Where We Speak Less-than-Fondly of Former Coaches

M

melscott62

All-Conference
Undone said:
I should have given more context.

Pelini's defenses were awesome against the Big 12 spread teams. He occasionally matched up well against the more traditional offenses of the B1G in big games (Michigan State in 2011, Michigan a couple times), but more often than not was clobbered in the run game in big games after we got into the B1G.

I don't usually put too much stock one way or the other into what coaches say in pressers; I look for the results on the field and then determine what they're doing/no doing. But my point was that Frost recognizes that his defense isn't currently made up of the right stuff to play good defense against the power teams in this conference. "Made up of the right stuff" could encompass many things, but contrast that with Pelini who constantly insinuated that it was players not doing their job that would get us blown out.

Asking rhetorically (as Frost is five games into a long career here) at what point does a coach not retool things when what you have doesn't work? Frost realizes what he has now doesn't work against power teams. That realization seems significant.
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Pelini's first few defenses would have done fine in the big 10.  I agree the scheme needed to be tweaked....but it was a talent issue.

 
melscott62 said:
Pelini's first few defenses would have done fine in the big 10.  I agree the scheme needed to be tweaked....but it was a talent issue.
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Not compared to what we have on this current roster, in my opinion.

I agree though that you could have put the likes of Suh, Crick, Gomes, Haag, etc. against those first few Wisconsin teams and they wouldn't have been able to run on us...but that's another conversation.    :)

 
1 thing in defense of Pelini. He did coach in the SEC and won a natty. So I think he knew what it took to stop power running physical offenses. When he had the horses he had no trouble stopping Ohio State in the National Championship

 
Huskers93-97 said:
1 thing in defense of Pelini. He did coach in the SEC and won a natty. So I think he knew what it took to stop power running physical offenses.
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Diaco had a pretty successful defense against Big Ten teams when he was at ND also.

That didn't translate well to Nebraska.

 
Huskers93-97 said:
1 thing in defense of Pelini. He did coach in the SEC and won a natty. So I think he knew what it took to stop power running physical offenses. When he had the horses he had no trouble stopping Ohio State in the National Championship
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So...how do we really boil down those comments? Would we say that Bo knew how to coach defense, but once he ran out of Callahan's linemen and a couple decent JUCO linebackers & DBs that he just couldn't recruit on the defensive side of the ball?

 
Undone said:
Pelini's defenses were awesome against the Big 12 spread teams. He occasionally matched up well against the more traditional offenses of the B1G in big games (Michigan State in 2011, Michigan a couple times), but more often than not was clobbered in the run game in big games after we got into the B1G.
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I think just the opposite is true.  We actually fared pretty well against most teams.  But the yards Wisconsin put up on us skewed the numbers significantly (which continues to be true, unfortunately).  If you look at the average yards per carry allowed against other teams - throwing out the Wisconsin game - we were actually pretty decent.

 
Mavric said:
I think just the opposite is true.  We actually fared pretty well against most teams.  But the yards Wisconsin put up on us skewed the numbers significantly (which continues to be true, unfortunately).  If you look at the average yards per carry allowed against other teams - throwing out the Wisconsin game - we were actually pretty decent.
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Game, singular? What game? The 2012 conference title game?

I went back and looked up some of Bo's primary blowout losses:

-2011 --> Wisconsin beats us 48/17, Michigan beats us 45-17

-2012 --> Ohio State curb stomps us 63-38, then Wisconsin embarrasses us 70-31 in the conference title game

-2013 --> UCLA hangs 504 yards on us and beats us 41-21

-2014 --> Wisconsin beats us 59-24 (defense was actually pretty good that season, though)

So I would still disagree with your "I think just the opposite is true" comment, but looking back on it, I think I'd agree that Bo was solid defensively outside of the "big" games that he really needed to win to turn a corner to get the team to an elite level.

It was interesting to look at the stats from the regular season game we had against Wisconsin in 2012 when we beat them 30-27; they only had 56 yards rushing. Makes it that much more bizarre that they then rushed for 539 in that title game. That game was the beginning of the end for The Guido.

 
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Pelini fielded a few good defenses but what I am starting to appreciate more then a good game or a good season,  is consistency. Diaco had maybe one or two good years and Pelini had two or so really good years-and that coincided with Carl being around. I want someone  that can field a tough d for an entire career. Ebs and flows, sure, but always tough. 

 
krc1995 said:
Pelini fielded a few good defenses but what I am starting to appreciate more then a good game or a good season,  is consistency. Diaco had maybe one or two good years and Pelini had two or so really good years-and that coincided with Carl being around. I want someone  that can field a tough d for an entire career. Ebs and flows, sure, but always tough. 
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We are definitely consistent this year.

 
Undone said:
Game, singular? What game? The 2012 conference title game?

I went back and looked up some of Bo's primary blowout losses:

-2011 --> Wisconsin beats us 48/17, Michigan beats us 45-17

-2012 --> Ohio State curb stomps us 63-38, then Wisconsin embarrasses us 70-31 in the conference title game

-2013 --> UCLA hangs 504 yards on us and beats us 41-21

-2014 --> Wisconsin beats us 59-24 (defense was actually pretty good that season, though)

So I would still disagree with your "I think just the opposite is true" comment, but looking back on it, I think I'd agree that Bo was solid defensively outside of the "big" games that he really needed to win to turn a corner to get the team to an elite level.

It was interesting to look at the stats from the regular season game we had against Wisconsin in 2012 when we beat them 30-27; they only had 56 yards rushing. Makes it that much more bizarre that they then rushed for 539 in that title game. That game was the beginning of the end for The Guido.
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Sorry, that was poorly-worded by me.  I was trying to say the one game against Wisconsin *each year* really made the stats for that year look much worse.  Wisconsin had figured out how to formation and motion us into a bad alignment and take advantage of it.  And we were apparently too stubborn to change.  But the rest of the time, we weren't all that bad.

2012 was they year they figured us out.  In the first game - like you said - we were very good against them. But they figured something out before the CCG and never looked back.

In 2012, we were #96 in the country in yards allowed per rush at 4.76.  But if you take out the Wisconsin CCG game, it would drop to 4.17 ypc which would have been #65. 

In 2013, we were #32 in the country at 3.78.  We didn't play Wisconsin that year.

In 2014, we were #91 in the country at 4.74.  Minus Wisconsin we would have been 3.80 which would have been #33.

So one year we would have been 31 spots better minus the Wisconsin game.  The other two years we were a Top 35 rushing defense (ypc) other than when we played Wisconsin.  Not great but definitely serviceable for a defense that was designed to stop the pass first and prevent the big play.

 
krc1995 said:
Pelini fielded a few good defenses but what I am starting to appreciate more then a good game or a good season,  is consistency. Diaco had maybe one or two good years and Pelini had two or so really good years-and that coincided with Carl being around. I want someone  that can field a tough d for an entire career. Ebs and flows, sure, but always tough. 
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I would go further and say that his good years also coincided with having Callahans recruits and a monster named Suh that made opposing offensive lines look like the movie The Waterboy.

 
r06ue1 said:
I would go further and say that his good years also coincided with having Callahans recruits and a monster named Suh that made opposing offensive lines look like the movie The Waterboy.
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I’ve made the same point and people here do not like it when you say Callahan did anything well- but he did. The 2009 roster is full of future NFLers. 

 
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