Hail Varsity: Early Polls Have Huskers Fifth in Big Ten West

Saunders

Saunders

Heisman Trophy Winner
The preseason football magazines are finding their way to newsstands now and the majority of them have Purdue projected for third in the Big Ten West. Read that again.

The team that won 3-of-33 Big Ten games between 2013 and 2016, but won four on its way to a 7-6 overall record last year, is picked third in its division. Purdue under Darrell Hazell wasn't an afterthought, it was a neverthought during those years. What a difference a year of Jeff Brohm makes.

I use the term "majority" somewhat jokingly. Stassen.com's 2018 preseason consensus was just born over the weekend and only includes three magazines –– Athlon, Street & Smith, Lindy's –– at this point. That means two of those have the Boilermakers third (Lindy's does not), and my guess is that won't hold as more outlets release their full conference projections. It's probably a little bit of an overreaction to Purdue's big first year –– the Boilermakers do have to replace a lot on defense –– but it's not totally out of whack. Brohm is, in my opinion, a really strong offensive mind and most of the major pieces on offense return.

But enough about Purdue. If you're doing the math here and know where the early polls have the Boilermakers, that must have the the Huskers . . . fourth or fifth?

https://hailvarsity.com/s/3961/hot-reads-early-polls-have-huskers-fifth-in-big-ten-west
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Yes, Purdue is set up to take the requisite second year jump under a fresh head coach, but they were overrated last year.

What that means is Purdue can be better than last year but not necessarily see that equate to more wins. 

 
I think there is a better chance that we win the west than finish 5th in the west. I think there is a better chance that we win the BIG than finish 5th in the west. Don't get me wrong, I do not think we will win the BIG, I just think it is ludicrous to think we will finish 5th in the west. It took a mind numbingly bad coaching staff, with meddling by a buffoon of an AD to create a 4-8 record. If Billy C came back we would finish at least 4th in the BIG.

 
I think a big reason they put us at 5th is the 3 crossover games. I can see us beating everyone but Wisconsin in the West (and wouldn't be totally shocked if we beat Wisconsin) but still not being in the top 2 due our East opponents.

 
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With the high degree of pessimism about Husker football, you'd have to think that most pundits and writers around the country don't put much stock in Scott Frost.  It would appear that they don't feel Frost will do much better than Riley.   

One can argue that the away games in conference are extra tough but on the other side of that is that the home games are easier.  Frankly, our record in the Big Ten generally has not been good since we first jointed.  At that time, NU was perceived among majority of national watchers and Husker fans alike as being somewhat relevant nationally and that the Big Ten was a step DOWN in overall competition compared to the Big 12.   Theoretically we should have done better in conference play since we moved 'down' in conferences.   The opposite has happened and it seems the perception is we're falling fast and the decline is expected to continue under Frost.  This is quite troubling.

It's year 1 but our recruiting is not exactly off to a racing start under Frost and the recent offers and the large number of offers already given suggest we are not having a lot of luck in attracting the better players we need.   I hope I am wrong on this but the trends and signs are less than encouraging.  

I believe Frost to be turning things upward and I will remain hopeful going into this fall that we will not end up being in the bottom 1/3rd of the country (that's where finishing near the bottom of the west of the Big Ten would put us I would guess).   We have got to be better than that if the recruiting 'ratings' over the past 5 years are anywhere near close.   Frost ought to be able to get us into 2nd or third place finish in the west with top 40 talent in year one.

 
84HuskerLaw said:
With the high degree of pessimism about Husker football, you'd have to think that most pundits and writers around the country don't put much stock in Scott Frost.  It would appear that they don't feel Frost will do much better than Riley.   

One can argue that the away games in conference are extra tough but on the other side of that is that the home games are easier.  Frankly, our record in the Big Ten generally has not been good since we first jointed.  At that time, NU was perceived among majority of national watchers and Husker fans alike as being somewhat relevant nationally and that the Big Ten was a step DOWN in overall competition compared to the Big 12.   Theoretically we should have done better in conference play since we moved 'down' in conferences.   The opposite has happened and it seems the perception is we're falling fast and the decline is expected to continue under Frost.  This is quite troubling.

It's year 1 but our recruiting is not exactly off to a racing start under Frost and the recent offers and the large number of offers already given suggest we are not having a lot of luck in attracting the better players we need.   I hope I am wrong on this but the trends and signs are less than encouraging. 
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If you get the picture that people (including national people) think Frost won't do much better than Riley, you have been living under a rock. They merely think the turnaround won't immediately happen in year one especially since we're playing 3 of the 4 best teams in the East. We could beat Iowa and still be behind them in the standings because Iowa is playing Indiana and Maryland. There is no hint that people think the decline will continue under Frost. The complete opposite of that is true. He got and gets so much positive attention it's unbelievable. They just think it will take some time.

I happen to think people are overestimating how good Northwestern and Purdue will be, though.

As for recruiting, I don't see how anyone can question it yet given how good of a class Frost put together in 3 months during part of which he was coaching a different team, and given his statements on not wanting to force committments in the spring and then have players break their committments later on. He's also stated he doesn't want to do OVs in the spring. Riley was all about the early commits. It's a different philosophy.

Based on Frost's statements of wanting the players to make sure they really want to commit here and stay committed and what happened in his first class here, no one should be concerned yet. Also, even though we only have 6 players we're currently around 30 on Rivals.

 
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BlitzFirst said:
I think for the most part the narrative goes as follows for pundits and journalists out there:

1.  Nebraska needs to recruit better to win the west

2.  Until they do that they won't contend for the divisional top spot in the West

The thing is, we recruit better than anyone in the west and have recruited better than anyone in the west in the past 5-7 years.  So there is just as much chance that we contend immediately or within the 2nd year.  Average recruiting for Wisconsin and Iowa has been in the 30's and 40's the past few years.  I'd say we'll be just fine contending soon.
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What you just said is basically my take also. 

I have contended (in the albeit brief time I've been on this board) Nebraska's biggest problem was between their ears.  They have had so much poor coaching the last 6 years (at the minimum) that they subconciously don't trust the coaches to put them into the right positions to succeed.  I think that change is already underway.  The only question is: How long will it take?  To @Moiraine point, most national media (and local media, as well as a good portion of the fan base) are asking the same question.  Right now we don't doubt Frost will turn it around, we're just wondering when it'll happen.

 
BlitzFirst said:
I think for the most part the narrative goes as follows for pundits and journalists out there:

1.  Nebraska needs to recruit better to win the west

2.  Until they do that they won't contend for the divisional top spot in the West

The thing is, we recruit better than anyone in the west and have recruited better than anyone in the west in the past 5-7 years.  So there is just as much chance that we contend immediately or within the 2nd year.  Average recruiting for Wisconsin and Iowa has been in the 30's and 40's the past few years.  I'd say we'll be just fine contending soon.
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Yep. This is where they're wrong if it's what they're saying. We've had the talent to get to the B1G Championship every year. But not the coaching. If UCF wasn't a fluke, we now have both.

 
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Where would we be predicted to finish if MR was still HC? How many spots is Frost worth? Even with the crossover schedule, I don't see how we finish worse than third. Last year's Huskers may have been worse than the 0-12 UCF team. The trifecta of MR, SE and Diaco I was world class bad.

 
There’s a lot of untapped potential, namely on the OLine, but I also think we’ve badly missed on a several prospects as well. Stands to reason, right? If our previous staff was so poor at coaching, which they were, we probably shouldn’t give them complete benefit of the doubt on talent evaluation.

Our 2017 class finished #23, but attrition drops it to #39 on the 247 class calculator. Other teams lost recruits as well, so it’s not an exact science, but I don’t think that looks like a top 30 class at this point. Especially with questions about Roberts and potentially a couple of others.

I don’t expect a bad season, I think we win 7 and possibly more if our OLine can play to its potential. But there are depth issues and a couple of spots on the roster that I don’t fully trust against anyone. I can see us revisiting expectations halfway through the season where we all sort of agree that the previous staff left the roster worse off than we gave them credit for.

 
Caliborn72 said:
There’s a lot of untapped potential, namely on the OLine, but I also think we’ve badly missed on a several prospects as well. Stands to reason, right? If our previous staff was so poor at coaching, which they were, we probably shouldn’t give them complete benefit of the doubt on talent evaluation.

Our 2017 class finished #23, but attrition drops it to #39 on the 247 class calculator. Other teams lost recruits as well, so it’s not an exact science, but I don’t think that looks like a top 30 class at this point. Especially with questions about Roberts and potentially a couple of others.

I don’t expect a bad season, I think we win 7 and possibly more if our OLine can play to its potential. But there are depth issues and a couple of spots on the roster that I don’t fully trust against anyone. I can see us revisiting expectations halfway through the season where we all sort of agree that the previous staff left the roster worse off than we gave them credit for.
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Agree, advise guarded expectations.

 
Well the thing is, recruiting better than the likes of Purdue and Minny and Iowa and to a lesser extent cookie cutter Wisconsin doesn't mean much when your coaching goes from erratic to flat out bad over the last 7 years.  So I don't think pundits are so naive to think recruiting has been our biggest downfall.  You can see that even during our slump that we've had playmakers win us games even when we had not business doing so.

 
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Redux said:
Well the thing is, recruiting better than the likes of Purdue and Minny and Iowa and to a lesser extent cookie cutter Wisconsin doesn't mean much when your coaching goes from erratic to flat out bad over the last 7 years.  So I don't think pundits are so naive to think recruiting has been our biggest downfall.  You can see that even during our slump that we've had playmakers win us games even when we had not business doing so.
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True. In addition to that, recruiting guys that leave right away doesn't help either. Guys like Elijah Blades did not help Nebraska at all but make their recruiting rankings look better. 

 
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