But we can’t be distracted by that. We have to stay the course and do what we think is right and keep doing it. And know that there are better days ahead. I am more confident about that even in a bad situation than ever as to where we can go. And we are excited to get to do that and we are excited about the challenge, but also the opportunity that is presented this week and the following weeks in the games. We will see how we do, but to me it is exciting. There is all different kinds of challenges to get ready for a team like Michigan State. They are obviously good and there is obviously the challenges of where we are. Like I said, our biggest battle is probably ourselves mentally. We can overcome that and we can get ready to play and have a great opportunity to win."
I don't want to nit pick language, but this was his prepared portion. "We'll see how it goes"? Really? Comeon man. I know you are a competitor and want to win, but language and attitude matter. You can't be a "lead by example" guy as a coach, even if that worked as a player. What you verbalize is internalized. And we aren't in a "see how it goes" situation. The message should be that they need to go out and take it.
I also don't like that he doesn't really build the team up at all. he talks about the challenges and overcoming mental errors, but he doesn't really instill a lot of confidence that they can get it done. His tone is always one of "let's do the best we can and see where the chips fall." I actually get and respect that in a sense, but it needs to be coupled with some steely-eyed determination. Some real "want to" kind of attitude. Every great coach is process oriented, but the goal needs to be clear, too. I just don't see a lot of fire in Coach Riley, and I haven't seen it from one of his "lieutenants" either. Someone needs to step up and be the "screw" so to speak.
On the program seeing better days ahead
“I just have a feeling, as I have gone through the season Dirk, and actually looked right at our games and look at what we can do. I have always felt confident that through the course of time that I can watch film and look at players with the help of the staff and make things better. And as I go through a season in this league the teams that we play, how we play, what we have to do better, it is an assessment as we go and I just feel good about that. I know this is such a powerful place that we can recruit to, and try to make it better in years to come. There is an immediate picture of a game and there is a long-term picture of where we have to go. All these things are always in evaluation and in gathering information. So as I gather information and I watch and learn I feel really good about it."
I know that using a person's first name is relationship building 101, but it just comes off as contrived. As far as the substance of his comments, every coach can look at tape and identify ways to improve. It's really about translating that read from film to the field. And so far, across his career, I just haven't seen much evidence that he can do that, at least not consistently across a team and in a way that generates wins. He can say that, but where is the improvement this year? Where's the evidence across other years?
I also HATE that he's subtly eluding to a talent deficiency by immediately going into recruiting.
This last sentece: what does that even mean???
"So as I gather information and I watch and learn I feel really good about it."?
On how he goes about fixing the program
"I think it comes through, now going back and evaluating our season and situationally looking at things we can improve five games right now. Can we defend that Hail Mary a little better? Can we teach it a little better? And that’s what it is because you’re asking really now specifically football stuff and that’s the part I feel really good about. We also want a culture. It is like I told all of you before, I don’t want to do this without a program that we think has a good substance for kids, and I also think the residual of that is better football, better discipline, better looking. I am excited about that, too. None of this is actually brand new to me. You go through 40 years of coaching and there’s all different kinds of seasons, great ones, hard ones, intermediate ones. Hopefully you learn the one thing you can do is make it better."
More missing forests for trees. The fact is, NU should not have been in a situation where a hail mary or a last ditch play could lose them the game. I made this point previously.
Let's say that NU should have won each of 5 of the past 6 games, 8 out of 10 times in each case. By losing all 6, Riley is defying logic and statistics. These failures are attributable to far more than one play of bad luck. They are attributable mainly to poor game planning, preparation and play calling, in my opinion. Philosophically, this offense is just poor. That's what needs to be fixed first and foremost.
But instead, he implies that the culture has been bad. I fundamentally disagree with him. The culture under Bo wasn't pretty, but it was effective and at its core, it was the same as what Riley and other successful coaches talk about: belief in the system, belief in each other and belief in yourself. Bo put a hard edge on things, but he wanted those same great things, during and after football, for his players. He produced a number of outstanding student athletes during his tenure and had a very low incidence of actual problems off the field. I just don't believe the argument that NU was a culturally bankrupt place under Bo. Therefore, I don't buy the argument that Riley has to rebuild the culture.
On Director of Athletics Shawn Eichorst coming out with a vote of confidence for you
"Well I appreciate that. It is kind of like I said in the general statement. Nothing about this surprises me, it doesn’t surprise me that Shawn has stepped out because I know what must be going on like that. That is not news to me. It is like I said, people are going to react one way or the other. It comes I think in general, I think especially in Nebraska, out of general idea of caring. I think people want to explain and to do it. There is no doubt we have failed in the eyes of what everybody that wants to do that’s a given. It is just another sign of how people do care and another reason I guess that it is important to know that everybody has got a vision of where it could go. And that is really encouraging to me."
I'm sure you do. All coaches would. Begs the question why Bo didn't get one ever, not even in '13 when he was retained.
On Shawn Eichorst’s message of a “brick-by-brick rebuild,” and whether there was a miscommunication from the beginning on what needed to happen in this season and seasons to come
"I don’t take jobs with that intention. My goal in taking the job was to establish good football and a program that everybody could be proud of. That has always been my intention in this deal that is what we wanted. I have taken over two different deals like that, at vastly different spots in their football lives. My personal perspective about this is that we just take what we have, look at it and our obvious goal was to win all the games and we’ve not done that. But then, it is like I said, we have to look immediate, what we want to do with our team today in practice and try to win the game this weekend. And then try to have those goals long term and then all the rest of it, whatever it is, whatever you call it rebuilding or renewing it’s different obviously. Nobody likes the different result right now. I don’t really look at it like that, this is what we were given an opportunity to do and this is how I think we can do better and to me that is an on-going process too, because I’ll find out more, so that is pretty exciting to me. We will never know till we get there, but we've got another nice commitment in recruiting today, I can’t tell you anything about it, but frankly some of the best news I have gotten in a while.”
This reference to recruiting is where Riley really really lost me. What a deflection. I still don't get what he's trying to say about "as we find out more." How much more do you need to know after 30+ years of coaching?
"We will never know till we get there"? What does this mean???
Sipple called him an "inspirational Monday speaker" but I'm not seeing it. I just see another guy who can talk the coach speak, but where are the results? Where's the vision?
On how far the team is away from where they want to be
“I understand that but can we just take our team and change those games in a rematch day? We can’t do that obviously. Could we make a few different plays to win those games? I’ve said, and I think everybody knows this, but your season plays out on those games. Michigan State has had those games. Iowa’s had those games. They beat Wisconsin 10-6, Wisconsin fumbles on the one yard line in the fourth quarter, but Iowa wins it. A close game. Michigan State goes one-score games against Rutgers and Purdue. They win the close games, and why is that? They’re plus-10 in turnovers, more efficient. To me, as disappointing as that is, those kind of things are encouraging, and I know we can go there.”
Again, rematches against awful teams like those played so far shouldn't be required. And the belief that "oh, we just got unlucky 6 out of 6 times" is dangerous. Not to mention that it ignores the whipping put on you by arguably the worst coaching staff in P5 football.
Those other teams may have had close games, but (a) they won, (b) they also had dominating games, and © most have also beaten better competition already.
On if they are getting worse as the season goes on
“I don’t know. Maybe those two games tell a story, but I don’t know if in general that’s a true statement all the way through. We also played probably our best overall football a couple weeks ago against Minnesota. How do you fit those two things? I don’t really have an explanation for…we certainly did give up 55 points, we also gave them 28 of them. I see the point, from the beginning to Saturday. I look at this league and I see all the time those kinds of scores. You just have to win those games and do better than that.”
I can't stand Dirk, and now we get to listen to his roll of stupid questions. Riley did a good job handling him.
Here, he hit a great point: no two games tell the whole story. Texas beat OU and then got crushed by a bad ISU team. Do those two games tell some sort of story? Not really. Just like a bad loss to Wisconsin last year didn't tell a whole story. Reporters and fans look for too many conclusions in too few games. I'm sure if NU pulls off an upset in Lincoln this week, which they have plenty of talent to do, there will be talk of corners turned "and this is why we did what we did" but that won't be any more accurate than to say that the loss to Purdue, on its own, means coaches' heads should roll today.
But factually, Riley is wrong; few, if any teams, have seen Purdue score 55 points under any circumstances. And to point that 28 points were given to them, I wish Riley would just flat out state that his play calling was awful and was the cause of that meltdown.
The absence of that statement, for all the talk of him being a stand up guy, I fail to see the accountability.
On goals
“Well there’s no doubt we want to win the championship and there’s no doubt what we want to do inside the program. The football part of it and how you compete and what you want to do, that part’s easy and the other part is really important to me personally is this is a program that all can be proud of. Those two things are always going to be at the top end of what we do goal-wise in our program.”
ok...
On where the culture is compared to last year
“Part of my deal about that is I’m not going to compare and contrast. I said this right off the bat to you and I said it to the players, I never want to talk about good and bad. It will be different because we are different people. I doesn’t even matter if I replaced Bo (Pelini) or if I replaced Nick Saban. We’re going to have a program of things we believe in. That part of it, there’s no need to even compare. We’ve got some things about the way it’s going to be that are just not to be compromised and it doesn’t even matter where we are. That’s the beauty of what we can do in college. Being involved for me in college sports is a little bit different. You can have that. I think in general, I know everybody wants to win and I know in general, if you have people one on one in a corner and say what do you want here, they want that. They want what we bring and I’m proud of that and we won’t lose that. That has nothing to do with not winning. We can’t cloud that.”
Back to why I like Coach Riley a lot as a mentor of young men and why I think moving him to athletic director might make some good sense (unless we want to do something really smart like hire Meyers or one of the other NU alum that have been tossed out).
While I personally agree with him on his last statement, I think he's dead wrong about Husker fans in general. We know for a fact that it's not really about running a clean program that graduates successful human beings. We've fired three coaches, two of whom had great records, who all ran clean programs.
Backed into a corner, at least 50% of Husker fans would take a championship with sanctions over no championship at all. I sincerely believe that NU could run an 70s/80s style OU or 90s/00s style Miami program, and if the championships were rolling in, there'd be no complaints and lots of rationalizations.
On how the players have handled the situation
“I don’t know. That’s an interesting thing that probably they can only answer. We’re going to do it one way. However it’s perceived or done, it can’t…I think whatever method it is for us for sure, that has nothing to do with compromising the detail of what we do. Now you’re going to say, ‘It doesn’t look like a lot of detail.’ I get that, I’ll take that. We own all of that. We own that. We can fix that. Every one of you has a personal approach to your job. You all do. So do I. You probably study it and you maybe change once in a while, which I will do. With 130 plus kids, you’re going to encounter lots of different circumstances. So there’s just going to be ways that you do things. Maybe part of it is belief, maybe part of it is personality. I know in the end you have to win in order to have a program in order to do all that. That’s easy to say. That’s one of the reasons we do it.”
Not really clear what he's trying to say here, but he did a nice job deflecting Dirk.
On teaching the players the new systems
“Not good enough, obviously because of where we are. At the same time, if you look offensively, I don’t like to throw statistics to necessarily make all the points but our production offensively in the league is pretty good. We’re up there in the top three in total offense. The only thing I don’t like is we’re not running the ball enough. Our production is good. Our red zone offense is up there at the top. Our third down is in pretty good shape. Statistically, whether it’s passing, whether it’s total offense, there’s stuff that’s there. Now am I happy with it? No, but it’s not like there’s not production. (The defense) that’s a different story for sure. We have to play better defense. Our defensive stats are down. We’ve given up too many big plays. Not enough good defense in the fourth quarter to win games. We can go on and on about that. Has it meshed? I know the quality of instruction going on, and I know the work that goes in. We’re just going to keep talking about coaching our kids. That’s all I can do. We can do better. We’ll see if we never stop trying to improve even though it’s this point in the season.”
"We aren't running the ball enough." I don't understand... does he mean not effectively or that he actually is going to push his staff to force the run more?
What are NU's defensive stats in conference, especially controlling for this last game, which was a debacle due to offensive play calling? It doesn't seem like it's been that awful.
I really don't get him... sometimes he just seems like a spectator in all of this.
On his trust in defensive coordinator Mark Banker
“In the football sense of it, I know his extensive defensive football background. I know more about the character and work that goes into it and the preparation that’s done and the bases that are covered. I’ve been with him through thick and thin. Good seasons and bad, top rated defenses and not so much. I know the consistency of work and the soundness that goes into how we teach and what we do. Now obviously those are words. You don’t see it, but I know what’s behind it all.”
Scary in his lackadaisical response here. "Some good, some bad, whatever."
I get that coaches need to have people around them with whom they are comfortable and have trust, but come on. I'd also question what he's referring to when he talks about top rated D's.
On who can help this program in the next few years
“I don’t ever want to compromise a team’s season for thinking about playing other guys because we’re looking to all that. I don’t ever delve into that. We don’t ever talk about that in a staff room. I think you can just do that by doing the best job right now in the day that you’re in. All that stuff comes to play later on as we look at film and then look at guys during the spring. There’s plenty of time to do that. We have to do the best job that we can for this team this week.”
Love this statement and so glad to hear him say it.
