Play some of the young healthy offensive lineman against Wisconsin
- Thread starter airboose
- Start date
Huskers19911
Four-Star Recruit
The previous coach left many gaps in recruiting, with the o line as one of the major ones. At offensive line, I think it is common that a scholly winner will take a few years to gain not only the necessary weight, but also the strength and speed to go with that weight. Some guys can do it, others can't. It's not even just linemen, how many other players that have scholarships don't see the field until they are juniors because they aren't ready yet?
Waterloohusker26
Five-Star Recruit
I'm hoping the young guns are just in need of a year to get bigger, stronger and faster. Because watching Utter, Hahn and Conrad completely whiff blocks and go plays without touching anyone is getting hard to watch.
Yeah, I don't think that's really accurate.
For starters, people seem to have an inflated view of what depth should be available. There are 85 scholarships but you're almost always redshirting a bunch of those. Right now I think we're redshirting 17 guys so we only have 68 guys available. Three of those are specialists so there's 65 scholarship position players. Spread around 22 positions that's three deep at each spot. But that's assuming that every player pans out and ends up being a contributor. Even it 67% turn into contributors (which might be a bit high), that's only two deep at each spot. And it's worse on the Offensive Line for a couple reasons. First - like you said - most of the time guys need at least a year if not two to get stronger and work on technique. And second, you don't necessarily have to have a true two- deep because guys can usually play a couple spots.
And all that is just assuming all positions are equal. There was much hand-wringing over our lack of LBs two years ago. We now have 12 LBs on scholarship. That's what this staff wants but that's also a full four-deep at that position. Same story at CB and S. Right now we have 8 CBs and 7 Safeties so we're basically four-deep at both those positions as well. We also have 8 DEs and we're "short" at DT with "only" 6 scholarship guys. If you have more than three-deep at all those spots - not to mention we're four deep at QB and five deep at RB - you have to be shorter somewhere else.
We have 15 scholarship offensive linemen. That's three per class (assuming most of them are here five years). And that's pretty much the number you'd expect us to be at. That's 1 out of every 5.6 scholarships - OL is 1 out of every 5 starting positions including specialists. You could probably have another one or two but you have to short yourself somewhere else to do that. And when you're redshirting four of them, you only have 11 left - just over a true two-deep. So you're starting out with not much depth. There's just not another way around it.
Now, all that being said, we definitely are short on game-ready tackles. We lost two last year who went to the NFL and we have one now who is probably an NFL guy. But I'm not sure we have a legit second guy, let alone a third. Our OL depth was hurt by Thurston deciding to leave this summer - he'd be handy right now. But I don't think it's accurate to say we're short on interior guys on the roster. We have quite a few available. But we lost a starter to injury before the season and apparently even a couple of the RS-Frosh aren't ready. So our depth is stretched but when you start getting several guys hurt that's just going to be what happens.
Kiyoat Husker
All-Conference
Anyone know how beat-up Wisconsin is? Chryst may not be as transparent about injuries as our head coach...
Count 'Bility
Banned
I'm pretty sure they got a couple guys up front being nagged as well. Cant remember where I heard/saw it.
it's late Oct/Nov in the big ten. Time to sack up.
That just shows how little you know about offensive linemen. They don't develop at the same rate. Nick Gates is the exception to the rule not the norm. In the glory years of the nineties most of those guys were only 2 year starters. Wiegert started 3 years, Stai, Rob Z. were 2 year starters. Graham was a 2 year starter. Wilks started 1 year.
The formula at NU for linemen was always come in RS, be a back up to a back up as a RS frosh. Be a back up as a Soph and maybe start as a Jr. You want RS Freshman to come in a be great and that was very rarely the case at Nebraska back when Uncle Milt coach the boys.
Count 'Bility
Banned
That's a formula all across the country.
i think a reason coaches get alittle defensive is because fans see a couple plays in a game, overreact and dont know a lot about the little things so wanna know why so and so doesnt get more opportunities. its' always "why doesnt X get to show what he can do". Well, cuz the coaches see him for 10 hours in practice a week. they know what he can do. I can question a lot of things to. it's what we do. But it's hard for me to get that way with personnel decisions.
i think a reason coaches get alittle defensive is because fans see a couple plays in a game, overreact and dont know a lot about the little things so wanna know why so and so doesnt get more opportunities. its' always "why doesnt X get to show what he can do". Well, cuz the coaches see him for 10 hours in practice a week. they know what he can do. I can question a lot of things to. it's what we do. But it's hard for me to get that way with personnel decisions.
Lyons in the Sea of Red.
All-Conference
I'm terrified to see what Wisconsins defense is going to do to this oline. We were flat out missing guys lined up directly across against Purdue.
Nebfanatic
All-American
if our guys have any pride I don't think we will see that next week.
This is the site I look at from time to time. Seems to be pretty accurate. Sorry the formatting doesn't paste very well.
Last edited by a moderator:
BIGREDIOWAN
Mods
I'm hopeful that they'll fix the mistakes that were made against Purdue in reference to Purdue just blowing through the line and getting into the backfield that quickly. I don't know enough about the offensive line, but it appeared someone was making the wrong reads/calls and that's what lead to those things happening. I'm guessing that's a fairly easy fix, but again, I have no idea.
Nebfanatic
All-American
So in reality they are more beat up than we are, which would make sense given their competition to this point.
i'm not claiming to know it all. i'm not talking about starters, but about the ability to safely backup and spell the starters against purdue. even if the 90s guys were only 1 year starters, i'm pretty sure the redshirt freshmen could play, especially when you consider that purdue's defensive linemen got into our backfield multiple times untouched. 3 of the OL could not move laterally to scoop or chip at all. are you really telling me that the lateral movement of our 4 star redshirt freshmen is currently worse than what we saw on saturday?
again, if so, i may not know the best way to do it, but we are definitely doing it wrong.