Were We Actually Any Better This Season?

I can't believe I'm the one defending Riley here. Of course, the team is better this year. However, that doesn't mean it was a great team. It was a good to mediocre team that had an extremely weak schedule.

 
Wins vs Northwestern, Illinois, and Purdue are the only difference between last year and this year.

 
It seems that last year's team, while losing those close games and taking time to accept the new staff, played with more heart. We flat did not show up for OSU, Iowa and outside of some dropped passes by UT receivers, Tn COULD have been a huge blow out as well. Yes we had OL injuries and injures to other key players in the end, but the O did not perform up to expectations, we did not have the depth to overcome injuries and it seemed we could never establish our O identity. The D went backwards, obviously, as the year went on.

Next year is do or die IMHO. 2018 will be a disaster if we don't pull our act together in 2017. 2017 is tough enough but 2018 is a notch above that. We can't keep waiting for a weaker schedule to make it to the CCG - we've proved we can't get it done last year or this year (this year's schedule was stronger than last year however. Next year we add Penn State to the schedule.)

 
Red Five said:
Wins vs Northwestern, Illinois, and Purdue are the only difference between last year and this year.
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I don't intend to come off as adversarial here, but are you stating this as fact or with the intent to suggest these wins were inconsequential improvements? Putting those three games in the win column was fairly substantial this year, imo.

But, look, I won't try to suggest I think this team or this season was some huge improvement from 2015. There was a lot to like this year and a lot that left me wanting, and we saw some recurring themes from 2015 carry into 2016. However, the university made this move to Riley because they (and many of the fans) were tired of treading water in the #9wins pool. We don't know if it was yet the right move, but perhaps we should look at it optimistically.

For example, sometimes, things have to get worse before they get better. We have years of disappointing trends at this program whether it be inconsistent QB play, turnovers, average line play, failures in big games, etc. All of those things, more than likely, were not going to be fixed in one or even a few seasons. I know everybody wants the flashy hire that makes things better immediately but those are far less common than they appear.

 
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I may have shared this before but I'll add my $0.02 here, too, if that's the case...

Passing offense went from 47th percentile last season to 31st percentile this one (considering only the regular season stats relative to those compiled in all games between FBS teams only).

Our worst stat in this category was completion percentage. 50.8% put us at 119th out of 128 FBS teams. Our only above average stat within this category was interceptions per game. Were you one of the fans saying we JUST needed TA to throw fewer picks? DID YOU USE A MONKEY'S PAW OR SOMETHING AND WISH IT? YOU DOOMED US ALL!

Passing defense went from 25th percentile last season to 71st percentile this one.

Our best stat in this category was interceptions per game. Our worst stat was, again, the completion percentage allowed. 60.2% put us at 76th.

Rushing offense went from 53rd percentile last season to 49th this one.

Our best stat in this category was rushing TD's per game. Our worst stat was rushing yards per carry. 4.32 rushing yards per carry put us at 72nd.

Rushing defense went from 80th percentile last season to 70th percentile this one.

All the stats in this category were above average with the best being the one for rushing yards allowed per game. 141 put us at 32nd.

Scoring offense went from 67th percentile last season to 39th this one.

Stats I tracked were below average here...with the overall points per game being worse, relatively, than touchdowns per game. 26.8 put us at 73rd.

Scoring defense went from 54th percentile last season to 79th this one.

Stats I tracked were above average with the overall points per game being better, relatively, than the touchdowns per game. 22.8 put us at 28th.

Total offense went from 65th percentile last season to 39th this one.

All the stats I tracked within this category were below average with the worst being yards per play. 5.43 put us at 83rd.

Total defense went from 50th percentile last season to 78th this one.

All the stats I tracked within this category were above average with the best tangible one being yards allowed per game. 350.6 put us at 20th. With respect to everything else, it bears mentioning that the number of defensive plays per game was very low. 64.9 put us at 14th. It's just one of those figures I track that I'm not sure is as meaningful...

Considered altogether, the stats had us at the 51st percentile overall last season and this year's stats put us at the 45th. Defense went from the 52nd to the 49th while the offense went from the 58th to the 37th. Such a drop in offensive production is disheartening but it could be argued the defense held up in light of that. When it's the record we're talking about, this year was clearly an improvement. I just don't know how much injuries explain the drop. How much do receivers' drops explain the drop? That completion percentage is ridiculous! Are the receivers being coached differently? Is it mostly an accuracy issue? How much do we blame the OL for not protecting our signal callers? As much as I have to laugh at the list of excuses, I'm still in the camp that realizes the Riley Huskers are still a work in progress.

p.s. - I forgot to include turnover margin somehow. Last season's squad posted numbers that put them in the 16th percentile while this season's numbers put them in the 64th percentile. While that's a pretty clear indicator of good improvement, we still are terrible (from a statistical standpoint) at getting fumbles. At 0.17 (fumbles gained) per game, we're in the bottom 3 of 128 teams! When we see all these missed tackles and give up a fairly high percentage of completions, it's telling me we're not on our guys to the extent we can call the Blackshirts a stifling defense. Is it just a matter of athleticism? We're 11th in interceptions gained per game so that doesn't seem right. We're just not blowing guys up, imo. How many times did we not hear a whistle and still see our kids watching the ball rolling on the ground? It happened at least once during the bowl game. The team is missing a killer instinct. Heck, they looked depressed for a whole half down in Tennessee.

p.p.s. - See why I stick to sharing stats? I can ramble on... GBR! Have a good offseason, people.

 
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lo country said:
teachercd said:
Last year most of us fans pretended that 6 wins was an amazing coaching job, that beating MSU and UCLA amounted to the "Little Engine" that could type of thing that Riley is/was known for. So, for a lot of us we pretended to like that underdog role...for a year.

Fast Forward a year and Riley did what we all really knew a coach at NU can do...(or a trained monkey or Bo) which was win 9 games. It looks better at first because 9 is better than 6 but most of us realize that last years 6 win mark was one of the worst coaching jobs ever.

So a lot of us fans went looking for "answers" here is what we came up with...

1. Toxic culture

2. The players never lifted

3. Riley needs his guys

Sadly the answer might be that we have a really nice average coach that won't really get us over a hump but probably won't ruin things either.

If you are SE and Kelly just became available, who is probably a top 15 or top 20 coach...I think you have to go and chat with him.
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This. So much this. Excuses all day, but doesn't change the one fact and that Riley was a .504 coach coming to NU......... I will say again, he was hired as the anti-Bo. Nice guy, polite, no tirades, heal the fan base, media, former players etc... Winning is an extra.. He might get us to the next level, but not with the current staff and mentality.

9 wins with this schedule was pretty easy. Next year not so much. We have still shown an inability to win the "big" games and be competitive..... MSU last year was great, but as a die hard Husker fan was questionable. As others have pointed out against UCLA, they were a shell of theta that started the season......

We have a long, long way to go. Much further than I would've thought.

I really thought last years losses was on the staff and poor calls/bad luck. I never thought we would get boat raced by OSU and Iowa. Had UT receivers caught those passes, the score would have been very ugly indeed.
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Riley coached like a .500 coach last season, lost games , as we know, we never should have........this is not your guy to win championships, not a chance he will get it done.

 
onlyHskrfaninIL said:
No that team that beat ucla was better
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The team that beat UCLA wasn't banged up all to hell. And also had a hell of a punter. :-|

Frankly, this team had problems as soon as we started losing starters because of roster management issues (e.g. recruiting, choices made by staff re: redshirts). This is on the coaching staff for trying to have their cake and eat it too: you can't try to sell a division championship run (or more) with one hand tied behind your back, roster-wise. Either you put the kids that can contribute on the field if you're making a legit run (especially if you know you have issues with depth) or you make it known you're just gonna focus on next year and that this year is a wash. Riley isn't Dr. Tom, the Bobfather, or even Solich where you have enough of a roster or cache where you can do both and pull it off.

However, one thing that we completely regressed in was the Special Teams department. Some of that is because of circumstances beyond the control of the team, but all other facets of special teams did worse this year than last year, IMO. I think in games like Wisky our special teams play cost us more than a few points.

 
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Haven't read this thread as I usually stay out of these discussions, but have we gotten to the proper conclusion that we were in fact better this season?

 
Interesting question.

I say probably not. I think the ball just bounced our way a few more times this year. Now is that an indication that Riley and Co are a total failure? To me, not yet. Did anyone really think NU was going to make any kind of a run last year or this year? Yeah 7-0 and being ranked top ten for a while was nice, but we had to all have known that that was going to be short lived. Last year was basically damage control. This year was establishing a culture/mindset/whatever you wanna call it. And next year will be, in my humble opinion, Riley's true first year.

 
Landlord of Memorial Stadium said:
Haven't read this thread as I usually stay out of these discussions, but have we gotten to the proper conclusion that we were in fact better this season?
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My conclusion is that coaching mistakes (clock management) cost us fewer games this year, so in that aspect we improved. I think RedFive maxe a good point that the basic difference was that we did not lose some games this year that we never should have lost last year. I guess that sort of an improvement but not a very substantial one. It seems to me we improved towards the end of last year and through the easy part of our early schedule this year and then we declined. Not sure I can conclude that kind of decline is an improvement. But yeah, the W-L record was better and that's all some people look at.

 
The W-L record was better

The discipline of the players was better re: penalties

The discipline of the coaches was better re: putting our team in bad positions to lose games we shouldn't have

The defense was better

The turnovers, and lack of turnovers, was better

The coaching staff is upgraded

The special teams was, maybe equally awful? Possibly a bit worse.

The offense was worse, but dealing with a littany of problems that didn't exist last season.

Really the only areas where we notably regressed were in our offensive production and in having two 21+ losses.

 
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