ShortSideOption
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The season that started with so much hype, national analysts picking us a dark horse CFP team, a QB coming off a Freshman All-American campaign that had him getting odds for the Heisman, has now officially ended at 12 games for the third year in a row. As I sit here with my glass of Buffalo Trace and reflect on the season, I look back at a lot of things that were frustrating, but there were also a ton of positives that came from it. I want to go into some of the things we heard these first two years, my OPINION on them, and what 2020 looks like position by position. The overriding theme is a lot of the things we were hearing are probably true, but we absolutely made them worse and it had nothing to do with Riley or Eichorst.
Let's start with this Quote for the bar that was this season:
That was such a BS move in my opinion. 6 wins with this team and this schedule is not what the bar should have been. When it was stated before the season, I told people live and on here that it would be a massive issue if we only got to 6 wins. Here we are with message boards melting down like Chernobyl, and people questioning every thing going on. We have put ourselves in a bit of a predicament for next year with a tougher schedule, and a possible youth movement (that i'll go into later) for 2020, but we already used the "we are young" excuse for 2019. If I told you our ADs goal would be to make a bowl game in year 2 after we fired Riley, you would laugh. If I told you that we would be 0-9 against Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, Purdue, and Indiana in 2 years, would that have been acceptable then? I know the answers there, just pointing out the lunacy of this statement.
"We need better players"
We've heard this from coaches, and in a roundabout way from the staff as well. I think this was partially true. We do need to upgrade the talent, but it goes further than recruiting. We need to develop better. With that said, We had better players than Colorado, Indiana, Purdue, and Minnesota. I won't start going into the Iowa and Wisconsin debate, and we certainly don't have better players than Ohio State. What i'm getting at, is all we had to do is go 2-2 against the first four, and we are bowling with a 7-5 record. Pretty much all of the guys on those teams if we offered would come to Nebraska. So whether you think we have better players or not, we could have the guys on those teams if we offered them. My point is, we had enough to win 7 here. Yes, we need better. But calling it out caused more issues than it needed.
"We need to establish our culture"
We heard this in regard to players recruited by the previous staff. I would agree we had guys that probably didn't work as hard we needed, or were too attached to the previous staff and didn't give our staff a fair shake. With that said, some of the "lack of buy-in" was created when you publicly tell people you need better players and guys you are counting on hear that. I can tell you with certainty that that statement made guys we really needed to be studs for us this year give some pause in full buy-in. So I could argue that some of the bad culture manifested in 2018 and 2019. Hopefully we can correct that.
"We are young and lack depth"
We certainly are. The 70%+ roster flip was something that we were "wowed" over. Articles were written on it. But did we go too far? As an example, I get that you need your own guys, but how did our LBs look this year? Avery Roberts was our most athletic ILB and would have been someone who could cover those Indiana (and other teams) WRs. But since he left and didn't fit what we were trying to do, we had guys like Mo Barry and Will Honas out there trying to cover slot WRs. We saw how that ended up. And now Avery Roberts (a 4 star) took off and is going to be an NFL draft pick due to leading his Power 5 team with a better conference record than us in tackles. What about us having a four star OLB leave and go JUCO and be committed to a team that just beat us two years in a row? What about us bringing in a four star OLB and him leaving in a year? While I agree we had some issues, again, a lot was self-inflicted. Going further into that, Mo Washington and Greg Bell, our prized four star RB recruits from 2018 both left the team. We also can not have our stud recruits getting injuries that have them out for 6 months like Nick Henrich, Javin Wright, Tate Wildeman, Casey Rogers, CJ Smith, Miles Jones, Will Honas, Noa Pola-Gates, and Ronald Thompkins. Guys that are four stars that would be providing depth at major programs get hurt and we struggle. You even have guys like Adrian Martinez, Deontai Williams, Wandale Robinson, Mo Washington, Kade Warner, that get knicked up and miss games. We need to have a clean offseason on this front.
Football coaches make football players better, put them in situations they can succeed
All of this above is fine, but what I saw from certain players regressing really concerned me. I don't disagree you want recruits that can run your offense, but as a football coach, you should be able to make football players better. There are plenty of examples of people getting better from 2018 to 2019 like Alex Davis, Lamar Jackson, and a guy like Cam Jurgens. But there are so many that regressed it was absolutely an issue. From there, you need to put your players in positions to be successful. I can't tell you how many times an offense would sub 4 guys out and 4 guys in, and we'd make 1 sub on defense putting Domann in for Nelson or something like that. But we would leave Mo Barry and Will Honas out there to cover slot WRs and against Indiana and Purdue it burned us over and over. Why didn't we match personnel? That's an example of us having the right players, coaches just need to do better. What about the swing passes that get us in 2nd and 12? Matt MIllen even started calling it out against Iowa. Again, I don't disagree we can get better guys, but players like Matt Farniok and JD Spielman this staff would have been ecstatic to get in Orlando. We unfortunately have to look in the mirror a bit.
Just a few things that were thrown out this year that won't fly for 2020. This next section i'll go into our position groups for next year, starting with most concerning to least. I am not going to go into transfers and attrition. It's coming, but speculation isn't needed and i'll address them when it's public.
Linebackers
This is my biggest concern for next year. We struggled all year at ILB, yet our top 5 ILB class in the country couldn't even crack the lineup. Where was Jackson Hannah? Henrich was out a majority of the year, could we have used him? Luke Reimers was getting all sorts of press and even practicing with the 1's in certain packages, why couldn't we get him on the field? We also struggled at OLB. While Alex Davis improved, he wasn't where we needed our guy to be. Domann is our best defensive player, we have to find a way to keep him on the field. Tannor looked improved, and so did Nelson throughout the year. But with a better DL in front of them in 2019 than they will have in 2020, this is concerning. Couple that with the fact that LB recruiting only netted one high school player so far, it means we will have to rely on people that couldn't beat out Mo Barry and Alex Davis this year in the 2020 season. Dewitt went thru a rough year, but I do think guys like Domann, Davis, Nelson, and Tannor have improved. The regression of Barry concerns me for 2020. We have little coming in recruiting wise, will have a worse DL in front of our LBs, and we regressed at ILB from 2018 in 2019. Lots of obstacles.
Wide Receiver
I couldn't decide between this and linebacker, but what gave the edge to LBs is that WR is the easiest spot to see the field as a true freshman. The increase of physicality doesn't really play into it outside, so you can just be a burner and play. What's concerning is that all of the guys we were so excited about couldn't see the field to help at all. Darien Chase, Jamie Nance, Demaryon Houston, Jaron Woodyard, Mike Williams, Andre Hunt, Katerion Legrone, and Justin McGriff are all guys we needed in 2019, but for one reason or the other couldn't help us at all. The development is lacking and we need to get these guys up to speed. We return JD Spielman and Kade Warner, also throw Wandale in there. Hickman may be able to help us out wide next year as well. But we need to get some guys in that can help, and we have got to get some improvement from the guys that are here. I just don't know if i'm confident for us to get where we need to be, but I do think guys like Betts (and hopefully Manning) can be big bodied WRs coming in and play right away to give us immediate help.
Offensive Line
First, let me start by saying that I stated a lot of people regressed on this team, but I do think we showed a lot of improvement at OL. Cam Jurgens started looking very good towards the end of the year, and even though we were 5-7, i'm glad we took our lumps with him this year now. The reason I have this #3 on my list is because I think Frost has a predicament on his hands next year. We got better IMO, but do we go youth movement for 2020? We literally could keep the exact same lineup in tact. But I also know we have some guys starting that just aren't the ceiling that our staff wants. The issue is, a guy like Boe Wilson who routinely struggled was all-conference in 2018, can you really not play him? Do we start the same guys or do we go something like this: LT Jaimes, LG Farniok, C Jurgens, RG Piper, RT Benhart? Again, I think we have options here, i'm just a bit curious which way we go with this.
Defensive Line
I actually only really have one concern here, but let me first state that our DL this year is as good as we can hope for. It doesn't get better than Darrion Daniels at NG, and the Davis twins were four star recruits in the 250 mile radius that were all-conference for Nebraska in 2 sports with offers from Penn State. We lose our starting 3, which is why this is #4 for me. That said, I think Stille and Thomas at DE give us a great base, because they are both capable of starting this year, they just had studs in front of them. Damion Daniels and Ty Robinson will man the NG spot with the Polar Bear Nash Hutmacher coming in to challenge for time. We can obviously slide guys down, and Jahkeem Green, Casey Rogers, and Tate Wildeman can help give us some depth. NG is what I am really concerned with here, i'm sure we will be fine at DE again.
Quarterback
I am not concerned in the slightest that we have the talent to get us to 9 wins next year in this position group. But Frost has some things to sort out in the offseason heading into 2020. Adrian Martinez was a freshman all-american. Noah Vedral is a guy that I had to tell people he is very good after some were saying how bad he is from spring game performances, and we have him. And a guy by the name of Luke McCaffrey has looked good in his limited action this year. I have no doubt Frost has who he needs here (throw Logan Smothers in the mix). With that said, which way does he go? I can pretty much tell you Martinez will be the starter against Purdue next year, but will he have a legitimate competition? That i'm unsure of. How he handles this is going to be the biggest deal for him.
Runningback
Not too concerned here as I think Dedrick Mills really came into his own this year. Wandale Robinson can be a great change of pace for you, and then we have Rahmir Johnson that can help. With our 2020 class we should have a cupboard we are able to lean on as well. The 3 I mentioned will give our recruits and young guys time to sink their teeth into the offense and an opportunity to show they deserve PT without being thrust into a major role too soon.
Tightend
I am not worried about this at all. We return Stoll, Allen, and Rafdal, while gaining eligibility from possibly the best of the bunch in Vokolek. I am shocked we didn't use the TEs more this year (as I said we would do before the season, boy was I wrong) since our WRs were struggling so much. Hopefully Vokolek gives us the vertical threat down the seam we need.
Defensiveback
Not concerned at all here. When our staff showed up, WR and DB were the most talent depleted spots. Travis Fisher has taken guys that aren't his (Lamar Jackson and Marquel Dismuke) and made them great pieces for this defense. He also brought in guys like Cam Taylor-Britt, Deontai Williams, Braxton Clark, and others that have showed really well. Dicaprio Bootle, Cam Taylor-Britt, Marquel Dismuke, and Deontai Williams give us a great 4 with Braxton Clark able to help out in nickel. Fisher is recruiting well and developing even better. Pretty lucky here.
Let's start with this Quote for the bar that was this season:
That was such a BS move in my opinion. 6 wins with this team and this schedule is not what the bar should have been. When it was stated before the season, I told people live and on here that it would be a massive issue if we only got to 6 wins. Here we are with message boards melting down like Chernobyl, and people questioning every thing going on. We have put ourselves in a bit of a predicament for next year with a tougher schedule, and a possible youth movement (that i'll go into later) for 2020, but we already used the "we are young" excuse for 2019. If I told you our ADs goal would be to make a bowl game in year 2 after we fired Riley, you would laugh. If I told you that we would be 0-9 against Colorado, Wisconsin, Iowa, Purdue, and Indiana in 2 years, would that have been acceptable then? I know the answers there, just pointing out the lunacy of this statement.
"We need better players"
We've heard this from coaches, and in a roundabout way from the staff as well. I think this was partially true. We do need to upgrade the talent, but it goes further than recruiting. We need to develop better. With that said, We had better players than Colorado, Indiana, Purdue, and Minnesota. I won't start going into the Iowa and Wisconsin debate, and we certainly don't have better players than Ohio State. What i'm getting at, is all we had to do is go 2-2 against the first four, and we are bowling with a 7-5 record. Pretty much all of the guys on those teams if we offered would come to Nebraska. So whether you think we have better players or not, we could have the guys on those teams if we offered them. My point is, we had enough to win 7 here. Yes, we need better. But calling it out caused more issues than it needed.
"We need to establish our culture"
We heard this in regard to players recruited by the previous staff. I would agree we had guys that probably didn't work as hard we needed, or were too attached to the previous staff and didn't give our staff a fair shake. With that said, some of the "lack of buy-in" was created when you publicly tell people you need better players and guys you are counting on hear that. I can tell you with certainty that that statement made guys we really needed to be studs for us this year give some pause in full buy-in. So I could argue that some of the bad culture manifested in 2018 and 2019. Hopefully we can correct that.
"We are young and lack depth"
We certainly are. The 70%+ roster flip was something that we were "wowed" over. Articles were written on it. But did we go too far? As an example, I get that you need your own guys, but how did our LBs look this year? Avery Roberts was our most athletic ILB and would have been someone who could cover those Indiana (and other teams) WRs. But since he left and didn't fit what we were trying to do, we had guys like Mo Barry and Will Honas out there trying to cover slot WRs. We saw how that ended up. And now Avery Roberts (a 4 star) took off and is going to be an NFL draft pick due to leading his Power 5 team with a better conference record than us in tackles. What about us having a four star OLB leave and go JUCO and be committed to a team that just beat us two years in a row? What about us bringing in a four star OLB and him leaving in a year? While I agree we had some issues, again, a lot was self-inflicted. Going further into that, Mo Washington and Greg Bell, our prized four star RB recruits from 2018 both left the team. We also can not have our stud recruits getting injuries that have them out for 6 months like Nick Henrich, Javin Wright, Tate Wildeman, Casey Rogers, CJ Smith, Miles Jones, Will Honas, Noa Pola-Gates, and Ronald Thompkins. Guys that are four stars that would be providing depth at major programs get hurt and we struggle. You even have guys like Adrian Martinez, Deontai Williams, Wandale Robinson, Mo Washington, Kade Warner, that get knicked up and miss games. We need to have a clean offseason on this front.
Football coaches make football players better, put them in situations they can succeed
All of this above is fine, but what I saw from certain players regressing really concerned me. I don't disagree you want recruits that can run your offense, but as a football coach, you should be able to make football players better. There are plenty of examples of people getting better from 2018 to 2019 like Alex Davis, Lamar Jackson, and a guy like Cam Jurgens. But there are so many that regressed it was absolutely an issue. From there, you need to put your players in positions to be successful. I can't tell you how many times an offense would sub 4 guys out and 4 guys in, and we'd make 1 sub on defense putting Domann in for Nelson or something like that. But we would leave Mo Barry and Will Honas out there to cover slot WRs and against Indiana and Purdue it burned us over and over. Why didn't we match personnel? That's an example of us having the right players, coaches just need to do better. What about the swing passes that get us in 2nd and 12? Matt MIllen even started calling it out against Iowa. Again, I don't disagree we can get better guys, but players like Matt Farniok and JD Spielman this staff would have been ecstatic to get in Orlando. We unfortunately have to look in the mirror a bit.
Just a few things that were thrown out this year that won't fly for 2020. This next section i'll go into our position groups for next year, starting with most concerning to least. I am not going to go into transfers and attrition. It's coming, but speculation isn't needed and i'll address them when it's public.
Linebackers
This is my biggest concern for next year. We struggled all year at ILB, yet our top 5 ILB class in the country couldn't even crack the lineup. Where was Jackson Hannah? Henrich was out a majority of the year, could we have used him? Luke Reimers was getting all sorts of press and even practicing with the 1's in certain packages, why couldn't we get him on the field? We also struggled at OLB. While Alex Davis improved, he wasn't where we needed our guy to be. Domann is our best defensive player, we have to find a way to keep him on the field. Tannor looked improved, and so did Nelson throughout the year. But with a better DL in front of them in 2019 than they will have in 2020, this is concerning. Couple that with the fact that LB recruiting only netted one high school player so far, it means we will have to rely on people that couldn't beat out Mo Barry and Alex Davis this year in the 2020 season. Dewitt went thru a rough year, but I do think guys like Domann, Davis, Nelson, and Tannor have improved. The regression of Barry concerns me for 2020. We have little coming in recruiting wise, will have a worse DL in front of our LBs, and we regressed at ILB from 2018 in 2019. Lots of obstacles.
Wide Receiver
I couldn't decide between this and linebacker, but what gave the edge to LBs is that WR is the easiest spot to see the field as a true freshman. The increase of physicality doesn't really play into it outside, so you can just be a burner and play. What's concerning is that all of the guys we were so excited about couldn't see the field to help at all. Darien Chase, Jamie Nance, Demaryon Houston, Jaron Woodyard, Mike Williams, Andre Hunt, Katerion Legrone, and Justin McGriff are all guys we needed in 2019, but for one reason or the other couldn't help us at all. The development is lacking and we need to get these guys up to speed. We return JD Spielman and Kade Warner, also throw Wandale in there. Hickman may be able to help us out wide next year as well. But we need to get some guys in that can help, and we have got to get some improvement from the guys that are here. I just don't know if i'm confident for us to get where we need to be, but I do think guys like Betts (and hopefully Manning) can be big bodied WRs coming in and play right away to give us immediate help.
Offensive Line
First, let me start by saying that I stated a lot of people regressed on this team, but I do think we showed a lot of improvement at OL. Cam Jurgens started looking very good towards the end of the year, and even though we were 5-7, i'm glad we took our lumps with him this year now. The reason I have this #3 on my list is because I think Frost has a predicament on his hands next year. We got better IMO, but do we go youth movement for 2020? We literally could keep the exact same lineup in tact. But I also know we have some guys starting that just aren't the ceiling that our staff wants. The issue is, a guy like Boe Wilson who routinely struggled was all-conference in 2018, can you really not play him? Do we start the same guys or do we go something like this: LT Jaimes, LG Farniok, C Jurgens, RG Piper, RT Benhart? Again, I think we have options here, i'm just a bit curious which way we go with this.
Defensive Line
I actually only really have one concern here, but let me first state that our DL this year is as good as we can hope for. It doesn't get better than Darrion Daniels at NG, and the Davis twins were four star recruits in the 250 mile radius that were all-conference for Nebraska in 2 sports with offers from Penn State. We lose our starting 3, which is why this is #4 for me. That said, I think Stille and Thomas at DE give us a great base, because they are both capable of starting this year, they just had studs in front of them. Damion Daniels and Ty Robinson will man the NG spot with the Polar Bear Nash Hutmacher coming in to challenge for time. We can obviously slide guys down, and Jahkeem Green, Casey Rogers, and Tate Wildeman can help give us some depth. NG is what I am really concerned with here, i'm sure we will be fine at DE again.
Quarterback
I am not concerned in the slightest that we have the talent to get us to 9 wins next year in this position group. But Frost has some things to sort out in the offseason heading into 2020. Adrian Martinez was a freshman all-american. Noah Vedral is a guy that I had to tell people he is very good after some were saying how bad he is from spring game performances, and we have him. And a guy by the name of Luke McCaffrey has looked good in his limited action this year. I have no doubt Frost has who he needs here (throw Logan Smothers in the mix). With that said, which way does he go? I can pretty much tell you Martinez will be the starter against Purdue next year, but will he have a legitimate competition? That i'm unsure of. How he handles this is going to be the biggest deal for him.
Runningback
Not too concerned here as I think Dedrick Mills really came into his own this year. Wandale Robinson can be a great change of pace for you, and then we have Rahmir Johnson that can help. With our 2020 class we should have a cupboard we are able to lean on as well. The 3 I mentioned will give our recruits and young guys time to sink their teeth into the offense and an opportunity to show they deserve PT without being thrust into a major role too soon.
Tightend
I am not worried about this at all. We return Stoll, Allen, and Rafdal, while gaining eligibility from possibly the best of the bunch in Vokolek. I am shocked we didn't use the TEs more this year (as I said we would do before the season, boy was I wrong) since our WRs were struggling so much. Hopefully Vokolek gives us the vertical threat down the seam we need.
Defensiveback
Not concerned at all here. When our staff showed up, WR and DB were the most talent depleted spots. Travis Fisher has taken guys that aren't his (Lamar Jackson and Marquel Dismuke) and made them great pieces for this defense. He also brought in guys like Cam Taylor-Britt, Deontai Williams, Braxton Clark, and others that have showed really well. Dicaprio Bootle, Cam Taylor-Britt, Marquel Dismuke, and Deontai Williams give us a great 4 with Braxton Clark able to help out in nickel. Fisher is recruiting well and developing even better. Pretty lucky here.
