I understand what you're saying but there's no way he was more physical than Tannor. Cooper was extremely slender for a LB...which is saying something because so is Tannor. Cooper probably was a great athlete but that doesn't necessarily translate to instincts on the field and execution of your position. Keem Green is another example. There wasn't a dude on our entire D line that had anywhere close to his athleticism and he couldn't get on the field. This sounds insensitive but sometimes players are just dumb. I've played with guys like that and I've coached kids like that. We're all in for a long road if we start losing sleep over great athletes that dont manifest into anything on the field. Sometimes you have to take flyers on kids and hope they turn into a decent player to match their athleticism. Two recent examples of this would be Alphonzo Dennard and D. Bootle. We took flyers on those guys because they were freak athletes and then they turned into good football players, unfortunately they are outliers though.
Another one leaving - Niko Cooper
- Thread starter phoenix4nu
- Start date
Speaking of special teams juggernauts. I talked to a guy last week who played at UNO with Randy Stella. He said Randy came downfield like a missile. No one wanted to take him on. Dude gave zero f****. Hate to see that talent wasted.
cooper failing to recover the fumble on a kickoff vs illinois cost luke mccaffrey the starting QB job & doomed us to another year (at least) of AM
change my mind
change my mind
So was Tom lying when he stated the following -
As best Osborne can remember, there was some sort of post-game gathering at the team’s hotel in Houston. Some NU regents were there and one pulled Osborne aside and said: It’s a good thing you won tonight.
“It was with words to the effect that you might not have been around if you hadn’t,” Osborne said this week. “Of course, that got my attention.” Article linked below. TO believed his seat was getting warm.
On Devaney, there was a petition circulated to fire him after soft seasons in 67 and 68.
Two HOF coaches experienced this from boosters and a fan base with completely outsized expectations. And since TOs retirement, the population demographics and competitive landscape of college football have changed even more decidedly against NU.
The years of Devaney and Osborne were remarkable in the longevity of tenure and quality of assistant coaches. Think about those teams in the mid-90s. Those offensive schemes had been cooking for several seasons and had been tweaked and perfected. Charlie started using the 4-3 in 92 and by the start of the two year winning streak has athletes recruited for it. In some respects we could target the Husker's downfall not so much to the departure of TO, but after Charlie left.
Last edited:
And it will be the 27th year in a row if we keep changes coaches every 3-4 years.
We hired a legit coaching candidate with other BCS offers for the first time since Osborne retired. He took over for a staff that was 6-12 in there last 18 games with 6 losses by more than 20 points including multiple 30 point losses to unranked teams. Nebraska was legitemately really bad in 2016 and by end of year playing as bad as any team in conference and that was every bit as much about talent as it was coaching. He deserves criticism for some lack of discipline and is unwillingness to appropriately address special team coverage and return teams and need to reduce player turnover a bit. He also deserves 125% of the time necessary to be 100% sure he cannot do the job considering his past accomplishments for NU and the offers he passed up to take on the **** show he inherited from Riley withe the hopes of making his alma mater great again.
Recruiting was truly decimated by multiple coaching changes and the inevitable transition class problems (player fit and settling on players late) for two changes. Throw in that Pelini basically quit recruiting the last year before he was fired and that Riley flat recruited about half the number 5.7 or better players we currently land and missed on a much higher percent to boot. The roster was flat out bottom quarter of big ten.
As a direct result of recruiting and the time it takes to develop lineman Frost has had exactly one line that wasn't big ten below average or bad (2019 line was big ten bad, undebatable), In 2018 with that average line his freshman QB was 12 in total offense and had a 1000 yard receiver and almost a second and the team finished number 2 in total offense in conference. So with decent line and some solid skill players Frost could coach offense which extended back to UCF and Oregon. Then all the sudden he is a complete moron in 2019 and 2020. Yah, that makes sense.
Lets see what Frost and Martinez do with Corcoran, Piper, Jurgen, Benhardt and Nouilis along with Banks and Hixson as likely swing players. I will flat out gaurantee you right now that 2021 is a better 0-line than that senior laiden 2018 group even with one second and two third year guys starting. We recruited some high level athletes (Corcoran, Piper, Benhardt) and absolutely hit a home run with Piper. Kids are just that much better athletes and players and you got a taste of that against Rutgers where an NU line was extremely dominant against a big ten team for first time since 2018.
And before some negative Nancy chimes it that its Rutgers and doesn't matter I would counter that just 1.5 years earlier a bad South Alabama teamed flat out dominated that bad 2019 line, limiting NU to less than 100 yards on 44 carries. That game should have been a sign of just how big ten poor that group was going to be considering it was patched together from the 8 scholorship lineman they had which included a So. walk-on being awarded a scholorship and converted 270 lbs TE, both of which ended up starting. Huh, cannot believe that didn't work in the Big Ten, better fire Allen obviously cannot coach or develop guys.
Offensively, we have been trying to dig out from that o-line mess the last two years and now it appears like we will get to see what a Frost offense looks like with a legit big ten offensive line. By all means if this offensive line group doesn't develop like we expect or we are so bad with turnovers and special teams that we lose regardless that I would get the true fans being ready for a change but we are not to that point yet which makes me question anybody that is as vocal, adamant and annoying about it as you are.
I will make a couple predictions for 2022 which I prefer not do but feel pretty confident about.
Defensively NU will finish in top half of the league in total YPG and based on players back and coaching improvements I would guess around 5th based on trending since 2018. While this won't be a great defense it will be very competitive and more than capable of holding there own.
Offensively, NU is going to finish in the top 4 in total YPG and if I had to guess much closer to first than fourth.
This roster has all the makings of a good football team and the record and scoring will be indicative of that assuming special team return and coverage units aren't horrid like 2020 and turnover margin is at least near break even. I believe this will be about an 8 win team with what they have and the fact I think they will be roughly average on special teams and turnovers. Obvioulsy, record could be better or worse depending on those two factors and injuries.
This is also why I assume they were trying to get out of OU game and are so glad the Illinois game is moved back to states. Even good football teams lose 9+ out of ten to OU and OSU. Getting out of the OU game makes the odds of 8 wins much higher by eliminating a probably loss and replacing it with a probable win. Assuming the team does develop as I have proposed there is also a legit chance they are 5-0 going into the home game with Michigan if they replace OU with a probably win and that type of confident can do amazing things for a team.
My only problem is how is was handled. This athletic department has just done some things poorly from a PR perspective. Proclaiming Jurgens the next Remington when you new he was going to have to play two years where he was underdeveloped and sized. Asking to move this game in a way that could have been made public in any way shape or form is another. It should have been an office visit with Castiglione with and honest question and honest explanation as to why we are asking to go along with a gift of fine Scotch or whatever the hell he likes and whatever future scheduling concessions he wants. Everything is negotiable if you give enough.
Instead it is handles in way were it is not only declined but ends up in paper as a means for OU to prevent NU from pushing the option.
Luke McCaffrey not being an average QB cost Luke McCaffrey the starting QB job. sigh
my favorite is that it took only 2 starts for all the geniuses on this board to determine Luke has no future as a QB but after 27 games (and winning less than 40% of them) the same people still think AM has potential.
The caveat to that is that INTERMITTENTLY Adrian looked like he could be a good QB. We're all still just watching and hoping he can be better or that Smothers is good enough to beat him out. IF Adrian could stop the stupid mental errors, he has a lot of physical talent. Heavy sigh. As the old saying goes, "if you always do what you've always done you'll always get what you always got."
AM has been very bad, I do not disagree. I am not a football genius but Luke was somehow even worse.
Edit: I like how threads about a random mostly unknown Linebacker transferring turns into re-litigating the QB position.
how quickly we all forget the best flashes of excitement in 2019 generated by the passing game were all Luke highlights, save mo washington taking a swing pass 75 yards to the barn in boulder
cooper had his hands on that fumble against Ill!
if he recovers it, we're in their territory and going in to cut it to a 1 possession game
perhaps then the D shores up, doesn't allow 200 2nd half rushing yards, we pull that one out and all of a sudden are looking at actual improvement instead of mind-numbing sameness
alas....
AM has had a season with 2600 yards, 1000 yard receiver (almost 2) and 12 in YPG and was also 17-8 TD/INT and the team finished 2 in YPG in big ten as a freshman. This was also the only year we had an average to above average offensive line to go with Morgan and Ozigbo.
I am not sold on him either due to perceived lack of competitiveness overall decision making and propensity to turn the ball but to act like he wasn't effective that year is not being honest. He has all the tools to be a good football player if he is put in a situation where we are largely choosing to pass on 2nd and 3rd down and nor forced to on second and third and long where he is most ineffective as a pocket passer.
My problem with Luke (any many others) was that his arm strength (fairly easy to judge) simply didn't appear to be anywhere near D1 level. Or said another way. I don't see him throwing for 2600 yards under any conditions based on what i have seen his throws in the last two years.
Now with the right offensive line and scheme you could be effective with Luke assuming he can stay healthy with the number of runs he would need to have to be effective. Short of it is the scheme is setup to be balanced and your best athletes on offense for 2022 will be WR/TE and you have to have someone that can get them the ball and Martinez has done that in the past.
Remember John Milton saying on Spirt of Play on Husker Century about the petition about firing Devaney after getting shut out at home against K-State and Milton joked that he even sighted the petition and said “ we were really bad”..
Osborne story is spot on...
Didn't catch the Milton quote there, but read about it. I thought Frost was The Answer, but it appears possible that he won't be able to get the program re-ignited. Certainly the coming season will be decisive in that regard. But the history here is pretty clear. Boosters and parts of the fan base bitched when two HOF coaches were at the helm, and continued to ***** when Solich won basically at the same clip, won a conference title and got to a title game. Callahan, say no more about level of bitching. Pelini was basically run out town on a rail after consistently winning 9. And since he would have had Tommy for two more years, I don't doubt he would have continued to win, although it would have been harder as the B1G got more competitive. Riley was initially seen as an antidote to BP, but ended up fielding a really bad team in 2017. And I think we can see the trajectory here. A lot of bitching and magical thinking about NU's position within the college football world. Karma is truly a *****, isn't it.
Frost may ultimately have to move on, as it will be time to give someone else a try. But the prospects of the defense have improved noticeably. Frost may have to give up his allusions of B1G defenses chasing his offenses around the field. The collective hours of film study have caught up to Chip Kelly inspired offenses and even some of the bad teams in the B1G field competent defenses. Get bigger backs (Stepp checks that box) and move the chains, take some pressure off of AMart to function as a do it all guy. The line to do that kind of thing is evolving in Lincoln.
Tannor is one of the least physical football players I've ever seen at the college level. You may be right on Cooper. You probably are right. But we'll never really know because he was never given a chance even though the guy above him could hardly ever execute his assignment either. If I know I'm better than the guy in front of me, but I'm never given a chance to prove it, I'm transferring out of that situation and looking at other options. I'm not saying that Cooper was absolutely better than Tannor, but I don't think it would be outside the realm of possibility either.
completely agree
they should rename the 'looks like tarzan plays like jane' award after caleb tannor
I agree that he wasn't a beast on special teams. I never said he was. I do think he was among the best players we had on special teams though. And I think he flashed some athletic ability that we have very little of on this team. All I'm saying was I think he deserved a shot to see the field more on defense. I'm not saying that he'd be some Allstar player or even that he was better than the guy in front of him, but imo he deserved a shot.