B1G Anonymous Comments from Coaches

Making Chimichangas said:
Regarding that coach's comments about our OL and DL...

Nebraska is much better than what was shown last season.  Last season was just a bad combination of piss poor coaching, zero development, no emphasis on strength and conditioning, and too many players that either half-a**ed it or just gave up.

I expect no such issues going forward and NU's O and D lines will be better, in my opinion, than many people think.
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We are thin at OL, even if the starters have more potential than what it looked like last season.

 
Man, Rutgers has had nine offensive coordinators in nine years? And we thought it's crazy how we go through DB coaches...

 
knapplc said:
This is why you have to take these comments with a grain of salt.

Nebraska has changed A LOT since 1999. Bill Byrne left, Steve Pederson came, Osborne became the AD, then Shawn Eichorst, and finally Bill Moos. That's a new AD every four years, on average.

For coaches, you've got Solich, Callahan, Pelini, Riley and now Frost. A new coach every five years, on average.

I can't even remember all the Offensive & Defensive Coordinators and all their systems.  Shawn Watson, Tim Beck, Jay Norvell. I am blanking on Riley's OC.  Defensive Coordinators were Pelini, McBride for a while, Diaco, Banker... other guys... and now Chinander.  Each Head Coach, OC & DC brought different nuances to Nebraska, just like each AD.

So... you can't just say "Nebraska hasn't changed."  We have. Maybe not the right changes, but can't/won't change isn't our problem.
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Yes and no.

I don't argue with anything you posted.  But it's also true that we spent the last three years running an offense that has almost completely vanished from the college game.  So in that sense, we "haven't changed" from what a lot of schools were doing 20 years ago.  Given the following comments about Frost's offense - although they didn't necessarily come from the same person - I think that's another way to look at it.

I've thought for years that something along these lines was a lot of the problem with Nebraska fan's tenancy to over-rate the success we should be having.  Part of it is just being a fan.  But I think a lot of it was the timing of how everything worked out for us.  We had SUCH an incredibly great run of success it came to be expected every year.  And when we fell, it was seen by many as a blunder of a coach firing/hiring and it should be an easy fix.  Obviously the hiring/firing played into it.  But I think the larger picture went unnoticed by many - that scholarship limitation and TV money changed the game such that it wasn't 6-8 schools that could just maintain a stranglehold on dominance for years on end.  The talent and competitiveness got spread out over a lot more teams but we didn't notice it as much because of the failings of our own team.  When we got back on track, we didn't realize that winning 9-10 games every year and being in the CCG every other year was actually a pretty big accomplishment.  After we fell hard on our face again, perhaps we'll finally have a bit better perspective on things. 

And I think running an offense that brings us up to the cutting edge will have a lot to do with that.  I personally have thought for a long time that's the type of offense that we should be running.  We had good success with a poor-man's version of it a few years ago. Now that we have the Cadillac version, I think we'll like it.

 
I've spoken very highly of this offense (I absolutely love it), but the key isn't running this offense, it's running an offense. I have no idea what Langs was doing. Beck and Watson ran a mish-mash hybrid to suit whatever they had at the time. Frost will and has said that it isn't a collection of plays he has, it's a system. It's a means for communicating and organizing ideas that allows for remarkable flexibility. Those other coaches didn't really have that and consequently those offenses didn't hold up under scrutiny.

 
Mavric said:
Yes and no.

I don't argue with anything you posted.  But it's also true that we spent the last three years running an offense that has almost completely vanished from the college game.  So in that sense, we "haven't changed" from what a lot of schools were doing 20 years ago.  Given the following comments about Frost's offense - although they didn't necessarily come from the same person - I think that's another way to look at it.

I've thought for years that something along these lines was a lot of the problem with Nebraska fan's tenancy to over-rate the success we should be having.  Part of it is just being a fan.  But I think a lot of it was the timing of how everything worked out for us.  We had SUCH an incredibly great run of success it came to be expected every year.  And when we fell, it was seen by many as a blunder of a coach firing/hiring and it should be an easy fix.  Obviously the hiring/firing played into it.  But I think the larger picture went unnoticed by many - that scholarship limitation and TV money changed the game such that it wasn't 6-8 schools that could just maintain a stranglehold on dominance for years on end.  The talent and competitiveness got spread out over a lot more teams but we didn't notice it as much because of the failings of our own team.  When we got back on track, we didn't realize that winning 9-10 games every year and being in the CCG every other year was actually a pretty big accomplishment.  After we fell hard on our face again, perhaps we'll finally have a bit better perspective on things. 

And I think running an offense that brings us up to the cutting edge will have a lot to do with that.  I personally have thought for a long time that's the type of offense that we should be running.  We had good success with a poor-man's version of it a few years ago. Now that we have the Cadillac version, I think we'll like it.
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I agree with that second paragraph especially.  I think the concept of "Nebraska" that is in everyone's heads has been a distraction for coaches and ADs over the past several regimes. That percolates down through the program until the players have this not readily attainable ideal that seems to be counterproductive to building a program.

One of the best things Frost could do is mentally put all that past success on a shelf and ignore it. Approach the Nebraska job as a complete rebuild, and teach his players to play like an underdog, not a college football blue blood.

 
Going from decades of a legendary staff and system to the watered down less disciplined version of the same thing hurt.  Throwing that watered down version in the trash and hiring a flashy new AD that wanted to completely change everything and hire a totally different guy with a totally different system hurt a lot.

Hiring a hard nosed guy helped for a bit.  Changing conferences with him and him refusing to adapt and hire a strong staff that could recruit for him hurt.

Firing angry hard nosed guy and hiring a guy who was respected for winning half the time but was at retirement not give a s#!t or full effort age and wasn't capable of winning at a Nebraska type level even during his best year......hurt.....a lot.

 
brophog said:
I've spoken very highly of this offense (I absolutely love it), but the key isn't running this offense, it's running an offense. I have no idea what Langs was doing. Beck and Watson ran a mish-mash hybrid to suit whatever they had at the time. Frost will and has said that it isn't a collection of plays he has, it's a system. It's a means for communicating and organizing ideas that allows for remarkable flexibility. Those other coaches didn't really have that and consequently those offenses didn't hold up under scrutiny.
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Completely agree. Under Watson, Beck and Langs we had no identity. We finally have a system where plays build off of plays. We also finally have an offense that has an answer for ways different defenses may try to attack, which is built into the offense. We also finally have a play caller that knows how to make in-game adjustments within that offense. Other coaches speak very highly of Frost and his offense for having an answer to everything and on this issue. I think there was a comment from Durkin at Maryland to the effect of we would mix it up and Frost would have an answer. 

 
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The cadence and tone on these are all very similar. Either they found one coach to go off the record or they are just faking it altogether. Still fun to read, but I’m not buying the idea that multiple coaches made these comments. 

 
dtbugeater said:
The cadence and tone on these are all very similar. Either they found one coach to go off the record or they are just faking it altogether. Still fun to read, but I’m not buying the idea that multiple coaches made these comments. 
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It's almost certainly assistant coaches or GAs. It's highly unlikely head coaches are giving these quotes. No coach wants to deal with the blowback of his name getting attached to the more inflammatory of these quotes (see: Illinois).

 
brophog said:
I've spoken very highly of this offense (I absolutely love it), but the key isn't running this offense, it's running an offense. I have no idea what Langs was doing. Beck and Watson ran a mish-mash hybrid to suit whatever they had at the time. Frost will and has said that it isn't a collection of plays he has, it's a system. It's a means for communicating and organizing ideas that allows for remarkable flexibility. Those other coaches didn't really have that and consequently those offenses didn't hold up under scrutiny.
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This post nails the situation.  There is a big difference between copying an idea and understanding an idea - which leads to continued development

 
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bugeater17 said:
We also finally have a play caller that knows how to make in-game adjustments within that offense. Other coaches speak very highly of Frost and his offense for having an answer to everything and on this issue. I think there was a comment from Durkin at Maryland to the effect of we would mix it up and Frost would have an answer. 
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A huge part of this, imo, is Coach Walters being the OC. A lot of people treat it as a negative to have the OC not be the play caller because we are so accustomed to him being one, but I think it's a hidden secret to their success. There is a macro level guy and a micro level guy and that makes decision making so much easier to be able to split those up. There is no question in my mind that having both is a big reason they are so good at adjusting so quickly.

 
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