So . . . Tim Griffin is still a d@#$)(.

[carlfense]

This is from Griffin's chat today:

"Jason Lewis from Kansas City, Mo., writes: Tim, I know recruiting is subjective but I'm wondering why you ranked Nebraska as the seventh-best class in the Big 12. You ranked them behind Baylor, when Nebraska's class was ranked 23rd overall and Baylor's was ranked 39th overall by Rivals. Can you explain your ranking for the Huskers? Thanks.

Tim Griffin: Jason, those were not my rankings but those of ESPNU’s talent evaluators. But I think I can speak for them that the biggest question is the lack of offensive skill players and the inability to land Owamagbe Odighizuwa, who instead accepted the offer at UCLA.

Nebraska desperately needs those big-time receivers to consistently challenge Texas and Oklahoma.

And I know I’ve heard from many Nebraska fans who claim they don’t need Odighizuwa because Bo and Carl Pelini will develop a lesser recruit into as good a player as Odighizuwa would have been.

But remember, he’s a special five-star talent. It always hurts when you lose a chance to get those difference makers. And for anybody to say that the Cornhuskers couldn't have used him don't understand the reality of how the big defensive end could have developed after working with the Pelinis."

ESPN Blog

So let me get this straight. The Nebraska team who just beat OU this year . . . and beat UT before a second was added to the clock . . . desperately needs big-time receivers to even challenge those same teams? Griffin . . . I knew you were a tool after your article about why you voted for McCoy for Heisman . . . but let me reiterate. You are a TOOL. :espnsucks:

 

[JTrain]

And I know I’ve heard from many Nebraska fans who claim they don’t need Odighizuwa because Bo and Carl Pelini will develop a lesser recruit into as good a player as Odighizuwa would have been.

But remember, he’s a special five-star talent. It always hurts when you lose a chance to get those difference makers. And for anybody to say that the Cornhuskers couldn't have used him don't understand the reality of how the big defensive end could have developed after working with the Pelinis."

Someone read my arguments in the Owa thread and tell me Griffin didn't steal this from me.

 

[carlfense]

And I know I’ve heard from many Nebraska fans who claim they don’t need Odighizuwa because Bo and Carl Pelini will develop a lesser recruit into as good a player as Odighizuwa would have been.

But remember, he’s a special five-star talent. It always hurts when you lose a chance to get those difference makers. And for anybody to say that the Cornhuskers couldn't have used him don't understand the reality of how the big defensive end could have developed after working with the Pelinis."

Someone read my arguments in the Owa thread and tell me Griffin didn't steal this from me.

I think most knowledgeable Nebraska fans have said or thought something similar to that. Owa was a big-time talent. No doubt about it.

 

[CENTEXHUSKER]

And I know I’ve heard from many Nebraska fans who claim they don’t need Odighizuwa because Bo and Carl Pelini will develop a lesser recruit into as good a player as Odighizuwa would have been.

But remember, he’s a special five-star talent. It always hurts when you lose a chance to get those difference makers. And for anybody to say that the Cornhuskers couldn't have used him don't understand the reality of how the big defensive end could have developed after working with the Pelinis."

Someone read my arguments in the Owa thread and tell me Griffin didn't steal this from me.

Is Griffin the Huskerboard mole? :sarcasm

 

[JTrain]

I think he's right on. And most of us would agree that, aside from a few great moments from Paul, a lack of real playmaking threats at receiver hurt us last year. Granted, lots of things hurt our offense last year, but if we want to (key word here) consistently be able to hang with major powers like OU and Texas, we need dangerous receivers. Because 99% of seasons we will not have have a player like Suh to keep us in every game despite an incompetent offense.

And I'm reiterating here, but I also agree (or, Griffin agrees with me) about Owa. Bo and Carl can turn a three star into a Barry Turner, but not into a Grant Wistrom. Special players like Wistrom have a certain quality that can't be coached. I don't wanna harp on Owa specifically too much, but I definitely believe Bo needs true difference makers on both sides of the ball to take us to a national title game. Five-star recruits have a much better chance to turn out difference makers at the college level, even though certainly four-stars can as well (Suh, obviously).

 

[knapplc]

I definitely believe Bo needs true difference makers on both sides of the ball to take us to a national title game.

Sort of. The question we want to ask ourselves is, do we want to be the 1995 Huskers, or would the 1997 Huskers be OK? There's no question that 95 team was special in a way that very few other teams have come close to. That was a team that was stacked with (or should have been stacked with if the rankings were accurate) five star players at several positions. There's no denying the 1997 team took a step back from that 1995 plateau. But the bottom line is, the 1997 team still won the championship, and would have trounced Michigan had they had the guts to play us.

I disagree with the notion that the only way to win a championship is with a loaded team. It can be done with a very good team - just ask 2007 LSU.

 

[carlfense]

I think he's right on. And most of us would agree that, aside from a few great moments from Paul, a lack of real playmaking threats at receiver hurt us last year. Granted, lots of things hurt our offense last year, but if we want to (key word here) consistently be able to hang with major powers like OU and Texas, we need dangerous receivers. Because 99% of seasons we will not have have a player like Suh to keep us in every game despite an incompetent offense.

And I'm reiterating here, but I also agree (or, Griffin agrees with me) about Owa. Bo and Carl can turn a three star into a Barry Turner, but not into a Grant Wistrom. Special players like Wistrom have a certain quality that can't be coached. I don't wanna harp on Owa specifically too much, but I definitely believe Bo needs true difference makers on both sides of the ball to take us to a national title game. Five-star recruits have a much better chance to turn out difference makers at the college level, even though certainly four-stars can as well (Suh, obviously).

No one will argue that a lack of playmakers hurts the team. However, Griffin doesn't say that. He says Nebraska desperately needs big-time receivers to even challenge Texas and Oklahoma. He is wrong as we beat one and should have beaten the other. No one can say that we didn't challenge those two teams despite the lack of a big-time receiver.

 

[JTrain]

I think he's right on. And most of us would agree that, aside from a few great moments from Paul, a lack of real playmaking threats at receiver hurt us last year. Granted, lots of things hurt our offense last year, but if we want to (key word here) consistently be able to hang with major powers like OU and Texas, we need dangerous receivers. Because 99% of seasons we will not have have a player like Suh to keep us in every game despite an incompetent offense.

And I'm reiterating here, but I also agree (or, Griffin agrees with me) about Owa. Bo and Carl can turn a three star into a Barry Turner, but not into a Grant Wistrom. Special players like Wistrom have a certain quality that can't be coached. I don't wanna harp on Owa specifically too much, but I definitely believe Bo needs true difference makers on both sides of the ball to take us to a national title game. Five-star recruits have a much better chance to turn out difference makers at the college level, even though certainly four-stars can as well (Suh, obviously).

No one will argue that a lack of playmakers hurts the team. However, Griffin doesn't say that. He says Nebraska desperately needs big-time receivers to even challenge Texas and Oklahoma. He is wrong as we beat one and should have beaten the other. No one can say that we didn't challenge those two teams despite the lack of a big-time receiver.

Yeah but as I mentioned, Suh was a big part of that (along with OU having their biggest down year in nearly a decade). Suhs don't come along very often. I can't know for sure what Griffin meant, and maybe he could have worded it better, but I think his point was just that, without playmakers (particularly at receiver) we won't be very successful in the long run (thus, "consistently") against stacked teams like OU and Texas. That doesn't mean we can't win from time to time, but not as much as we want and (most of us) expect to.

 

[knapplc]

I wonder if Tim Griffin has watched tape on Quincy Enunwa.

And I wonder if he's looking at the fact that we offered something like 30 WRs and landed just one.

It just seems to me that he's grading us too much on what we lost rather than what we gained. People made the same mistake about Missouri last year. Yeah, losing Maclin and Daniel and the others hurt - it has to - but they were still a good team without them.

 

[JTrain]

I definitely believe Bo needs true difference makers on both sides of the ball to take us to a national title game.

Sort of. The question we want to ask ourselves is, do we want to be the 1995 Huskers, or would the 1997 Huskers be OK? There's no question that 95 team was special in a way that very few other teams have come close to. That was a team that was stacked with (or should have been stacked with if the rankings were accurate) five star players at several positions. There's no denying the 1997 team took a step back from that 1995 plateau. But the bottom line is, the 1997 team still won the championship, and would have trounced Michigan had they had the guts to play us.

I disagree with the notion that the only way to win a championship is with a loaded team. It can be done with a very good team - just ask 2007 LSU.

I didn't mean they had to be loaded, but just that they need a handful of true difference makers (guys that the opposing team has to focus on... All-American types). I think 95% of teams that play in the BCS title game need at least three of these types. Even 2007 LSU had Glenn Dorsey and Craig Steltz (both first-team all-americans) and Ali Highsmith (second team). Plus, 99% of the time a two-loss team won't get to the national title game, so that was a bizarre year. In all five of Nebraska's national title years, we had at least three legitimate difference makers, if not a lot more in certain years.

Side note: I actually think our 97 team was loaded. Their Blackshirts may have a been a very small step down from 95, and the Mizzou game damaged our rep a bit, but overall they were great. For most of the season they were on track to break the '83 record for rushing YPG, and finished less than 10 YPG behind it. The defense had Wistrom and Peter as seniors, and a young Mike Brown leading the team in tackles. Billingsley ranks that team as the eleventh best of all-time.

 

[knapplc]

I didn't mean they had to be loaded, but just that they need a handful of true difference makers (guys that the opposing team has to focus on... All-American types). I think 95% of teams that play in the BCS title game need at least three of these types. Even 2007 LSU had Glenn Dorsey and Craig Steltz (both first-team all-americans) and Ali Highsmith (second team). Plus, 99% of the time a two-loss team won't get to the national title game, so that was a bizarre year. In all five of Nebraska's national title years, we had at least three legitimate difference makers, if not a lot more in certain years.

Side note: I actually think out 97 team was loaded. Their Blackshirts may have a been a very small step down from 95, and the Mizzou game damaged our rep a bit, but overall they were great. For most of the season they were on track to break the '83 record for rushing YPG, and finished less than 10 YPG behind it. The defense had Wistrom and Peter as seniors, and a young Mike Brown leading the team in tackles. Billingsley ranks that team as the eleventh best of all-time.

While all of that is true, the larger point I'm trying to make is that there are varying degrees of "championship caliber" teams. We can still be a contender without an Owa Odighizuwa as long as we have enough Jared Cricks around. Nobody is going to deny that it would be MUCH easier with a guy like Odighizuwa on the team, or several, but it's not a deal-breaker that we don't have them. It's just harder.

 

[JTrain]

I didn't mean they had to be loaded, but just that they need a handful of true difference makers (guys that the opposing team has to focus on... All-American types). I think 95% of teams that play in the BCS title game need at least three of these types. Even 2007 LSU had Glenn Dorsey and Craig Steltz (both first-team all-americans) and Ali Highsmith (second team). Plus, 99% of the time a two-loss team won't get to the national title game, so that was a bizarre year. In all five of Nebraska's national title years, we had at least three legitimate difference makers, if not a lot more in certain years.

Side note: I actually think out 97 team was loaded. Their Blackshirts may have a been a very small step down from 95, and the Mizzou game damaged our rep a bit, but overall they were great. For most of the season they were on track to break the '83 record for rushing YPG, and finished less than 10 YPG behind it. The defense had Wistrom and Peter as seniors, and a young Mike Brown leading the team in tackles. Billingsley ranks that team as the eleventh best of all-time.

While all of that is true, the larger point I'm trying to make is that there are varying degrees of "championship caliber" teams. We can still be a contender without an Owa Odighizuwa as long as we have enough Jared Cricks around. Nobody is going to deny that it would be MUCH easier with a guy like Odighizuwa on the team, or several, but it's not a deal-breaker that we don't have them. It's just harder.

I'm hypothesizing that, without at least three true difference makers, your chance of playing in the national title game is very close to zero. You could make it with three, and you could make it with ten, but with less than three, your chances are really, really slim (think '84 BYU). With a good group of talent and great coaches, you can consistently win 9-10 games and compete for the conference (think Osborne's first decade), but until you get that handful of difference makers, you aren't going to make that final step. It took Rozier, Gill and Fryar to put Osborne in position, and it took LP, Donta Jones and Ed Stewart (plus Frazier in the Orange Bowl) to finally make it happen.

 

[Enhance]

You can't fault Griffin for his opinion. One of the biggest things that hurt our offense last year was a lack of play-making wide receivers. Obviously, there was a culmination of things that led to the offensive troubles, but ineffective WR's was one of those things. Curenski's performance in the Holiday Bowl was a perfect example. The guy slipped and fell nearly four times. Say what you will about the wet conditions, but Niles Paul seemed to be flying around just fine.

Secondly, Griffin's whole point about Owa is that the guy had amazing athletic ability and would have been a standout d-end. Owa would have been an immediate threat for a starting job and more than likely would have developed quicker than any other d-end prospect we had. If the Pelini brothers went after him, you know that he's got a good work ethic and would work his butt off. That's really all Griffin is saying, that Owa more than likely would have been a threat early and could have developed quickly.

 

[JTrain]

Five-star talents are some of the few guys that can really have a big impact as true freshmen at positions like DE. Grant Wistrom played in every game his true freshman season (remember, TO played very few true freshmen) and had 36 tackles and 4.5 sacks, and was Big 8 Newcomer of the Year. Owa had the tools to make a similar immediate impact.

 

[HuskerT]

I think he's right on. And most of us would agree that, aside from a few great moments from Paul, a lack of real playmaking threats at receiver hurt us last year. Granted, lots of things hurt our offense last year, but if we want to (key word here) consistently be able to hang with major powers like OU and Texas, we need dangerous receivers. Because 99% of seasons we will not have have a player like Suh to keep us in every game despite an incompetent offense.

And I'm reiterating here, but I also agree (or, Griffin agrees with me) about Owa. Bo and Carl can turn a three star into a Barry Turner, but not into a Grant Wistrom. Special players like Wistrom have a certain quality that can't be coached. I don't wanna harp on Owa specifically too much, but I definitely believe Bo needs true difference makers on both sides of the ball to take us to a national title game. Five-star recruits have a much better chance to turn out difference makers at the college level, even though certainly four-stars can as well (Suh, obviously).

No one will argue that a lack of playmakers hurts the team. However, Griffin doesn't say that. He says Nebraska desperately needs big-time receivers to even challenge Texas and Oklahoma. He is wrong as we beat one and should have beaten the other. No one can say that we didn't challenge those two teams despite the lack of a big-time receiver.

In his defense, he did say to "consistently challenge".

Nebraska desperately needs those big-time receivers to consistently challenge Texas and Oklahoma.

I don't care for the guys comments in regards to our recruiting class, but I understand what he's saying when it comes to playmakers. To get into that upper echelon we are going to have to start winning some recruiting battles for the top offensive talent.