sign and create a big class comprised of mostly freshmen with a few jucos, don't you upset the balance? Obviously, only a certain number of the freshmen will develop into regulars in the line up and stars. If you have bigger classes instead of balance, guys can't wait their turn because a good percentage of the guys they're competing with share their eligibility status. Wouldn't this make people frustrated enough to transfer and then you feel the need to over sign again and again and again?

 

I didn't know if past coaches were unwilling to over sign because of the negative effect they believed it would have on the team or if they were just unable to do.it and using roster balance to excuse this deficiency as an HC.

 

Thoughts?

 

You take a big class and plan on some of them not panning out and moving on naturally.

[tmfr15]

It does effect the conversation a lot with recruiting when you break it down to position groups.

 

And I can see where it would be ok for larger classes as long as they perform well. 

 

Then again, if you have to take big classes frequently, the risk/bust factor for the class goes up.

[tmfr15]

Also ... Attrition is a definite factor and we can't anticipate that with any certainty

[brophog]

Class balance is really tricky with the amount of player movement we see now. The new reality is some will transfer out unexpectedly. Just because everyone comes in the same year doesn't mean they leave the same year. Hypothetically you can have something like this:

 

JUCO - 2 years

NFL Early Entry/3 for 3 JUCO - 3 years

Never redshirted - 4 years

Redshirted - 5 years

 

 

 

 

[tmfr15]

1 hour ago, brophog said:

Class balance is really tricky with the amount of player movement we see now. The new reality is some will transfer out unexpectedly. Just because everyone comes in the same year doesn't mean they leave the same year. Hypothetically you can have something like this:

 

JUCO - 2 years

NFL Early Entry/3 for 3 JUCO - 3 years

Never redshirted - 4 years

Redshirted - 5 years

 

 

 

 

Excellent points. That kind of answered my original question.

[spurs1990]

 

I don't know where to put this. It's probably already been posted but this thread says development. This blocking seems like a nice development. Legrone showing that he's willing to work his tail off blocking.

[Old Nebraska Guy]

The NCAA limits each football recruiting class to 25 new counters.  There is a way to somewhat manipulate that number.  Like early enrollees can count against last year if you have spots leftover.

 

When attrition occurs you cannot always replace them one for one.

 

If we had a big 2018 class and I don't follow recruiting enough to know we may not have room for a lot of early enrollees