Coaching or Talent - which is more responsible

[84HuskerLaw]

That walk-ons don't win you anything. Here's a stat that will show how much talent we are lacking at this time. We had 79 players on the travel roster. 24 of them were walk-ons. Bo's sh**ty recruiting was the equivalent to being put on self imposed probation.

Maybe I am missing something here on this stat but isn't this about 'normal' for a travel roster because you have a total of 85 max on scholarship and in most years about all your freshman and one or two (non frosh) are red shirt scholarship players who would not travel. If you give about 22 scholarships each year off of 85 scholarships, that means you travel with at most about 63 scholarship players and the rest would then necessarily be walk ons. Apparently we only had 55 in Miami but several had injuries and could not play so maybe they didn't travel either. I am just estimating therefore that about five (5) walk ons have beat out scholarship guys on the travel squad. I think that says some good walk ons made the team as you would surely expect and hope. A few upper classman didn't turn out and quit or transferred or got in trouble, etc.

Thus, if I am reading your comment as you intended it, I don't think we can really fault Bo's recruiting bad scholarship guys that are apparently not as good as walk ons this year according to Riley. ? Am I missing something in this analysis? Just trying to understand the point. Maybe you are right and if so, it is shocking and disappointing to think the recruiting has been 'that bad' in recent years. On the other hand, maybe that is good because we can hopefully recruit better and thereby improve the team significantly as a result.

22 a year is more than 85. 24 walk ons is an tribute of how much Bo disliked and how lazy they were when it came to recruiting. They were more focused on trying to create new excuses as to why they couldn't get talent to Nebraska instead of putting in more work to get them here. Yes recruiting has been "that bad" under Bo. He just didn't like it and it is fitting that he went to a small school where they only get the kids that are not good enough to make it to the big schools. Which is why it wouldn't surprise me if he was successful at Youngstown State, just like Frank at Ohio as you don't have to be a good recruiter to win at that level.

Yes 22 X 4 = 88 but it is also not unusual to have one recruit fail to qualify or drop out or change his mind, etc. Call it 21 X 4 = 84. With about 20 red shirts and medical hardships and injureds and academics etc. it seems not surprising to find we take walk ons instead of nearly 100% scholarship guys to travel. My only point. And as far as 24, I would hope we have that many quality walk ons on the roster at any given time. Hopefully I'd like to see about 45 good walk ons on the team at any given time. We need to keep roster up near 130 in my opinion. If we have 45 walk on s,. a good chance that a dozen or so are significant contributors. I would not be surprised that out of 25 scholarships granted, at least 20% won't end up making the three deep chart for numerous reasons from academics to homesickness to family issues to drugs and other moral issues, to major injuries ending careers to simply a kid losing interest in sports. Another 20% won't make it athletically as they get too big, never get big enough, are not as fast or talented as hoped, etc. That takes about 40% of 25 or 10 from the roster leaving 15. 15 X 4 = 60 (again) leaving a necessity to take a number of walk ons to Miami.

I am not trying to argue against your point about Bo's poor recruiting as I tend to think he did not recruit as well as he should have and maybe didn't make the effort. Recruiting to Lincoln requires major effort by the coaches in travel, being away from home, etc. Maybe in Miami, you can recruit from your car by driving a couple hours on a Friday nite. Not happening in Nebraska. You fly all over the USA. And, in today's economy, getting top kids away from other parts of the country is tough when the consequence is the kid's parents and friends etc won't be able to afford to go the games. And tickets are not cheap in Lincoln, In Miami, you could obviously walk in to the game Saturday without a ticket by early in the second quarter and sit anywhere! Big difference for Florida kids.

 

[Enhance]

Some really good discussion and ideas in here.

First off, I don't know if a lack of "speed" is necessarily a glaring problem. I think, in some cases, people blame a lack of "speed" because they don't see or understand the schematic deficiencies that lead to a blown play. I didn't see a wealth of speedy talent destroying us yesterday. I saw a lot of guys just missing assignments and not making plays. Now, I do think Miami certainly did have some better talent at their WR position, for example, then we did in the secondary. But, a WR catching a ball in the middle of the field with no defender within 10 yards of him is not a speed problem. That's a guy (or multiple guys) missing their assignments.

Second, I think we really need to give more attention to the problems penalties and dropped passes created for us yesterday. We tried to run the ball Saturday, but when we needed big 3rd down conversions we kept making mental mistakes. Westerkamp had two huge third down catches, including at least one where he got blown up, and it was called back for a penalty. In other instances, guys like Hovey or Reilly were dropping passes. They were great plays and great throws, but the WR's weren't doing their job and that led to problems getting any rhythm.

Third, in terms of play-calling, the broadcast pulled up a stat at one point where Saturday showing the Huskers were dead even in play selection at 28 pass, 28 run. Guys, that's 50/50. There's no wishy-washiness there - we were trying to run the ball. But, again, penalties and a very inconsistent push along the o-line makes it seem like we aren't trying. I don't think this line is playing as well as last year's, but the more obvious and glaring problem is we don't have an amazing back in AA to make up for deficiencies. It kind of is what it is right now.

Lastly, and I've said this in other threads, I think really need to have more faith in the coaches. We've had 15 years of inadequacies in this program. These guys deserve more than just 9 months to make up for all the years of problems we've developed.

Overall a very good post. The only part that I would have to disagree with is the lack of speed. Miami was bigger, faster, and stronger than we were. Their DL averaged 30 lbs more than our OL did. The only way this is going to get fixed is by recruiting and that is what this staff is doing right now, recruiting their butt off. They made some mistakes in both offensive and defensive play calling, esp on leaving our CB's on an island, if that is what they want to do, wait until we get better players at the position. But then it again it may not matter with the lack of overall talent on the defense as there is very little on it.

I agree there are certainly some talent deficiencies and we unquestionably need improvements at several positions. That said, I believe people are using the 'we need speed' argument as a crutch to overlook schematic inadequacies. We failed to cover a considerable number of pass plays effectively yesterday, finding opponents in wide open areas of the field because defenders missed their assignments.

So, I definitely agree with the point you're arguing there, but, I also think there's a balance here that people are unfairly overlooking, like the example I brought up. A lack of speed doesn't leave an opposing wide receiver wide open in the middle of the defense with no defender within 10 yards of him. And while our front seven certainly didn't do our secondary a lot of favors, those types of plays are on the secondary.

 

[AFhusker]

That walk-ons don't win you anything. Here's a stat that will show how much talent we are lacking at this time. We had 79 players on the travel roster. 24 of them were walk-ons. Bo's sh**ty recruiting was the equivalent to being put on self imposed probation.

Maybe I am missing something here on this stat but isn't this about 'normal' for a travel roster because you have a total of 85 max on scholarship and in most years about all your freshman and one or two (non frosh) are red shirt scholarship players who would not travel. If you give about 22 scholarships each year off of 85 scholarships, that means you travel with at most about 63 scholarship players and the rest would then necessarily be walk ons. Apparently we only had 55 in Miami but several had injuries and could not play so maybe they didn't travel either. I am just estimating therefore that about five (5) walk ons have beat out scholarship guys on the travel squad. I think that says some good walk ons made the team as you would surely expect and hope. A few upper classman didn't turn out and quit or transferred or got in trouble, etc.

Thus, if I am reading your comment as you intended it, I don't think we can really fault Bo's recruiting bad scholarship guys that are apparently not as good as walk ons this year according to Riley. ? Am I missing something in this analysis? Just trying to understand the point. Maybe you are right and if so, it is shocking and disappointing to think the recruiting has been 'that bad' in recent years. On the other hand, maybe that is good because we can hopefully recruit better and thereby improve the team significantly as a result.

22 a year is more than 85. 24 walk ons is an tribute of how much Bo disliked and how lazy they were when it came to recruiting. They were more focused on trying to create new excuses as to why they couldn't get talent to Nebraska instead of putting in more work to get them here. Yes recruiting has been "that bad" under Bo. He just didn't like it and it is fitting that he went to a small school where they only get the kids that are not good enough to make it to the big schools. Which is why it wouldn't surprise me if he was successful at Youngstown State, just like Frank at Ohio as you don't have to be a good recruiter to win at that level.

Yes 22 X 4 = 88 but it is also not unusual to have one recruit fail to qualify or drop out or change his mind, etc. Call it 21 X 4 = 84. With about 20 red shirts and medical hardships and injureds and academics etc. it seems not surprising to find we take walk ons instead of nearly 100% scholarship guys to travel. My only point. And as far as 24, I would hope we have that many quality walk ons on the roster at any given time. Hopefully I'd like to see about 45 good walk ons on the team at any given time. We need to keep roster up near 130 in my opinion. If we have 45 walk on s,. a good chance that a dozen or so are significant contributors. I would not be surprised that out of 25 scholarships granted, at least 20% won't end up making the three deep chart for numerous reasons from academics to homesickness to family issues to drugs and other moral issues, to major injuries ending careers to simply a kid losing interest in sports. Another 20% won't make it athletically as they get too big, never get big enough, are not as fast or talented as hoped, etc. That takes about 40% of 25 or 10 from the roster leaving 15. 15 X 4 = 60 (again) leaving a necessity to take a number of walk ons to Miami.

I am not trying to argue against your point about Bo's poor recruiting as I tend to think he did not recruit as well as he should have and maybe didn't make the effort. Recruiting to Lincoln requires major effort by the coaches in travel, being away from home, etc. Maybe in Miami, you can recruit from your car by driving a couple hours on a Friday nite. Not happening in Nebraska. You fly all over the USA. And, in today's economy, getting top kids away from other parts of the country is tough when the consequence is the kid's parents and friends etc won't be able to afford to go the games. And tickets are not cheap in Lincoln, In Miami, you could obviously walk in to the game Saturday without a ticket by early in the second quarter and sit anywhere! Big difference for Florida kids.

TO never had that many that contributed. Walk ons are something else that Nebraska fans need to get that out of their head that walk ons need to be a major part of a successful program. If they are, you see mediocre at best results because they don't win you sh#t.

 

[Bowfin]

I vote coaching. Miami said that they watched last year's Oregon State film of Banker's coverage schemes and saw that they could exploit the holes in the middle of the field...and they did.

 

[knapplc]

I vote coaching. Miami said that they watched last year's Oregon State film of Banker's coverage schemes and saw that they could exploit the holes in the middle of the field...and they did.

Where did they say that?

 

[QMany]

I vote coaching. Miami said that they watched last year's Oregon State film of Banker's coverage schemes and saw that they could exploit the holes in the middle of the field...and they did.

Where did they say that?

Secondary: Is it safe to say that Daniel Davie isn't meshing well with the new defensive scheme? It's just not working out. Granted, the entire secondary is struggling, but Davie has been the most prominent player having issues. Inserting Chris Jones and Jonathan Rosehelped, but it's also a schematic thing. Miami's Brad Kaaya noted that the Hurricanes studied a lot of Oregon State film to identify it's weaknesses, and boy, did they ever find them. Grade: F

http://www.cornnation.com/2015/9/20/9358923/report-card-miami-hurricanes-36-huskers-33

I'm sure more specifics can be found; that was only a 6-second Google search.

EDIT:

In an interview with the World-Herald, Kaaya said he’d watched film of Nebraska defensive coordinator Mark Banker’s work at Oregon State, and, in game-planning, figured out that NU’s safeties and corners are susceptible to certain inside routes. On the first two drives of the game, Kaaya found those holes, completing nine of his first 13 passes for 141 yards.

http://www.omaha.com/huskers/tropical-depression-frantic-husker-rally-can-t-make-up-for/article_8ad5c7e6-5f23-11e5-ad0e-2b32a3a331d5.html

 

[GBRedneck]

That walk-ons don't win you anything. Here's a stat that will show how much talent we are lacking at this time. We had 79 players on the travel roster. 24 of them were walk-ons. Bo's sh**ty recruiting was the equivalent to being put on self imposed probation.

Maybe I am missing something here on this stat but isn't this about 'normal' for a travel roster because you have a total of 85 max on scholarship and in most years about all your freshman and one or two (non frosh) are red shirt scholarship players who would not travel. If you give about 22 scholarships each year off of 85 scholarships, that means you travel with at most about 63 scholarship players and the rest would then necessarily be walk ons. Apparently we only had 55 in Miami but several had injuries and could not play so maybe they didn't travel either. I am just estimating therefore that about five (5) walk ons have beat out scholarship guys on the travel squad. I think that says some good walk ons made the team as you would surely expect and hope. A few upper classman didn't turn out and quit or transferred or got in trouble, etc.

Thus, if I am reading your comment as you intended it, I don't think we can really fault Bo's recruiting bad scholarship guys that are apparently not as good as walk ons this year according to Riley. ? Am I missing something in this analysis? Just trying to understand the point. Maybe you are right and if so, it is shocking and disappointing to think the recruiting has been 'that bad' in recent years. On the other hand, maybe that is good because we can hopefully recruit better and thereby improve the team significantly as a result.

22 a year is more than 85. 24 walk ons is an tribute of how much Bo disliked and how lazy they were when it came to recruiting. They were more focused on trying to create new excuses as to why they couldn't get talent to Nebraska instead of putting in more work to get them here. Yes recruiting has been "that bad" under Bo. He just didn't like it and it is fitting that he went to a small school where they only get the kids that are not good enough to make it to the big schools. Which is why it wouldn't surprise me if he was successful at Youngstown State, just like Frank at Ohio as you don't have to be a good recruiter to win at that level.

Yes 22 X 4 = 88 but it is also not unusual to have one recruit fail to qualify or drop out or change his mind, etc. Call it 21 X 4 = 84. With about 20 red shirts and medical hardships and injureds and academics etc. it seems not surprising to find we take walk ons instead of nearly 100% scholarship guys to travel. My only point. And as far as 24, I would hope we have that many quality walk ons on the roster at any given time. Hopefully I'd like to see about 45 good walk ons on the team at any given time. We need to keep roster up near 130 in my opinion. If we have 45 walk on s,. a good chance that a dozen or so are significant contributors. I would not be surprised that out of 25 scholarships granted, at least 20% won't end up making the three deep chart for numerous reasons from academics to homesickness to family issues to drugs and other moral issues, to major injuries ending careers to simply a kid losing interest in sports. Another 20% won't make it athletically as they get too big, never get big enough, are not as fast or talented as hoped, etc. That takes about 40% of 25 or 10 from the roster leaving 15. 15 X 4 = 60 (again) leaving a necessity to take a number of walk ons to Miami.

I am not trying to argue against your point about Bo's poor recruiting as I tend to think he did not recruit as well as he should have and maybe didn't make the effort. Recruiting to Lincoln requires major effort by the coaches in travel, being away from home, etc. Maybe in Miami, you can recruit from your car by driving a couple hours on a Friday nite. Not happening in Nebraska. You fly all over the USA. And, in today's economy, getting top kids away from other parts of the country is tough when the consequence is the kid's parents and friends etc won't be able to afford to go the games. And tickets are not cheap in Lincoln, In Miami, you could obviously walk in to the game Saturday without a ticket by early in the second quarter and sit anywhere! Big difference for Florida kids.

TO never had that many that contributed. Walk ons are something else that Nebraska fans need to get that out of their head that walk ons need to be a major part of a successful program. If they are, you see mediocre at best results because they don't win you sh#t.

HAHAHAHAHA! Is that why TO typically had 90+ walkons on the roster?

 

[StPaulHusker]

I'm sure it has everything to do with coaching and nothing to do with talent.

https://huskerhankwordpresscom.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/problems-with-pelini/

Quote: In fact, of the 79 names on the roster in Miami…24 were walk-ons. That’s what Riley inherited from Pelini.

 

[Stumpy1]

I'm sure it has everything to do with coaching and nothing to do with talent.

https://huskerhankwordpresscom.wordpress.com/2015/09/20/problems-with-pelini/

Quote: In fact, of the 79 names on the roster in Miami…24 were walk-ons. That’s what Riley inherited from Pelini.

Exactly...When 1/3 of your travel roster are walk-ons, you have a talent issue. I know walk-ons are special to this program and some do contribute on a regular basis but there is a reason they are walk-ons in the first place. I know some, if not all had 'ships to go play at a smaller school but instead came here to play and that is fine but it doesn't make them all D1 athletes because of it.

 

[GBRedneck]

There are 85 players on scholie right now, and only 11 are former walkons. Some scholarship players are injured, and some are redshirting, and some just haven't performed well enough to make the travel roster.

What is the scholie/walkon ratio for other teams?

 

[StPaulHusker]

There are 85 players on scholie right now, and only 11 are former walkons. Some scholarship players are injured, and some are redshirting, and some just haven't performed well enough to make the travel roster.

What is the scholie/walkon ratio for other teams?

The point is 79 players traveled to Miami. And 1/3 of them are/were walk ons. That means there is a clear talent gap that Riley has been given and must fix.

 

[BIGREDIOWAN]

I'm saying it's mainly a talent issue with some coaching issues sprinkled in. Banker needs to figure it the hell out with this defense or take a walk. Hopefully Riley will figure out what happens to head coaches who are stubborn at Nebraska. Ask the last two if you need an idea of how it ends Riley.

 

[GBRedneck]

There are 85 players on scholie right now, and only 11 are former walkons. Some scholarship players are injured, and some are redshirting, and some just haven't performed well enough to make the travel roster.

What is the scholie/walkon ratio for other teams?

I'll bet dollars to donuts that teams in the top 10 are not going on the road with 1/3 of their roster being walk ons.

How many walkons do you think are included in the average 79 man travel roster?

 

[GBRedneck]

There are 85 players on scholie right now, and only 11 are former walkons. Some scholarship players are injured, and some are redshirting, and some just haven't performed well enough to make the travel roster.

What is the scholie/walkon ratio for other teams?

The point is 79 players traveled to Miami. And 1/3 of them are/were walk ons. That means there is a clear talent gap that Riley has been given and must fix.

No, that stat doesn't mean anything by itself. Take a look at Wisconsin and tell me how many walkons are included in their 79 man travel roster. Then we can talk.

 

[StPaulHusker]

I'm saying it's mainly a talent issue with some coaching issues sprinkled in. Banker needs to figure it the hell out with this defense or take a walk. Hopefully Riley will figure out what happens to head coaches who are stubborn at Nebraska. Ask the last two if you need an idea of how it ends Riley.

I think he is figuring some of it out. He pulled Davie and things changed for the better on defense.

Collins hasn't been dominant. Our best DL is a converted TE RS freshman. McMullen has disappeared.

LB play has been much improved but they are thin and not healthy all at the same time.

The deck was stacked against him this year and possibly even next year. They need more quality players.