I don't think that's true at all, and certainly not at the skill positions. Again, Minnesota played 20 true freshmen last year. They are 9-0 currently. If our S&C needs 3 seasons to take hold, we are in massive trouble. I think the bigger issue at play is 2017 UCF had "zero injuries" (I still don't believe that but i'll pass it off as truth for right now) and 2019 Nebraska has had close to 50% of their 2018 and 2019 classes either have serious injuries or leave. It's only 2 seasons in, so my alarm isn't going off yet, but that has to be corrected for 2020. You can't have four star Nick Henrich come in and need to bolster your depth at ILB and blow out his shoulder. You can't have 4 star Noa Pola-Gates blow out his knee when we are already down a safety or two. You can't have 4 star Deontai Williams blow out his shoulder first game. You can't have Tate Wildeman, Casey Rogers, Chris Hickman, and others get lengthy injuries like that. IMO that's why it's taking longer for us to get guys ready, not because of the conference we are in. Kids get in here and basically lose a 1/2 year of development.
I do agree that many times a four or five star recruit is someone that matured quicker and is a college player playing against high school kids. I get that. A lot of those Florida kids were pretty raw.
Good points.
I do wonder if Frost would have taken a different approach to playing his youngsters had he known he'd be starring down the barrel of another season without a bowl game. JMPO, but I don't think he thought he had a team capable of winning the Big Ten, but he probably thought 7-8 wins was certainly on the docket.
Had he seen 4-8, 5-7 coming, would he have played guys like Bryce Benhart, Ty Robinson, NPG, Rahmir Johnson, Darien Chase, Ethan Piper, Garrett Nelson, Quinton Newsome, Myles Farmer, Demariyon Houston and Jamie Nance more? Would he have just accepted he'd take some lumps and put them all either on special teams, the starting lineup or at least the two deep? I mean, 5-7 is 5-7. At least get your foundation class experience.
I don't think anyone would argue that redshirting is a bad strategy. It's an ideal scenario for every recruit, I don't care who it is. Getting bigger, stronger, faster and more familiar with the system is never a negative approach. But I think he thought he'd be able to put this class in an incubator and still get to a bowl game with the guys he's basically rolling with now. With the likely outcome being back to back seasons without bowl practices, I'd love to know if he's suffering from hindsight.
Last season Fleck was coming off a 5-7 team in 2017, basically the same previous season Frost was coming into this year with Nebraska. I suspect Fleck figured he would struggle to get to bowl eligibility and took the approach I talked about above. He ended up exceeding expectations and made a bowl on top of it.