Riley's Head Coaching Career -- Bad losses & Ranked Wins

ColoradoHusk

ColoradoHusk

Heisman Trophy Winner
As NU and Coach Riley had another "bad loss" over this past weekend to Northern Illinois, it was Riley's 3rd "bad loss" in less than 30 games as coach at NU.  What do I consider a "bad loss"?  I consider a bad loss to a team that ends up with a losing record or a non-Power 5 conference team.  This morning, I saw some comparison to Tom Osborne's losses to Iowa State in his career, but the '92 Iowa State game was Osborne's only loss in his career to a team that ended the season with a losing record.  Say what you will about Osborne, but he beat the teams he was "supposed to beat".  I am also a believer that even a "good coach" should win the games he's supposed to, even if he can't win big games (Bo Pelini).  I wanted to take an extensive look at Coach Riley's career, and show the number of "bad losses", and show wins over ranked teams, as well.  Here we go.

1997 -- Bad losses (BL) -- Stanford, Cal; Ranked wins (RW) -- none

1998 -- BL -- Arizona State, Cal; RW -- #15 Oregon

2003 -- BL -- None; RW -- None

2004 -- BL -- None; RW -- #24 Arizona State

2005 -- BL -- Arizona, Stanford; RW -- none

2006 -- BL -- None; RW -- #2 USC, #23 Hawaii

2007 -- BL -- UCLA; RW -- #2 Cal, #20 Oregon

2008 -- BL -- Stanford; RW -- #1 USC, #18 Pitt

2009 -- BL -- None; RW -- #23 Cal

2010 -- BL -- UCLA, Washington State; RW -- #9 Arizona, #20 USC

2011 -- BL -- Sacramento State, UCLA, Arizona State

2012 -- BL -- None (but OSU lost to an eventual 7-6 Washington team when OSU was ranked #7 -- borderline bad loss); RW -- #13 Wisconsin, #19 UCLA

2013 -- BL -- FCS Eastern Washington; RW -- None

2014 -- BL -- California, Washington State; RW -- #7 Arizona State

2015 -- BL -- Illinois, Purdue; RW -- Michigan State

2016 -- BL -- None; RW -- #22 Oregon (ended season at 4-8)

2017 -- BL -- MAC team Northern Illinois

So, what does this tell us?  Here are my thoughts.

- I think it's reasonable to take away Riley's first 2 years at Oregon State, where he took over one of the worst programs in college football

- Riley took over for Dennis Erickson in 2003.  Erickson made Oregon State a decent program, with one great year in 2001.

-- 2006-09 was Riley's best run as head coach at Oregon State (10-4, 9-4, 9-4, 8-5)  Those years were very good for Riley.  Even with a couple of bad losses in those years, Oregon State had a number of wins over ranked teams, with 3 wins over top 5 teams.

-- 2010 started a trend to some very mediocre Oregon State teams through 2014.  These years included a high number of bad losses.

-- 2012 looks like the outlier for Riley's last 5 years at Oregon State going 9-4.  They had some very nice wins in the first half of the season, was 6-0, and reached #7 in the country.  Then they had a borderline bad loss to Washington in game 7.  Oregon State did go 3-4 in the last 7 games of the season.

-- To me, bad losses show me a lot more than nice/ranked wins do.  They show me that teams are inconsistent and don't have the ability to beat teams physically.  I guess Oregon State will always struggle with beating teams physically, but peak Nebraska was built on beating teams physically.  Riley hasn't shown me that he's interested in beating teams physically at Nebraska.

 
Even when I throw out 1997-8, Riley has had 15 "bad losses" in the past 15 years, so NU fans can basically expect 1 bad loss every year.  That's not exactly championship level coaching.

 
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For sake of comparison, here are Pelini's bad losses and ranked wins at NU.  I am not trying to make this a Bo vs. Riley thing, just showing the info.  I do give credit to Bo for limiting the bad losses.  He just didn't win "big enough" to keep his job.

2008 - No bad losses and no ranked wins

2009 - No bad losses, ranked wins vs. #20 Oklahoma, #22 Arizona

2010 - Bad losses against Texas (borderline bad loss in bowl game against Washington), ranked wins vs. #17 Okie State #7 Missouri

2011 - Bad loss vs. Northwestern, ranked win vs. #9 Michigan State #12 Penn State

2012 - No bad losses, ranked win vs. #20 Michigan

2013 - No bad losses, ranked win vs. #23 Georgia (bowl game)

2014 - No bad losses or ranked wins

 
That's good research, but it's tough to make determinations looking at lists after the fact.  You can't account for illnesses, injuries, suspensions, etc.  Riley has never been a championship level coach, but he's never really been a bum either until the past, say, 6 years.  

 
ColoradoHusk said:
For sake of comparison, here are Pelini's bad losses and ranked wins at NU.  I am not trying to make this a Bo vs. Riley thing, just showing the info.  I do give credit to Bo for limiting the bad losses.  He just didn't win "big enough" to keep his job.

2008 - No bad losses and no ranked wins

2009 - No bad losses, ranked wins vs. #20 Oklahoma, #22 Arizona

2010 - Bad losses against Texas (borderline bad loss in bowl game against Washington), ranked wins vs. #17 Okie State #7 Missouri

2011 - Bad loss vs. Northwestern, ranked win vs. #9 Michigan State #12 Penn State

2012 - No bad losses, ranked win vs. #20 Michigan

2013 - No bad losses, ranked win vs. #23 Georgia (bowl game)

2014 - No bad losses or ranked wins
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Wasn't there a pretty embarrassing loss to a Wisconsin team in the Big 10 title game?  

 
southernoregonhusker said:
Wasn't there a pretty embarrassing loss to a Wisconsin team in the Big 10 title game?  
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Yes, in terms of the score it was plenty embarrassing, but it wasn't to a team with a losing record.

I agree that blowout losses could be another thread altogether, but I was focusing on losing to teams that you should beat.

 
southernoregonhusker said:
That's good research, but it's tough to make determinations looking at lists after the fact.  You can't account for illnesses, injuries, suspensions, etc.  Riley has never been a championship level coach, but he's never really been a bum either until the past, say, 6 years.  
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It's impossible to account for those types of things, and I would argue that if you are a good enough coach and have built a solid program, you should still be able to beat "bad teams".

Riley had a very good run at a historically bad program from 2006-2009.  It's the stretch from 2010 on that made NU fans scratch their head at the hiring of Riley, and he is continuing that trend at NU.

 
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I like what you did here. I would add one other tidbit. Mike Riley owns three of the worst losses in the last 50 years of Nebraska football with probably THE worst loss.

2015 Purdue went 2-10 and beat Nebraska by 10. And the game wasn't even as close as the score indicated. That's the worst loss since Devaney took over.

Toss in a loss to 5-7 Illinois in 2015 and a loss to NIU this year, when the Huskies were coming off a 5-7 season, and Riley has three of the 10 worst losses since 1962.

 
ColoradoHusk said:
Yes, in terms of the score it was plenty embarrassing, but it wasn't to a team with a losing record.

I agree that blowout losses could be another thread altogether, but I was focusing on losing to teams that you should beat.
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Yet it was still more embarrassing because Wisconsin literally ran one play just to different sides do the field for 90% of the game and had 3 backs and I think a towel boy rush for 300 yards.  We were supposed to be good because it's the CCG and we got jail sexed like nobodies business.  That's embarrising. Lesser opponents get up for certain teams and play inspired.  Who knows  NIU could have been preparing for Nebraska since camp.  Our guys probably took them a little lightly and paid the price.  

 
Fortunately, I haven't personally seen many people try to in any way justify Riley's losses by comparing them to some bad TO losses. That's an argumentative strategy we should put to bed because it often times just doesn't make sense, particularly when we consider some of those TO teams with bad losses finished the season ranked.

 
QMany said:
I was at both. Wisconsin was very embarrassing, but I'd never say it was worse than NIU.
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Wisconsin wasn't exactly peak Alabama.  Yes NIU isn't either but we played terrible and still had a chance to win at the end.  Wisconsin brought lube, showed it to us and then didn't even give us the courtesy of using it.  We played like crap and coaches made zero adjustments.  It was embarrassing.  

 
Fair enough about the Big Ten Championship game loss to Wisconsin.  It was bad/embarrassing/pathetic, or whatever you want to call it.  Please feel free to add that loss as a "bad loss" in Pelini's tenure.  It won't hurt my feelings.  By the end of Pelini's tenure, I wanted him gone too.

However, Riley was brought to Lincoln to IMPROVE things over Pelini, and he has 3 bad losses in less than 30 games as head coach.  He also did that numerous times at Oregon State, especially the last 5 years there.  It's a very bad trend, and it should be concerning for NU fans who want Riley to have more time to prove himself.  His history has proven to us that he's just not that great.

 
The TO loss to ASU in 1996 - a year after what was probably the best team to ever play college football was pretty bad... speaking from someone who was unlucky enough to be there....

 
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