Strong had a ton of success then went to Texas and didn't. Herman had a ton of success, goes to Texas and so far is struggling too. At some point you have to look at the common ingredient and consider maybe it aint the coach.
Totally agree on that last sentence. The problem in this analogy is two of the three coaches being referenced are making it work elsewhere, so it's hard to conclude Nebraska and Texas are similar in this respect. Though, if you took away the two recent Riley losing seasons at Oregon St, you could argue he's
slightly worse at Nebraska than before. Not a strong argument, though.
The second problem is you're overstating Herman's struggles and ignoring he's in year 1. I don't care who comes next year, if they do what Herman is doing right now, I'm happy. Very promising year 1.
His losses are to Maryland, who actually had a QB in that game, his first game as coach. The other 3? Teams ranked 4. 10, 12, and he's the only one that can seem to beat ISU. He's blowing out who he is supposed to blow out, and those ranked losses are by a combined 11 points, with two of them going to OT. He also has an outside chance of getting his scoring offense and scoring defense into the top 30, something Nebraska hasn't done in forever. He's doing way, way better than his predecessor, metrically speaking. Very promising first year, indeed.
In short, year 1 Herman is a terrible analogy for year 3 Riley. Herman is doing everything you realistically expect a year 1 coach to do, being right on pace for a huge year 2. While he's likely to be a 6 or 7 win team this year due to some close losses, he's doing things we've wished a Nebraska coach would do since 2001.