Where we discuss our fondness - or lack thereof - for former coaches now departed - Again

[fb30]

Although in 97 I think 9 or 10 of the offensive starters were from Nebraska. Anyway it doesn't really matter these coaches are going to do what they are going to do.

 

[cm husker]

TO didn't tailor his offense to attract coastal talent. But he certainly recruited the coasts. And rightfully so.

I missed the part where Mike Riley is doing anything different.

Unless you want to go ahead and explain that "coastal talent" is your code word for a pass-first offense, a skillset that somehow eludes the millions of football players in the middle of the country.

You could also come to the coast seeking the best running backs in the country. California is full of them. Florida has dual threat quarterbacks. New Jersey has speed and talent on both sides of the ball. Every offense will need good players at every position. Tom Osborne knew this. MIke Riley does, too. Probably because it's not a secret. There's no discernible geographic speciality when it comes to football, but there are high school football hotbeds.

Mike Riley getting traction among prized California recruits who take to social media bragging about coming to Nebraska is nothing but good.

Unless you want to be a d!(k about it.

We've been around and around on this, so I won't rehash it again. I'll just (THREE PARAGRAPHS OF REHASHING))

I'll stick with post #20, which you've done nothing to refute.

But as long as I'm here: Tom Osborne actually did listen to his critics, and nearly 20 seasons into his head coaching career he changed his recruiting philosophy, focusing more on speed, more on defense and more on faraway high school football hotbeds. As you may recall, this led to "championship" football, although I'm not sure why you put the word in quotes.

By the way....didn't this used to be a completely different thread?

Guy, is it your contention that TO didn't recruit nationally before the 90s?

Would you be surprised to learn that the % of depth chart players from NU and the 500 mile radius was higher in the 90s than in the 80s?

 

[junior4949]

TO didn't tailor his offense to attract coastal talent. But he certainly recruited the coasts. And rightfully so.

I missed the part where Mike Riley is doing anything different.

Unless you want to go ahead and explain that "coastal talent" is your code word for a pass-first offense, a skillset that somehow eludes the millions of football players in the middle of the country.

You could also come to the coast seeking the best running backs in the country. California is full of them. Florida has dual threat quarterbacks. New Jersey has speed and talent on both sides of the ball. Every offense will need good players at every position. Tom Osborne knew this. MIke Riley does, too. Probably because it's not a secret. There's no discernible geographic speciality when it comes to football, but there are high school football hotbeds.

Mike Riley getting traction among prized California recruits who take to social media bragging about coming to Nebraska is nothing but good.

Unless you want to be a d!(k about it.

We've been around and around on this, so I won't rehash it again. I'll just (THREE PARAGRAPHS OF REHASHING))

I'll stick with post #20, which you've done nothing to refute.

But as long as I'm here: Tom Osborne actually did listen to his critics, and nearly 20 seasons into his head coaching career he changed his recruiting philosophy, focusing more on speed, more on defense and more on faraway high school football hotbeds. As you may recall, this led to "championship" football, although I'm not sure why you put the word in quotes.

By the way....didn't this used to be a completely different thread?

Guy, is it your contention that TO didn't recruit nationally before the 90s?

Would you be surprised to learn that the % of depth chart players from NU and the 500 mile radius was higher in the 90s than in the 80s?

CM, you are not wrong. However, neither is Guy. TO did change his philosophy especially with regards to recruiting speed. What everyone must remember is the fact that Nebraska was absolutely blessed with local talent back then. When was the last time a Nebraska high school kicked out an Ahman Green? When was the last time they kicked out a Rob and Jon Zatechka? How many Zach Wiegert's? How many Adam Treu's do we have walking on these days? When's the last time a panhandle school kicked out a Terry Connealy? It's not like we have Scott Frost's running up and down the field these days. We had a lot of local talent come into the program within a few short years of one another.

 

[Stumpy1]

Nebraska high schools churned out some fantastic talent in the 90's, especially 91-96. That era has to be the best this state has ever had. We have had a few more really good ones come through the ranks but nothing like that 5 year span.

 

[cm husker]

I think TO changed his defensive scheme, which put more speed on the field at one time due to a LB and DB over a 5th man on the front. But TO always tried to recruit the fastest, biggest, strongest guys he could. He's talked about that even - how he didn't wake up one day and think "I need to start recruiting fast guys."

I do agree that he changed his defensive tactics though, kind of like how he tweaked his offensive tactics during the late 70s.

So I'm not trying to claim TO was static. Just that he never deviated from his core principles.

As for local talent, I'd contend that maybe we aren't seeing quite as much production on the field from NE natives because we haven't been running a system that produces.

I look at "unbalanced system" based coaches like Briles and Leach among others and notice that they get a lot production out of average athletes. If we ran an unbalanced system, I think we'd see more production out of local talent (and all talent in general).

It's hard to say how we would think of guys who'd had better or less disrupted coaching staff's?

That said, since 2002, NU has had a number of very talented NE kids go through:

Herian, Horne, Leflore, Mann, Jay Moore, Dane (all earned multiple letters)

Green, Mueller, Bo Rudy, Teamer

Christensen, grixby, huff, Steinkuhler

Potter

Henry, Jones

Crick, Paul

Fisher, okafor, Steinkuler

Zimmerer, pensick

Rodriguez, cotton, Evans

Sterup, davie, reeves

etc

A lot of those guys were highly regarded recruits and or played at least some professional football.

So, is it that we aren't producing talented athletes in NE or that we aren't utilizing (or even recruiting) them as well as we used to?

 

[cm husker]

Nebraska high schools churned out some fantastic talent in the 90's, especially 91-96. That era has to be the best this state has ever had. We have had a few more really good ones come through the ranks but nothing like that 5 year span.

It was definitely a special time

 

[Undone]

As for local talent, I'd contend that maybe we aren't seeing quite as much production on the field from NE natives because we haven't been running a system that produces.

Although Bo's national team rushing rankings weren't obviously as good as Osborne's, we regularly were at least in the top 10 in rushing under Bo, correct?

And since I assume you want us to be based around the power run game, how does that jive with your quote above?

 

[junior4949]

Well, I don't think that's a coincidence. Do you? Another somewhat overlooked thing is partial and non-qualifiers. In the 1995 NC game, we started four partial or non-qualifiers (cornerback Michael Booker, defensive tackle Christian Peter, cornerback Tyrone Williams and defensive end Jared Tomich), and two others, wideout Reggie Baul and outside linebacker Jamel Williams, played almost as much as the starters. According to Nebraska officials there were at least 12 partial or non-qualifiers in the program.

The stars aligned for TO. Things have drastically changed since then.

 

[cm husker]

As for local talent, I'd contend that maybe we aren't seeing quite as much production on the field from NE natives because we haven't been running a system that produces.

Although Bo's national team rushing rankings weren't obviously as good as Osborne's, we regularly were at least in the top 10 in rushing under Bo, correct?

And since I assume you want us to be based around the power run game, how does that jive with your quote above?

From 2004 to 2010, we were running what I think is an ill fitted system. We especially squandered some great local talent in the mid 00's just when our B12N brethren were pretty bad.
By '11 through '14, we were shifting to a better system and we saw better results. I thought considering the injury situations in '13, they did a good job overall. That's a small sample size though.

And Bo wasn't perfect by any means. He didn't get many NE recruits during a few years - there will always be fluctuations in available talent, but averaging 2 or 3 NE recruits during a rolling period is too few, imo.

 

[Undone]

Without overthinking it, do you see the point I'm trying to make?

Bo actually ranked very high in national rushing rankings. Not as high as Osborne; he could have been better.

 

[Undone]

We handed the ball off and (and also tossed it) to some very talented out-of-state running backs by the name of Helu Jr., Burkhead, and Abdullah to get a lot of those yards. Then two very talented running quarterbacks, also from out-of-state, helped compile those respectable rushing totals (not by mainly keeping the ball on option plays, but based more out of the zone read).

So are you implying then that we could have run a better/different power run scheme to have compiled *better* rushing totals that would have appealed to and more efficiently promoted in-state talent to be developed and then recruited for our offense during this tenure?

Or, are you lost in the point you were even trying to make at this point because you see how tenuous your argument was to begin with?

**Edit - Oh, and I also forgot to ask if your argument is based more on offensive linemen recruiting.

 

[Undone]

From 2004 to 2010, we were running what I think is an ill fitted system. We especially squandered some great local talent in the mid 00's just when our B12N brethren were pretty bad.

It's obvious that you would think that.

Let's focus on 2009 - 2015 when we had Martinez/Armstrong at QB running a power run scheme out of the zone read.

 

[cm husker]

Obviously I'm not against out of state talent. I would love for us to recruit well nationally, but my central contention is that we shouldn't concern ourselves with running a system that's supposedly appealing to the "best talent" because very few kids are that fixated on scheme. Rather, we should run a system that maximized production from our most readily available and retain-able talent.

And yes, the OL is a major factor because there are 5 of them on the field, so the allowable margins for missing is much smaller.

I don't think Burkhead, Abdullah or even Helu Jr chose NU because of our system - all were also low to mid level 3* recruits - Abdullah was mainly recruited as an athlete/defensive player. Martinez and Armstrong both chose based as much on the opportunity to play QB as anything related to the specific system.

My point is, continue to recruit who we can, but don't cater to the perceived desires of the 5* recruit . If they come, great.

If they don't, then you better have a system in place that can run without them.

 

[cm husker]

From 2004 to 2010, we were running what I think is an ill fitted system. We especially squandered some great local talent in the mid 00's just when our B12N brethren were pretty bad.

It's obvious that you would think that.

Let's focus on 2009 - 2015 when we had Martinez/Armstrong at QB running a power run scheme out of the zone read.

Martinez arrived in 2010, but was playing under Watson's system - a system that was stagnant that he definitely sparked. The staff was gone after 2014.

Therefore, I addressed from 2011 to 2014.

 

[RunMickeyRun02]

I'm having a hard time reconciling the title of this thread with the words everyone else has said underneath. Although some of those words have been very funny. Kudos to Undone and Guy.

That being said some former coaches I'm fond of: TO, Solich, even Cally a little (or Billy C if you're planning on transferring) not so much Bo, he yelled angry words at me via hidden audio tape, like twice.