Huskerzoo
Starter
There are a lot of reasons we should be pessimistic. No doubt we will hear all about this over the next 8 months or so. However, if you've read my posts at all, you know how much I like to contextualize things. Today, I want to talk about our WRs while I eat my lunch.
As everyone knows, our team is in the midst of a serious youth movement. I think we all recognized that needed to happen, but we seem to be in disagreement about how much that should be impacting our team. While the impact is very obvious in some places (e.g. Jurgens snapping the ball), I don't think we have appreciated just how much youth hurts us at WR. This manifests in two different ways, the first is catching, the second is blocking.
The numbers I'm going to talk about are without regard for RS status. If someone wants to dig that deep, they're welcome to. Of the 200 leaders in receiving yards in the NCAA this year (up to this point) 16 are FR, 46 are SO, 80 are JR, and 59 are SR. In looking at our WR corps, we had 3 SR (Noa, Mike Williams, Woodyard), 1 JR (Spielman: The only player we had in the top 200, ranked at number 47 overall), 2 SO, and 3 FR listed in our 2 deep. I would make the argument that our SRs were all borderline P5 talent. However, that's neither here nor there. What it does suggest to us is that the best is yet to come. As we start having our WRs mature, we're going to start having more productive years. This year I think we were particularly vulnerable to a drop off because we lost a number of players expected to contribute. We are without a doubt in better position for next year as FR in particular struggle (16/200 of the top receivers).
With regard to blocking, this comes down to guys putting in effort and getting bigger. Iowa in particular took advantage of this all game this year. This will help our screen game in meaningful ways.
I didn't have the time to run the analysis based on line experience, but if you look at our OL rankings, they weren't pretty and this is clearly another area where experience is going to pay huge dividends.
As everyone knows, our team is in the midst of a serious youth movement. I think we all recognized that needed to happen, but we seem to be in disagreement about how much that should be impacting our team. While the impact is very obvious in some places (e.g. Jurgens snapping the ball), I don't think we have appreciated just how much youth hurts us at WR. This manifests in two different ways, the first is catching, the second is blocking.
The numbers I'm going to talk about are without regard for RS status. If someone wants to dig that deep, they're welcome to. Of the 200 leaders in receiving yards in the NCAA this year (up to this point) 16 are FR, 46 are SO, 80 are JR, and 59 are SR. In looking at our WR corps, we had 3 SR (Noa, Mike Williams, Woodyard), 1 JR (Spielman: The only player we had in the top 200, ranked at number 47 overall), 2 SO, and 3 FR listed in our 2 deep. I would make the argument that our SRs were all borderline P5 talent. However, that's neither here nor there. What it does suggest to us is that the best is yet to come. As we start having our WRs mature, we're going to start having more productive years. This year I think we were particularly vulnerable to a drop off because we lost a number of players expected to contribute. We are without a doubt in better position for next year as FR in particular struggle (16/200 of the top receivers).
With regard to blocking, this comes down to guys putting in effort and getting bigger. Iowa in particular took advantage of this all game this year. This will help our screen game in meaningful ways.
I didn't have the time to run the analysis based on line experience, but if you look at our OL rankings, they weren't pretty and this is clearly another area where experience is going to pay huge dividends.
