Jonathan Rutledge of Auburn hired for Husker special teams

[ShortSideOption]

Obviously good questions, and I wish I had some brilliant answer, I really don't have a very good answer. I will always be a special teams guy, that is what I know (what little I know) but I look at it this way, even if you go 3 and out every series the offense has 3 plays the defense has 3 plays but there is only 1 special team play. I do believe that special teams are 1/3 of the game, but realistically it isn't. Unless you score on one offensive play (then you would have a fg and KO) normally your offensive and defensive plays will outnumber your special team plays 4 or 5 or more to 1. I guess I think you could get by with an analyst that can do everything but actually talk to the players without committing a full time position that is probably needed elsewhere. If that makes any sense?

Side question to this dude, is he someone that could be hired as a full time position coach should another member of the staff decide to leave in the next year or two?

All good points,. Let's be honest, there's not as many special teams plays as offense or defense. But I do think that line of thinking is what gets you in the 120s for special teams, where it's not as important. And I also don't think you need a guy who is solely specials teams as a full time paid assistant. With that said, let's say Scott Frost is your HC/OC like he is, and is helping with WRs most the practice, your WR coach could be WR/Special Teams Coach with his emphasis on the special teams part. Or when Chinander is helping with the OLBs from his DC role, you could have an OLB/Special Teams coordinator when there's some overlap.

Ya, I think an analyst who is 30 is using this role to get into a full time gig if I had to guess. There will have to be a coach in charge of it on gamedays though, when there's an injury and someone goes down you can't have four or five coaches trying to figure out what to do. Sometimes it's not as simple as looking at the depth chart.

 

[joncarl]

All good points,. Let's be honest, there's not as many special teams plays as offense or defense. But I do think that line of thinking is what gets you in the 120s for special teams, where it's not as important. And I also don't think you need a guy who is solely specials teams as a full time paid assistant. With that said, let's say Scott Frost is your HC/OC like he is, and is helping with WRs most the practice, your WR coach could be WR/Special Teams Coach with his emphasis on the special teams part. Or when Chinander is helping with the OLBs from his DC role, you could have an OLB/Special Teams coordinator when there's some overlap.

Ya, I think an analyst who is 30 is using this role to get into a full time gig if I had to guess. There will have to be a coach in charge of it on gamedays though, when there's an injury and someone goes down you can't have four or five coaches trying to figure out what to do. Sometimes it's not as simple as looking at the depth chart.

I would say great minds think alike but that would be an insult to you. I went to Huskers.com and looked at the stats because I was curious about the number of plays and came back to find your response and you are correct. If I read things right we had 867 offensive plays and there were 837 defensive plays. If you look at special teams the punt team was out there for 59 punts, punt return 66, fg-12, fg defense-15, KO-66 and KR-67 for a total of 285 special team plays (plus or minus).

To the second bold, are GA's allowed to do any coaching or are they like analysts and can not coach?

 

[LarstheRed]

All good points,. Let's be honest, there's not as many special teams plays as offense or defense. But I do think that line of thinking is what gets you in the 120s for special teams, where it's not as important. And I also don't think you need a guy who is solely specials teams as a full time paid assistant. With that said, let's say Scott Frost is your HC/OC like he is, and is helping with WRs most the practice, your WR coach could be WR/Special Teams Coach with his emphasis on the special teams part. Or when Chinander is helping with the OLBs from his DC role, you could have an OLB/Special Teams coordinator when there's some overlap.

Ya, I think an analyst who is 30 is using this role to get into a full time gig if I had to guess. There will have to be a coach in charge of it on gamedays though, when there's an injury and someone goes down you can't have four or five coaches trying to figure out what to do. Sometimes it's not as simple as looking at the depth chart.

I generally follow your line of thinking, but you have me confused lately. You say that Frost is our HC/OC, but most have said that while Frost is calling plays and heavily involved in the offense, he isn't acting as a coordinator providing the interaction necessary for 'meshing' the position coaches, personnel, game planning that the OC position requires. Based on our production/coordination in both the areas of WR and OC (among others), we sorely needed an improvement. While no one will argue ST was a complete crap show most of the year, I don't think I'd put the need for upgrade there over either OC and WR (or OLB for that matter). Your position seems to be we made a mistake in who we hired to fill the roles as you would have preferred. That then asks the question, are their any strong OC candidates that are intimately familiar with Frost's style that also have ST experience...and could we actually get them? Or as mentioned, how about a strong WR coach that is familiar with the offensive style, and has ST experience...and could we attract them to Lincoln? I'm not saying coaches with these qualifications are unicorns, but I'm betting it's a pretty shallow pool. If the thought is we shouldn't have hired Dawson, and instead hired someone for OLB with ST experience, that might be true, but I am willing to give Frost a pass on grabbing someone he has a great deal of trust in.

Snyder was a bummer because he was absolutely the perfect fit. When I first heard his name I was thinking, 'get a signature on a contract and put him under armed guard with no phone or email access'. The problem was we really only had an analyst spot for him, and who in their right mind blames him for taking a full coaching role at a place like USC over our analyst position? No one. It would have been the steal of the century, but it wasn't likely as soon as word spread he wasn't going to be staying in Manhattan. The only option I see is not hiring Dawson, and finding someone else for OLB, or you hire Snyder as a coach and ask Ruud to handle both LB spots.

 

[FeelLikeAStranger]

My thinking is that we had Snyder basically in the bag until U$C gave him a full asst. position for just ST’s. Helton probably didn’t have many options or much to lose, given how badly they mangled that situation. Texas interviewed him for ST/TE and didn’t hire him. I don’t think he translates to a specific position coach. Bummed we didnt get him, but you cant offer what you dont have. Hopefully this guy is good.

 

[LarstheRed]

My thinking is that we had Snyder basically in the bag until U$C gave him a full asst. position for just ST’s. Helton probably didn’t have many options or much to lose, given how badly they mangled that situation. Texas interviewed him for ST/TE and didn’t hire him. I don’t think he translates to a specific position coach. Bummed we didnt get him, but you cant offer what you dont have. Hopefully this guy is good.

I don’t think he’s an off the charts great coach, but I also don’t think USC was the only program that could have or would have offered him a full coaching spot. He would have been a great fit for us, but I think he was a tougher pull than some believe.

 

[Bleed Red]

Let alone the obvious fact that it would be nice to have our coaches focus entirely on what they were hired to do. Because it's not like we're a really good team. No, we're about the 10th or 11th best team in the Big Ten until we prove otherwise. So I can't understand why we wouldn't seek every advantage possible to make us better.

I'm just frustrated that we don't seem to take special teams more seriously.

By making one of the coaches responsible for all ST, we would either be removing a position coach from the mix or giving someone extra duties....either way that takes coaches away from what they were hired to do. (coach a position) So, this is going to occur no matter what the answer to ST is.

 

[HuskerWeatherman]

By making one of the coaches responsible for all ST, we would either be removing a position coach from the mix or giving someone extra duties....either way that takes coaches away from what they were hired to do. (coach a position) So, this is going to occur no matter what the answer to ST is.

Not necessarily.

Many teams have a coach whose only job is to coach special teams. Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois are at least three Big Ten West schools have have special teams coordinators -- with no other coaching duty listed. The other teams I scanned through have special teams coordinators that also have a secondary role. No other school (*** stated, in the Big Ten -- not just the West, as I've looked at) is minus a special teams coordinator. Only Nebraska.

 

[Bleed Red]

Yes, but hiring that assistant to be ST coordinator means dumping one of the existing assistant coaches. A team only gets 10 spots. Who is on your chopping block? Having lost that person, either his position is picked up by a coordinator (giving duties to coaches that they aren't being paid for) or added to another assistant (again, same thing).

I'll stand by my comment....adding a ST coordinator means spreading other duties among existing coaches. Which, according to the comment i responded to, would be preventing at least one coach from doing ONLY what they are paid to do currently.

 

[The_CornTorch]

 

[skerBob]

I feel better about this hire now that I've seen this chart of Bill Connelly’s SP+ model from Hail Varsity article on his hiring:

• 2011 Memphis (pre-Rutledge): 115th
• 2012 Memphis: 60th
• 2013 Memphis: t-1st
• 2013 North Carolina (pre-Rutledge): t-31st
• 2014 North Carolina: 91st
• 2015 North Carolina: 8th
• 2015 Missouri (pre-Rutledge): t-93rd
• 2016 Missouri: 96th
• 2017 Missouri: t-5th
• 2017 Auburn (pre-Rutledge): t-59th
• 2018 Auburn: 41st
• 2019 Auburn: t-7th

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hailvarsity.com

 

[Stuck in the South]

I keep reading of the teams he coached and that I believe is a mis-statement of an analysts duties.
If I'm correct-he can watch video with them but is not allowed on the field (game time or practice). Hope it works out.

 

[LarstheRed]

Not sure how you got the idea that I think there are a lot of options, my concern is the exact opposite. There’s not a solid amount of guys out there to fill the analyst role, we were getting a steal with Snyder coming here as an analyst. When you lose Snyder as an analyst and hire a guy like we did, you should have hired someone with one of your two vacancies that had special teams experience. We didn’t because we thought we had Snyder.

Ill be critical all day of us being awful at special teams in 2019, losing a coach that was our special teams coordinator, not back filling it, and losing out on our #1 target we thought we had and landing with what we did where he can’t even on field coach. Now it’s all hands on deck. And that has zero to do with the success from UCF (where they had a special teams coach on staff).

Here's the problem with what you are saying in my mind; you aren't giving a real answer. You are absolutely correct, we lost our special teams coach, who I think most felt was doing a pretty marginal job at both his position and in regards to special teams, be it health issues, or just not that into what he was doing, but either way, an upgrade was needed in both areas. What you aren't saying is which hire do you change, and who do you see as being a better option that we could bring in?

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I don't think you are thrilled we brought in Lubick. I think you understand why Frost did it, but you don't seem as excited as some of the folks here. I personally see this as immediate help in improving our offense in several area. Is he ST knowledgeable? No, but he's filling two spots that needed serious improvement, so I think this is a really good hire. By process of elimination, that leaves Dawson as the guy we shouldn't have hired. The fact he's familiar with the staff, the program and the surroundings is a big plus in my eyes, as is his experience in coaching this defense/position both in college and at the NFL level, but as you mention, he's not a ST guy. So who would you have chosen that is his equal at his position, and who has ST experience that you would have prefered?

I'm not trying to be a jackass, but I see what appears to be a great deal of criticism regarding all the decisions made by Frost, and not a ton of solid ideas to offer alternatives. I'm not turning cartwheels over the new analyst, but I do like both of the other hires, and I would not want to short the need for upgrades at OC, WR or OLB in order to fill in a stud on special teams. Ruud is not experienced enough to handle the burden of both inside and outside, at least I dont believe so. We have to have a WR coach, and getting someone who has experience in this offense AND who can recruit would be golden on it's own, but toss in he's going to OC for the guy who he's been close to for a chunk of his career and I don't think that could have gone better. And I'm fine that we didn't get THE perfect guy, but to hint this entire staffing change as some epic fail, or a big disappointment is kind of BS. Will it hurt us a few times on ST? Probably, but I can't see that as being as detrimental to our season as watching our offense floundering series after series, or our receiver corp look like a patchwork quilt of injured guys while all our recruits sit the bench, or even our OLBs ringing up tackles with a frequency that can be counted on one hand that may not require a thumb.

I'll admit, I don't follow the coaching ranks, so I don't know if there were plenty, or even some coaches out there eager for a shot to play for Frost in Lincoln, but if there are names you believe we should have hired, I'd like to hear them so I can get more familiar with that part of college football. Cohesion and family seem to be very important to Frost and the gang, so if those were the primary reasons he chose who he did, then we'll see if that cohesion is enough to elevate the special teams play going forward with the input of our very young analyst.

 

[HuSkaBob]

Here's the problem with what you are saying in my mind; you aren't giving a real answer. You are absolutely correct, we lost our special teams coach, who I think most felt was doing a pretty marginal job at both his position and in regards to special teams, be it health issues, or just not that into what he was doing, but either way, an upgrade was needed in both areas. What you aren't saying is which hire do you change, and who do you see as being a better option that we could bring in?

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I don't think you are thrilled we brought in Lubick. I think you understand why Frost did it, but you don't seem as excited as some of the folks here. I personally see this as immediate help in improving our offense in several area. Is he ST knowledgeable? No, but he's filling two spots that needed serious improvement, so I think this is a really good hire. By process of elimination, that leaves Dawson as the guy we shouldn't have hired. The fact he's familiar with the staff, the program and the surroundings is a big plus in my eyes, as is his experience in coaching this defense/position both in college and at the NFL level, but as you mention, he's not a ST guy. So who would you have chosen that is his equal at his position, and who has ST experience that you would have prefered?

I'm not trying to be a jackass, but I see what appears to be a great deal of criticism regarding all the decisions made by Frost, and not a ton of solid ideas to offer alternatives. I'm not turning cartwheels over the new analyst, but I do like both of the other hires, and I would not want to short the need for upgrades at OC, WR or OLB in order to fill in a stud on special teams. Ruud is not experienced enough to handle the burden of both inside and outside, at least I dont believe so. We have to have a WR coach, and getting someone who has experience in this offense AND who can recruit would be golden on it's own, but toss in he's going to OC for the guy who he's been close to for a chunk of his career and I don't think that could have gone better. And I'm fine that we didn't get THE perfect guy, but to hint this entire staffing change as some epic fail, or a big disappointment is kind of BS. Will it hurt us a few times on ST? Probably, but I can't see that as being as detrimental to our season as watching our offense floundering series after series, or our receiver corp look like a patchwork quilt of injured guys while all our recruits sit the bench, or even our OLBs ringing up tackles with a frequency that can be counted on one hand that may not require a thumb.

I'll admit, I don't follow the coaching ranks, so I don't know if there were plenty, or even some coaches out there eager for a shot to play for Frost in Lincoln, but if there are names you believe we should have hired, I'd like to hear them so I can get more familiar with that part of college football. Cohesion and family seem to be very important to Frost and the gang, so if those were the primary reasons he chose who he did, then we'll see if that cohesion is enough to elevate the special teams play going forward with the input of our very young analyst.

I'm jumping in late here, but I think it's more the execution of the plan than the people. Kind of like this:
- We need new coaches for OC, WR, OLB and ST. We have three people we want to hire:

ST Analyst, which enables us to hire coaches for:
OC/WR
OLB

Okay, great. Hire them! Oops, the ST Analyst got a better job before we sealed the deal, would have been nice to hire a OLB/ST guy. Too late!

I hope Lubick will "coordinate" the "offense" well and make it seamless. I think Dawson will do a good job with the OLB's. Would have been nice to get Snyder... but c'est la vie.

 

[LarstheRed]

I'm jumping in late here, but I think it's more the execution of the plan than the people. Kind of like this:
- We need new coaches for OC, WR, OLB and ST. We have three people we want to hire:

ST Analyst, which enables us to hire coaches for:
OC/WR
OLB

Okay, great. Hire them! Oops, the ST Analyst got a better job before we sealed the deal, would have been nice to hire a OLB/ST guy. Too late!

I hope Lubick will "coordinate" the "offense" well and make it seamless. I think Dawson will do a good job with the OLB's. Would have been nice to get Snyder... but c'est la vie.

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong, but in my mind we were willing to sacrifice certain things to get people the staff as a whole was comfortable working with, or had experience in what we are currently doing. And I get that Special Teams are referred to as 1/3 of the game, but we know strictly from a play count standpoint, it's closer to 20-25%, still critical, but it's not like we are completely neglecting it by not having one person focus 100% of their attention on that function.

One of the comments that caught my attention (I think this is you, ***) was something to the effect of, ' say Scott Frost is your HC/OC like we assume, and is helping with WRs most of the practice'. That right there should answer the question of priorities. Everyone has said we were not in anyway cohesive last year on offense. Blocking blown because timing was off, receivers not where the QB expected them, young players not getting the attention needed to develop into contributors. A huge part of that should be remedied if you have a stronger OC who 'coordinates' the position coaches and game plans, and a WR coach who is motivated to develop the young talent on this team. If Frost was indeed doing what was described last year, then it's painfully obvious that was too much, and he did a poor job of trying to juggle all those balls. Some of that may have been Walters not being a strong enough personality to take the reigns from Scott, or Scott not having confidence in Walters, but either way, it was a poor structure. This team is going to be one that in many ways, lives, or dies, on how the offense performs, just as the teams at Oregon and UCF did. We can't afford to have marginal anything on that side of the ball. Consequently, that type of offense is going to put substantial pressure on our defense, and the LB position performance is critical for the 3-4 to be successful. We have a number of young players that need to be contributing this year, so we can't have any partial effort in that area.

I'll toss this out as a way too early guess of additional staff changes down the road. If Tuioti doesn't up his recruiting game, and/or the line takes any steps back beyond some inexperience, that's the next position we see a change. (or we could substitute Beckton into this guess) If that's the case, that will be where we have a full time coach we find with some ST experience. I'm sure we considered that with the staffing moves this year, but Snyder made it less critical. That's changed, but I don't think we would have not hired the folks we did even if we'd known Snyder wasn't coming earlier. I think Scott wanted the two guys he got, and was willing to try to backfill with another analyst if need be. It's all a guess, but knowing a couple of folks who've been around that staff, I don't see the bumbling mistakes that seem to be suggested. I see different philosophies that may not match what some other think, but I don't see confusion or panic.

 

[Barry Badrinath]

Here's the problem with what you are saying in my mind; you aren't giving a real answer. You are absolutely correct, we lost our special teams coach, who I think most felt was doing a pretty marginal job at both his position and in regards to special teams, be it health issues, or just not that into what he was doing, but either way, an upgrade was needed in both areas. What you aren't saying is which hire do you change, and who do you see as being a better option that we could bring in?

I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but I don't think you are thrilled we brought in Lubick. I think you understand why Frost did it, but you don't seem as excited as some of the folks here. I personally see this as immediate help in improving our offense in several area. Is he ST knowledgeable? No, but he's filling two spots that needed serious improvement, so I think this is a really good hire. By process of elimination, that leaves Dawson as the guy we shouldn't have hired. The fact he's familiar with the staff, the program and the surroundings is a big plus in my eyes, as is his experience in coaching this defense/position both in college and at the NFL level, but as you mention, he's not a ST guy. So who would you have chosen that is his equal at his position, and who has ST experience that you would have prefered?

I'm not trying to be a jackass, but I see what appears to be a great deal of criticism regarding all the decisions made by Frost, and not a ton of solid ideas to offer alternatives. I'm not turning cartwheels over the new analyst, but I do like both of the other hires, and I would not want to short the need for upgrades at OC, WR or OLB in order to fill in a stud on special teams. Ruud is not experienced enough to handle the burden of both inside and outside, at least I dont believe so. We have to have a WR coach, and getting someone who has experience in this offense AND who can recruit would be golden on it's own, but toss in he's going to OC for the guy who he's been close to for a chunk of his career and I don't think that could have gone better. And I'm fine that we didn't get THE perfect guy, but to hint this entire staffing change as some epic fail, or a big disappointment is kind of BS. Will it hurt us a few times on ST? Probably, but I can't see that as being as detrimental to our season as watching our offense floundering series after series, or our receiver corp look like a patchwork quilt of injured guys while all our recruits sit the bench, or even our OLBs ringing up tackles with a frequency that can be counted on one hand that may not require a thumb.

I'll admit, I don't follow the coaching ranks, so I don't know if there were plenty, or even some coaches out there eager for a shot to play for Frost in Lincoln, but if there are names you believe we should have hired, I'd like to hear them so I can get more familiar with that part of college football. Cohesion and family seem to be very important to Frost and the gang, so if those were the primary reasons he chose who he did, then we'll see if that cohesion is enough to elevate the special teams play going forward with the input of our very young analyst.

I agree with a lot of what you just said and I am in the same camp as you not knowing much about what coaches are out there unless they are high profile. As much as some have dogged on the hire, I'd like to see the stats of Snyder on Special Teams posted as well. The ones that a poster had on Rutledge were very promising, and I'm not sure he is as much of a whiff as some think.

It'll be interesting to see how all of this work's out and even minor improvement in ST is going to be huge for our team.