Herbie’s Hangout Bill Busch 8 to 9 wins

[Carm]

We definitely recruit at the highest level.

I can get on board with the idea that it shouldn’t take long to get to a point where guys that play here are getting drafted.

I think it goes beyond development. I think the recruiting rankings of the classes often overstated their positive impact on the team. For one, a number of the four stars we recruited were lightly recruited four stars, or were not guys who would stick around. We also starved some critical positions. The biggest example was OL - we had very few OL recruits under Frost's watch (and some of the ones we took were last second offers), which is why we are where we are today.

The recruiting seems to bed much better organized now.

 

[ShortSideOption]

The idea we keep calling ourselves the most talented team in the West yet continue to watch our west foes produce more high end NFL talent is ridiculous.

We recruit better than any team in the west, fact. We are not the most talented team in our division, also fact.

I think this is another good point. We continually out-recruited B1G West teams according to every recruiting outlet, but i'm not entirely sure I watched us on any Saturday thinking we had the best players on the field. So did we misevaluate or did we not develop? I have a hard time thinking evaluations were off, shit Wisconsin gave an offer to Benhart and Hutmacher and those guys have done nothing for us despite the Badgers usually being pretty good at knowing what linemen to offer. It's not like Adrian Martinez was a bad recruiting get.

I think the last 5 years our staff had the wrong idea of how to make recruits good football players and it's going to take longer than 9 months for Rhule to correct that.

 

[ShortSideOption]

Oh hell yeah, 8-4 would be amazing in Rhule's first year.

That wasn't in any way what I was talking about, but 8-4 in year 1 of Rhule would be very impressive, absolutely. No arguments there.

I'm right there with you... because we should always get better players than Minnesota, Northwestern, Illinois, Purdue, Cockeye and even Wisconsin. Problem has been they were getting the coaching advantage on us. Hoping Rhule rights the ship there. Curious what things look like once USC and UCLA join though. We squandered good chances to play for titles. Hell, Northwestern played for the B1G title twice over the past 4 or 5 years. The fact we haven't in over a decade is crazy to think about.

 

[Carm]

I think this is another good point. We continually out-recruited B1G West teams according to every recruiting outlet, but i'm not entirely sure I watched us on any Saturday thinking we had the best players on the field. So did we misevaluate or did we not develop? I have a hard time thinking evaluations were off, shit Wisconsin gave an offer to Benhart and Hutmacher and those guys have done nothing for us despite the Badgers usually being pretty good at knowing what linemen to offer. It's not like Adrian Martinez was a bad recruiting get.

I think the last 5 years our staff had the wrong idea of how to make recruits good football players and it's going to take longer than 9 months for Rhule to correct that.

The real reason on the OL - I'll say it again - was too few recruits. You take a Benhart knowing that 30-40% of the Benharts you take will be duds. We didn't take enough so that we could afford the duds. Wisky doesn't hit on every guy. They take enough guys that fit their risk profile so that they end up with a good line when the dust settles.

 

[ShortSideOption]

I think it goes beyond development. I think the recruiting rankings of the classes often overstated their positive impact on the team. For one, a number of the four stars we recruited were lightly recruited four stars, or were not guys who would stick around. We also starved some critical positions. The biggest example was OL - we had very few OL recruits under Frost's watch (and some of the ones we took were last second offers), which is why we are where we are today.

The recruiting seems to bed much better organized now.

See, I would disagree a little there. While i'm not going to get into "committable" or not for an offer, Wisconsin wanted Benhart bad. They wanted Hutmacher bad. Cockeye wanted Piper. I think with the OL thing it comes back to that 2019 class, and I wrote about it in my blog a couple years ago... I said I can tell you exactly how the Frost tenure will go based on that 2019 OL class because they thought they had the keys to development. Went out and got Bland, Piper, Lynn, Andersen, Fritzsche, Banks, and Benhart. Piper was an in-state guy so you're taking him with his Cockeye offer, Benhart you take all day, but the rest of those guys did absolutely nothing for us.

Going to the DL.... Frost inherited the Davis twins that they couldn't do anything with despite them both being NFL draft picks.

We had some awful coaching. We couldn't even keep Wan'Dale Robinson here.

I agree the recruiting seems to be better organized now. Roster management can deter success just as much as getting good or bad players in I suppose.

 

[HerbRedman]

The real reason on the OL - I'll say it again - was too few recruits. You take a Benhart knowing that 30-40% of the Benharts you take will be duds. We didn't take enough so that we could afford the duds. Wisky doesn't hit on every guy. They take enough guys that fit their risk profile so that they end up with a good line when the dust settles.

Also, one byproduct of this poor recruiting is you (ie the fans) then pivot to blaming the assistant coaches. Not a regular blame - a maniacal, I'm-gonna-stab-you-in-your-sleep level blame.

So, you under-recruit or poorly recruit a position group (step 1)... then you have less good, developed players in said position group (step 2) ... then you blame the position coach for poor on-field results from said position group (step 3).

It's not hard to see how this entire assembly line process has been fucked. Not to mention, this process alters kids' careers irrevocably. You under recruit so then you're stuck with true freshman Teddy Prochazka starting vs the best defensive end in CFB. Teddy tears up his knee. So right there his development is altered. Then you need him to come back year 2 (since you're still underfilled in that position group) and he comes out and gets another season ending injury. So his entire path has been altered because of this phenomenon and he'll likey never be the same. At Wisconsin he would have sat on the shelves for 2 seasons minimum letting his body develop into his frame.

 

[Carm]

@Stan Raymond posted an opening analysis of just how few of the guys in those Frost recruiting classes actually stayed at Nebraska. I wish I had it - perhaps he can post it here. That's either an evaluation issue or a culture issue.

I have a hard time believing that coaching up players was something our Riley and Frosts staffs were unusually bad at compared to other schools. It seems almost impossible, statistically, to me that they could almost all be poor at that. That is the easiest AC trait to acquire in the market. I could see that perhaps S&C was misguided and that could be a cause. I really come back, though, to talent evaluation and recruiting efforts. The recruiting effort was lacking, certainly under Frost. That is not the easiest trait to acquire.

 

[Carm]

Went out and got Bland, Piper, Lynn, Andersen, Fritzsche, Banks, and Benhart. Piper was an in-state guy so you're taking him with his Cockeye offer, Benhart you take all day, but the rest of those guys did absolutely nothing for us.

those 5 guys who did nothing were 5 of the 12 OL recruits we took in a 4 year period. That was my original point. Austin is probably okay at coaching but the guy's recruiting sent us to football hell.

 

[Carm]

Those OL recruiting misses also were likely an indirect cause of other attrition, e.g., you mentioned Wandale. He may well have finished at Nebraska if we had had a competitive line.

 

[Carm]

this is from a very interesting article on the validity of OL recruiting ranking evaluations in the recent past, written by Charles Power, who runs evaluations for On.3 (Benhart is a 2019 guy)

​

Recruiting rankings have historically been very up-and-down when it comes to offensive linemen and the NFL Draft. For every Laremy Tunsil, there are two or three former five-stars who were Day 3 picks or even worse, completely undrafted.

22 offensive linemen were rated as five-stars from 2014 to 2018 according to the On3 Industry Ranking, which factors in the rankings of all primary recruiting media services. Just four of those prospects (Alex Leatherwood, Isaiah Wilson, Jedrick Wills and Jonah Williams) were first-rounders.

First, there are some position-specific dynamics at play worth considering. Offensive line is a developmental position, both physically and technically. Rarely do future first-round picks at the position have ready-made size, particularly as high school underclassmen. They tend to be big-framed athletes who gradually and naturally add strength and mass late in their high school career and early in college.

This developmental arc does not naturally dovetail with early evaluations as high school prospects. Many offensive line prospects who rack up early offers as high school underclassmen are simply bigger than their peers. This is a stage where sheer mass matters the least and when developing athleticism and movement skills matters the most. Study of the position also shows us that filling out as a high school underclassman often limits athletic upside.

Though true freshmen offensive linemen rarely start at the Power 5 level, many college offensive line coaches and media evaluators are reticent to project and tend to be attracted to heavier, more physically-developed prospects even if that means sacrificing movement skills and long-term upside. We saw this in the 2019 cycle, with some very big, unathletic linemen ranked high by the industry early on due to overpowering smaller defensive linemen in camp settings, while showing very little projectable and translatable skills on Friday nights.

 

[Baron Winnebago]

I got bored and looked at which 4 stars Frost tried to land as measured by official visits and the gist of that analysis was that almost everyone Frost targeted did fuck all in college to date (among those who had any runway, e.g. not the 2022 croots).

You lose 100/100 if you don't bring in guys who have something you can even coach up

 

[Carm]

My personal theory is that Frost simply did not like building relationships because he was an introvert and also not willing to commit the time. He did want a decent recruiting ranking, as that prevented the firestorm poor classes would bring.

Therefore, he gravitated to the four stars and high three stars who didn't require relationships from him to be attracted to a B1G school.

These, of course, were the ones who would generally see Nebraska as clearly their best offer.

 

[Stan Raymond]

@Stan Raymond posted an opening analysis of just how few of the guys in those Frost recruiting classes actually stayed at Nebraska. I wish I had it - perhaps he can post it here. That's either an evaluation issue or a culture issue.

I have a hard time believing that coaching up players was something our Riley and Frosts staffs were unusually bad at compared to other schools. It seems almost impossible, statistically, to me that they could almost all be poor at that. That is the easiest AC trait to acquire in the market. I could see that perhaps S&C was misguided and that could be a cause. I really come back, though, to talent evaluation and recruiting efforts. The recruiting effort was lacking, certainly under Frost. That is not the easiest trait to acquire.

It's kinda long I'll summarize, HS recruits only.

2018 class:
19 recruits
2 Didn't get here
13 transferred
2 left early to the NFL
1 retired
1 completed eligibility here

2019 class
25 recruits
12 transferred
1 left early to the NFL
3 retired
1 is completing eligibility here
8 will have a year of eligibility left

2020 class
21 recruits
13 transferred
1 medically retired
7 have eligibility left

2021 class
20 recruits
7 transferred
1 retired
12 have eligibility left

2022 class
15 recruits
7 transferred
8 have eligibility left

2018-2022 JuCos
15 recruits
7 transferred
1 early to the NFL
5 completed or are completing eligibility here
2 have eligibility left

Totals
115 recruits
2 didn't get here
59 transferred
4 left early for the NFL
6 retired
7 completed eligibility here
37 have eligibility left

 

[11husker23]

Getting diabetes from all the sugar ingested.

 

[HerbRedman]

I got bored and looked at which 4 stars Frost tried to land as measured by official visits and the gist of that analysis was that almost everyone Frost targeted did fuck all in college to date (among those who had any runway, e.g. not the 2022 croots).

You lose 100/100 if you don't bring in guys who have something you can even coach up

IIRC the most successful 4* or 5* recruit Frost was around was Wandale. And ironically enough Wandale is the one Frost wanted to bail on (Frost got pissy when WR appeared to take longer in his process). The only reason we got Wandale IIRC is because Held or Walters begged Frost to not give up on him.

Part of successful ELITE LEVEL recruiting is you have to have an insane amount of patience (which was not the Big Dipper's strong suit).

 

[Milo-of-Croton]

You can sign all the 4 and 5 stars you want...development is still critical to success. Players do not improve through osmosis. True in high school, true in college.

 

[NSECTA4]

I can’t see us losing more than 3 games in a season ever again

I remember basically saying the same thing to my dad when Bo was hired. I just need to keep my fucking muffin muncher shut.

 

[BIG TONE SOPRANO]

Met him one night years back with myself and a guy that has way more money than any of you. Bill was smoked