Spring Practice Pressers 2023

Man, guys like that are hard to find.  I have coached with tons of guys and most of us don't love practice.  Especially FB practice which, if you are doing it right, is like 75% just boring a$$ reps.  

I feel like NU is about to become one of those teams that we hate when they play against us.  No stupid penalties, no wasted plays, no guys running wide open because of missed assignments, no fumbles...

 
Some scattered thoughts after watching through some of the 3/06 presser from Rhule. I've said many times that I oscillate between believing that what coaches say in press conferences really doesn't add up to nearly as much as most fans think, and also finding that there sometimes are some valuable nuggets of transparency that you can get.

When he talks about practice being so important and then also talks about what he thinks the team is lacking, it reinforces for me that the thing that made us go 3-9 & 4-8 the past two seasons was not a talent problem. And I'm just talking about what stood between us having those two season results as opposed to going 7-5ish. What stood in the way was just an embarrassing lack of attention to details - which was completely on the staff. Like, completely.

Frost's staff was actually fairly good at most things except actually coaching football. Meaning like, the stuff in practices and the ability to take specific actions to get certain players to progress to the next level in their abilities.

 
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To add to the above: it all makes me pretty confused though about Raiola being retained. I'm not saying that last year's performance by the line is some kind of smoking gun that shows that he "can't coach."

But the performance was bad enough that you definitely have to have your doubts. Not sure how you couldn't.

 
Undone said:
To add to the above: it all makes me pretty confused though about Raiola being retained. I'm not saying that last year's performance by the line is some kind of smoking gun that shows that he "can't coach."

But the performance was bad enough that you definitely have to have your doubts. Not sure how you couldn't.
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I agree with your first post.  The attention to detail and the ability to think on the fly during games and make good decisions just wasn't there.

As far as Raiola, the only thing I can hang hope on is that he saw that but couldn't do anything about it in his position.  He very well could have explained all that to Rhule when he took over and layed out his vision of the O line and how he wants to coach it and Rhule was convinced the problem wasn't his coaching.

 
BigRedBuster said:
As far as Raiola, the only thing I can hang hope on is that he saw that but couldn't do anything about it in his position.  He very well could have explained all that to Rhule when he took over and layed out his vision of the O line and how he wants to coach it and Rhule was convinced the problem wasn't his coaching.
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And to maybe put it another way, maybe one year's time isn't enough to really know. That could be a fair assessment also.

I wonder if people can come up with examples outside of Cam Jurgens of guys who were significantly better by their senior year than they were when they were sophomores. JoJo...maybe?

Looking back just off the top of my head, it sort of felt like where a kid was at as a sophomore was basically his peak. If somebody disagrees with that, the dialogue would be great because I could be completely off. But the development - stacking skills on skills - just wasn't really there IMO.

 
Undone said:
I wonder if people can come up with examples outside of Cam Jurgens of guys who were significantly better by their senior year than they were when they were sophomores. JoJo...maybe?

Looking back just off the top of my head, it sort of felt like where a kid was at as a sophomore was basically his peak. If somebody disagrees with that, the dialogue would be great because I could be completely off. But the development - stacking skills on skills - just wasn't really there IMO.
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Austin Allen and CTB come to mind.  But yeah, not a lot of development going on from Soph to Sr seasons.

TyRob is a great example of this.  Started 7 games as a RSFr in 2020.  Can you say he was better this year as a 4th year player?

 
Undone said:
To add to the above: it all makes me pretty confused though about Raiola being retained. I'm not saying that last year's performance by the line is some kind of smoking gun that shows that he "can't coach."

But the performance was bad enough that you definitely have to have your doubts. Not sure how you couldn't.
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if you look at the positives I believe they had less false starts and less holding penalties than years prior.  It got to a point before Raiola arrived you could almost count on a false start as soon as the offense reached the redzone.  

 
Red Five said:
Austin Allen and CTB come to mind.  But yeah, not a lot of development going on from Soph to Sr seasons.

TyRob is a great example of this.  Started 7 games as a RSFr in 2020.  Can you say he was better this year as a 4th year player?
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Exactly what I was thinking with Robinson.

Good call on Austin Allen though, I'd definitely agree with that one. Becton seemed pretty solid in his role on Frost's staff.

 
Undone said:
Could easily still be a complete fail and net negative for Husker football even if we get him.
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100% agree.

I am super happy with the Rhule hire and think the vast majority of what he has done so far has been home runs.  But I still scratch my head with keeping Raiola.

I will go to my grave thinking the only reason he was retained is because his nephew is the #1 QB recruit.

 
Undone said:
To add to the above: it all makes me pretty confused though about Raiola being retained. I'm not saying that last year's performance by the line is some kind of smoking gun that shows that he "can't coach."

But the performance was bad enough that you definitely have to have your doubts. Not sure how you couldn't.
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I see it the other way around….

If they are not going live, that’s not on Riola.  An easier example is tackling.  You absolutely have to practice it.  Just based on what we saw when Joseph took over, the team, in general, got a whole lot better at the basics.  And that was during the season.

You can’t become a complete O lineman doing drills.  This is my speculation, but I think it was the soft practice and culture.

 
gobiggergoredder said:
...soft practice and culture.
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This is the low hanging fruit and what most people hope was really the problem. Because people view this as easy to change. Frost thought it was easy, most everyone thought it would be easy for him, but his team looked disorganized & scattered under his leadership even at the start of year 5.

As to your other point, I tend to think that pretty much everything is in fact on the coaches. Because no matter how hard you're working, or what tactics you use to get through to the people you're coaching, technically you could always work harder or try a different route.

I think Rhule will bring a stronger work ethic than Frost. But I also think Frost's soft work ethic has probably been pretty overblown. As I've said many times, I think his coaches just weren't very good at actually coaching football. No way to actually know if Rhule's guys are any better right now in March, IMO. It's an easy assumption to make because of how awesome he is with the words he uses in pressers though, no doubt.

 
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