Welcome, Deontai

[Pitt State]

One third of our current recruits are 5.5 guys. The lowest 3* recruit. We need athletes. I get we don’t have the luxury and never will like others, but dang. Safety’s weight 167 don’t excite me. I get they might pan out in their 4th or 5th year. I see us winning the West every 4 or 5 years.

I think we'll get our fair share of 4 star recruits & maybe a 5 star here & there. They've only been recruiting for a couple of weeks. Give Frost & his staff a chance. They just flipped one of the top quarterbacks in the country to Nebraska. Yes, this first season will probably be rough. It's the future I'm looking forward to.

 

[Husker.Wed._rivals]

No. Pelini's issues against Wisconsin and other running teams had next to nothing to do with too much speed and not enough size. In fact, I think he made a big mistake trying to be just like everyone else in the Big 10. To me the issues were:

1) A huge athletic downgrade. When we moved to the Big 10 all the talk was about how our defensive speed, and overall team athleticism, would be too much for the conference. But we immediately tried to matchup with the rest of the league. We went from a defense featuring Gomes, Haag and David on the middle line, to one with Compton, Whaley and Fisher. David was still there in 2011, when we won the division, but after that, not alot of athleticism, especially at LB.

2) Two gap and two high. We were determined to keep two safties high to prevent big plays. The only way to do that is to play two-gap up front. This asked alot of a front that wasn't very talented (especially after Crick's injury in 2011, until basically today) and teams like Wisconsin could consistently grind it out. By keeping two safties high, we also struggled big-time with the QB run game, as we are all painfully aware.

3) Complex defense asking too much of the safties. In Pelini's defense the safties were asked to fly up and support the run on sweeps and counters and to play over the top on pass plays. Teams like Wisconsin, we able to pair jet sweep and counter looks with double moves and go routes on the outside, putting our safties in no-man's land. Which led to poor angles and record numbers for backs like Bell and Gordon.

Excellent post.

 

[inWV]

Look at my posted he was responding to. The athletic downgrade was #1. We lost guys like Suh, David, Dennard, Prince, Haag, etc and replaced them with guys who had much less ability. But the schematic issues were real too. Combine both and you see blowouts to teams with much more talent like OSU and even teams without superior talent like Wisconsin. We didn’t lose to those teams because we were too small.

You are spot on here. Regardless of the 3 or 4* level at the time of being recruited, after a couple of years you get to see if a player is or is becoming a good football player. A kid like Stiile shows some promise, hopefully the new staff can develop him to be successful in their systems. We need guys who want to get to the ball. I think we have them. Let them play a little faster and tolerate some mistakes. The Davis twins are pretty athletic for their size. Turn them loose a bit. Could the result be worse than what we saw last year?

 

[oldjar07]

Come on man. There’s a serious talent gap from OSU, PSU. If you’re just talking Wis - if they had a QB they’d beat us by 30. I still can’t figure out why they can’t recruit a QB or WR for that matter.

One third of our current recruits are 5.5 guys. The lowest 3* recruit. We need athletes. I get we don’t have the luxury and never will like others, but dang. Safety’s weight 167 don’t excite me. I get they might pan out in their 4th or 5th year. I see us winning the West every 4 or 5 years.

Did you watch their film? Those 167 pound safeties are hitting like they're 240. I don't think the talent gap between Wisconsin and Ohio State is that big at all and Wisconsin has no more talent than we do. Like you said, their qb play has been terrible all year and they still took Ohio State to the wire. There's little difference between a starter quality 3 star and a 4 star or 5 star recruit.

 

[inWV]

Next years D will be better simply by virtue of hitting the coaching reset button. The players had given up down the stretch on D. The difference between 07 and 17 is that we n 07, Keller and Ganz had good enough units to get in the end zone.
Players will have to prove themselves to the new staff. The competition will make more players better.

 

[oldjar07]

Look at my posted he was responding to. The athletic downgrade was #1. We lost guys like Suh, David, Dennard, Prince, Haag, etc and replaced them with guys who had much less ability. But the schematic issues were real too. Combine both and you see blowouts to teams with much more talent like OSU and even teams without superior talent like Wisconsin. We didn’t lose to those teams because we were too small.

It wasn't necessarily athleticism that was the problem. We had people who were athletic but didn't know the schemes, and people who knew the schemes, but weren't athletic and Pelini mostly chose the latter. The first time we got blown out by Wisconsin was 2011 and we had guys like Dennard and David playing. We beat Wisconin early 2012 when both of those guys left. It seems like people forget we actually beat Wisconsin earlier in the year before getting blown out by them in the championship game.

 

[oldjar07]

And it was only about 1 or 2 plays that were beating us the whole time in the 2012 championship game. Bo was stubborn and refused to change his scheme in-game.