Cotton return from exile

[sarge87]

However, Coach Cotton will have to prove himself to be worthy of his position though. I know we're talking about a team that always seems to be rebuilding in ISU, (Sorry Cy) but Cotton's numbers were less than impressive during his tenure at ISU.

2003- 17 Sacks on QB- NU

2004- 34 Sacks on QB- ISU

2005- 39 Sacks on QB- ISU

2006- 38 Sacks on QB- ISU

In 2007 after his departure 17 sacks on QB were recorded.... I do not know if this was scheme, recruiting, or not having the right people to fill the positions. I do have some questions though.

Cy, maybe you can help me out here. What were the folks over in Cyclone Land's take on Cotton there during his tenure? By reading the boards over there, some criticized his recruiting. I know when he was offered the job there, he came bearing gifts as in 300lb. recruit Brandon Johnson from Rushville, NE.

Just like everyone else here, I'll wait till the end of next years season to pass judgment. I just had some questions that I wanted to throw out there.

 

[MCAT800]

According to the stats on Huskerpedia

2000 27 Sacks Tenopir OL coach

2001 32 Sacks " "

2002 39 Sacks " "

2003 27 Sacks Cotton OL coach

 

[Cy the Cyclone]

I believe over the course of my posting career I have shown that I do not post BS. I'm sure there are quite a few people here who will back me up, even a few mods in this.

In any case, ask yourself why Cotton has not been able to latch onto any job since his time at Iowa State? Why was he only offered jobs at some of the lowest programs in the country if he was such a great coach? Ask yourself also which recruit he has gotten that has made any substantial impact at any school. Wait, Ryan Schuler was his big grab. Yes, a recruit who got his scholarships revoked from other schools because of his problems with blood clots.

Instead of asking me why I bash Cotton, maybe you should ask yourself what trait he has shown over the years that makes him easy to defend.

I'll check back to this post in about a decade when you may find the answer.

He was waiting for his kid to graduate from high school...as he made abuntantly clear to the press when McCarney, Cotton, et al got the boot as ISU.

 

[Cy the Cyclone]

However, Coach Cotton will have to prove himself to be worthy of his position though. I know we're talking about a team that always seems to be rebuilding in ISU, (Sorry Cy) but Cotton's numbers were less than impressive during his tenure at ISU.

2003- 17 Sacks on QB- NU

2004- 34 Sacks on QB- ISU

2005- 39 Sacks on QB- ISU

2006- 38 Sacks on QB- ISU

In 2007 after his departure 17 sacks on QB were recorded.... I do not know if this was scheme, recruiting, or not having the right people to fill the positions. I do have some questions though.

Cy, maybe you can help me out here. What were the folks over in Cyclone Land's take on Cotton there during his tenure? By reading the boards over there, some criticized his recruiting. I know when he was offered the job there, he came bearing gifts as in 300lb. recruit Brandon Johnson from Rushville, NE.

Just like everyone else here, I'll wait till the end of next years season to pass judgment. I just had some questions that I wanted to throw out there.

Cotton did some good things with the ISU offense. He had to start from scratch with a hoard of young guys since Walden's recruits, frankly, sucked. He opened up a run-dominated mind-set and got the passing game going (something not seen since before the Crutchfield/Davis/Davis era). He really did a good job developing talent (ie...Myers, Blythe...). Main problem with Cotton and the ISU offense was that it broke down before the season ever started. Featured runners were always going down in the non-conference games, never to be seen again, linemen were leaving with injured knees, broken ankles...whatever. At one point in 04 or 05, we were starting a reserve fullback and a DT on our offensive line at the end of the season. He wanted to set up the pass with the run but kept running out of ball carriers. The fact that they could stay competitive, let alone with a few and actually go to a few minor bowl games, with the lack of depth and talent is a pretty good testiment to Cotton. If I had any knocks on him they would be that he tends to be too conservative in his play calling (which could reflect the inexperience of the team) and I also believe that he needed to pay more attention to the strength and conditioning of his offensive squad, maybe preventing some of the early injuries

Of course...the fact that ISU has the least funded football progam in the Big 12 could have had a lot to do with some of the problems Cotton and ISU had to endure too...ya think???

You'll do okay with Cotton, he's a pretty good one. I might have picked up Loney instead (available, good and cheap) but that's just me.

 

[pctopeka]

Cotton's biggest problem when he was offensive coordinator at Nebraska for the one year was Jamaal Lord, otherwise known as the terminal cancer. Lord was a poor practicer, had horrible mechanics which led to his terrible passing, and was a selfish ball carrier. Cotton was severely limited in his play calling by Lord's lack of passing skills and "me first" attitude. Hitching the wagon to Lord was probably the main reason for Solich's downfall, too.

 

[sarge87]

However, Coach Cotton will have to prove himself to be worthy of his position though. I know we're talking about a team that always seems to be rebuilding in ISU, (Sorry Cy) but Cotton's numbers were less than impressive during his tenure at ISU.

2003- 17 Sacks on QB- NU

2004- 34 Sacks on QB- ISU

2005- 39 Sacks on QB- ISU

2006- 38 Sacks on QB- ISU

In 2007 after his departure 17 sacks on QB were recorded.... I do not know if this was scheme, recruiting, or not having the right people to fill the positions. I do have some questions though.

Cy, maybe you can help me out here. What were the folks over in Cyclone Land's take on Cotton there during his tenure? By reading the boards over there, some criticized his recruiting. I know when he was offered the job there, he came bearing gifts as in 300lb. recruit Brandon Johnson from Rushville, NE.

Just like everyone else here, I'll wait till the end of next years season to pass judgment. I just had some questions that I wanted to throw out there.

Cotton did some good things with the ISU offense. He had to start from scratch with a hoard of young guys since Walden's recruits, frankly, sucked. He opened up a run-dominated mind-set and got the passing game going (something not seen since before the Crutchfield/Davis/Davis era). He really did a good job developing talent (ie...Myers, Blythe...). Main problem with Cotton and the ISU offense was that it broke down before the season ever started. Featured runners were always going down in the non-conference games, never to be seen again, linemen were leaving with injured knees, broken ankles...whatever. At one point in 04 or 05, we were starting a reserve fullback and a DT on our offensive line at the end of the season. He wanted to set up the pass with the run but kept running out of ball carriers. The fact that they could stay competitive, let alone with a few and actually go to a few minor bowl games, with the lack of depth and talent is a pretty good testiment to Cotton. If I had any knocks on him they would be that he tends to be too conservative in his play calling (which could reflect the inexperience of the team) and I also believe that he needed to pay more attention to the strength and conditioning of his offensive squad, maybe preventing some of the early injuries

Of course...the fact that ISU has the least funded football progam in the Big 12 could have had a lot to do with some of the problems Cotton and ISU had to endure too...ya think???

You'll do okay with Cotton, he's a pretty good one. I might have picked up Loney instead (available, good and cheap) but that's just me.

Thanks for the info Cy. I didn't follow Cotton much after he left here.

 

[T_O_Bull]

Welcome home Barney.

>>>T_O_B

 

[Pasadena Husker]

Cotton's biggest problem when he was offensive coordinator at Nebraska for the one year was Jamaal Lord, otherwise known as the terminal cancer. Lord was a poor practicer, had horrible mechanics which led to his terrible passing, and was a selfish ball carrier. Cotton was severely limited in his play calling by Lord's lack of passing skills and "me first" attitude. Hitching the wagon to Lord was probably the main reason for Solich's downfall, too.

yes, it is true that jamall lord was the real weak link on that offense, but i saw nothing during the 2003 season that showed cotton could compensate for lord's lack of ability and the o-line was mediocre at best under cotton's watch. if you look back on that season you will note that the big reason they won 10 games was due to the defense and the offense only seemed to "manage" and not lose games.

 

[junior4949]

Cotton's biggest problem when he was offensive coordinator at Nebraska for the one year was Jamaal Lord, otherwise known as the terminal cancer. Lord was a poor practicer, had horrible mechanics which led to his terrible passing, and was a selfish ball carrier. Cotton was severely limited in his play calling by Lord's lack of passing skills and "me first" attitude. Hitching the wagon to Lord was probably the main reason for Solich's downfall, too.

I have no idea about Lord's practice or selfishness. What I was always told during Lord's tenure was that he just didn't have anything upstairs. People close to Cotton said that we only really saw about 1/3 of his playbook because Lord was too stupid to get anymore of it down. When Lord audibled, it was always an option and he always kept the ball. This could be deemed selfish, but in reality I think it was because he was too stupid to know anything else.

I think we should all keep in mind that Cotton is now a position coach, not the OC. The first thing he will have to do is deprogram the offensive line's thinking of zone blocking.

 

[HuskerWisdom]

Interesting some of the same stuff gets posted on other boards about Cotton also. It gets a bit tiresome to refute stupid comments about him and his past. Anyway, I put together this information on his performance as the OC at Iowa State:

"I put together some numbers from Barney Cotton's days as OC at ISU. To give some context, he was there from 2004 through 2006. 2003 and 2007 numbers are added to show how the team did prior to his arrival and after his departure.

PPG

2003: 14.4

2004: 20.5

2005: 28.2

2006: 18.8

2007: 18.2

as offensive coordinator in 2003, scored 1 TD per game more than the 2003 team did, and 2 TD's a game better in 2005. Had a down year in year 3, but still outscored last year's team. I don't see how an offensive line can do a lousy job and somehow manage to score 2 TD's a game more than the previous OC did.

Rushing Average / Adjusted Rushing Average (minus scrambling yards by the QB):

2003: 3.2 / 3.27

2004: 3.2 / 3.49

2005: 2.7 / 3.37

2006: 3.0 / 3.95

2007: 3.1 / 3.15

The rushing numbers on this team are a bit misleading as Meyer had a propensity to scramble looking to make something out of broken plays. While he was a scrambling QB, he was not a 'rushing' QB. Take his yardage out of the equation and you see that the offensive line performed better under Cotton than it did before or after him. Key here is answering the question of how well the OL did on plays that were designed to be rushing plays - not how good they did on plays that were passes turned into scrambles.

Yards per attempt:

2003: 5.6

2004: 6.4

2005: 7.8

2006: 6.9

2007: 5.8

This statistic is a critical number for understanding how effective an offense is, and for understanding what the offense was doing. In another thread, someone argued that sacks/attempt was a sign of a poor offensive line - when in reality the kind of routes the team runs has a bigger impact on the number of sacks. If you support that theory, you would have to argue that the offensive line of the 2005 SuperBowl champions, the Steelers, was in fact a lousy offensive line because they ranked near the bottom of the league in sacks per pass attempt and under Cowher they almost always had a poor number of sacks per pass attempt. Why? because they ran longer routes that forced the QB to look downfield for a longer period of time, and that statistic alone tells you nothing about the types of routes the team is running. This number can fluctuate a lot if a team is running a different style of passing offense, but for more basic styles, if a team is able to protect the QB enough to get 7.8 yards per pass attempt, that team's OL is doing a excellent job up front.

One final number that was interesting to me. In 3 years as their OC, ISU was held to one TD or less twice - and that took place in 2004 (Cotton's first year), but were never at 7 or less in 2005 or 2006. By comparison, they were held to 7 pts or less 4 times in 2003, and 3 times last year."