Originally posted by walksalone:
Well, his last performance, driving my beloved Raiders into the ground is more proof, that his a$$ cannot coach. I know i'm going to suffer the next few years due to SP's inability to pick a decent replacement, for Solich. SP was hoping to get a big name in here due to the fact that he was hoping he could get kids to commit on our coach's "name recognition".
It baffled me, why we hired a guy, who had just been fired for leading a team to a 4-12 season. Granted, the year before he'd gone to the superbowl, but there are two reasons for that. One, because the dinosaurs on the team had career years, second because he still had the leftovers from the earlier "Chucky" regime.
Well, there’s always two sides to anything as subjective as coaching. An equally valid, plausible argument is that Callahan’s coaching was responsible for squeezing career years out of those players, and getting them to the Superbowl. They had, after all, been underachievers to that point. As for the 4-12 season, it’s also equally plausible that those same players rebelled when Callahan tried to adjust their roles to improve the team. The long and the short of it is that there’s no way to tell, given those two years, the differences between the college game and the pro game, and the personalities involved.
Again, Callahan may be a lousy coach – all I’m saying is that, first, we can’t tell for at least two more years (and perhaps more) and, second, removing him now would actually probably hurt more than it would help.
As for getting a “big name”, that wasn’t the motivation. The first choice was Huston Nutt. Nutt is not a “big name”, by any stretch of the imagination. What made Nutt attractive was two things – first, he had just beaten both Texas and Missouri (and beat Texas when they were ranked in the Top Ten and Arkansas was unranked), and, second, he recruits well given his circumstances. In the last six or seven years, he’s managed to snag some top talent – not a lot, but some – at a school that lacks anything close to the tradition or “draw” of Nebraska.
Yes, Callahan may have been hired as a “big name”, but I’d guess it was more for his recruiting, and his desire to build a staff that made recruiting the priority.
Originally posted by walksalone:
His inability to adjust under fire is his major malfunction. When the proverbial "shite" is hitting the fan, he changes nothing. I'm not a D-I football coach, but even I can tell when you need to adjust your gameplan to "improvise, adapt, and overcome", and I know at least a half dozen folks on here, capable of the same thing.
For the short term, yes. For the long term, no.
The only way to implement a new system is to commit to it – if you don’t, it’s akin to trying to implement a little more passing to an option offense. You won’t practice it enough to actually be able to do it. Likewise, the only way to convince recruits that they will actually perform in an offense that showcases their talents is to fully commit to that system.
Originally posted by walksalone:
I know there's nobody out there that's worth two sh*ts anyways, if we're looking for a coach. I would have been happy with Bo. Our defence at least looked like they were trying harder, even if the statistics don't back me up.
Which puts us back to the same “good, but not quite good enough” status quo. Ultimately, it comes down to whether we are willing to endure the pain in the hopes of making that final step back to national titled contender.
I think everyone on this board would prefer to see the option attack. It was part of Nebraska’s identity once Osborne installed it. It appealed to the fan base. It had a lot of pluses.
But finding a top notch coach who runs the option is virtually impossible. Finding recruits to run it is much more difficult than for an offense that the recruits feel will showcase their talents. There’s not even any guarantee Pelini would have run the option, or that he would have assembled a staff that could recruit. He may have been a good choice, but that’s in the past.
Originally posted by walksalone:
Watching our team now, it looks like they really don't give a damn. At least for the bowl game last year, they looked like they had some fire in them...
I would guess there are a fair number of the players that don’t like the coach or the system, or don’t like the roles they’ve been asked to fill. But if they feel that way, it’s almost impossible for the coaches to motivate them anyway. And as players, they need to bear some responsibility for their own motivation. Shouldn’t it be enough that they are Blackshirts? That they represent NU?
