Sipple puts the talent argument to bed
- Thread starter GBRedneck
- Start date
Spooky Tooth
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JJ Husker
Donor
He's said basically the same thing for 2 or 3 years now. He's been wrong everytime. IMO he's not a good analyst. Whiffs on most all of his observations and predictions.
Exactly. All of this complaining about talent is interesting to me, because it almost universally lacks context.
For example, Shanle (who should know better) tweets some drivel about Purdue being as or more talented than NU. Of course what the original author and Shanle fail to mention is that according to the same (flawed) methodology, Michigan St and Nebraska are equally talented (or NU is even slightly more talented).
Same goes for a lot of the claims that Bo just lived off of Callahan's recruits. It fails to acknowledge that NU actually didn't have, relative to historic trends, that many kids draft, especially among top draft picks, during Bo's first 4 years (and that 33% of those top 3 picks were Bo signees).
Lots of misinformation being used to prop up rationalizations.
And that's dangerous, because if we don't acknowledge and understand the unique circumstances around NU football, we aren't going to overcome them (or properly take advantage of them).
that ignores that NU is
Thanks_Tom RR
New member
Damn! Great story. This fits the state of the Husker team perfectly. Bo was a good coach (maybe not elite coach) and the team's success was built from his fire. Take that external source away without replacing it, and the team is underperforming with Riley. Riley, as an obvious internal competitor, is not going to be the fire, so he needs to find a way to convey to this team that they need to self-police and hold their peer's accountable. Let them know their success with demand on them.
The other major aspect of this issue, is that the coaches have designed a scheme that does not allow their talent to succeed. There appeared to be much more buy in at the beginning of the season, but as the results on the field did not match the effort level being put forth, you could see some guys fade. More followed as the season has worn on.
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Playing football well, is a skill, not a "talent". Skills can be taught, or in this case, coached.
When everybody yaks about "talent" they are trying to tell me that 18 year old can be taught to field strip and reassemble an M-16 blindfolded, design and maintain a website, pilot a plane, run a dairy farm, frame and finish a house, and rebuild a '69 Hemi Cuda because those are skills, but looking back for the ball or maintaining leverage on a block is a gift from God, like prophecy or working miracles.
So my take is that the walk-ons are more teachable and have mastered college level football skills better than those recruited. It doesn't mean that Nebraska has less proficient players, it means that they came from a different source.
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Harriedhusker
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GBRedneck
Banned
Blackshirt_Revival
New member
The talent or lack thereof on this team is one thing, but I thought one of the big points of praise for Riley was his ability to maximize talent and get the most of the teams he coached? Riley himself even made comments that this was one of the more talented teams he had coached, and that the team was particularly deep in talent on both the offensive and defensive lines.
Do these comments now amount to platitudes? The comments about working in their system and tailoring it to the talent we had on the team, do those amount to platitudes as well?
Bottom line is Riley took over a program that won 9 games the year before. Nobody in the local or national media, nobody on this site or any message board I'm aware of, and no Husker fan I know in real life predicted this team to be this poor right now. So what is the issue? Could it be coaching?
Maybe the issue is this staff is not at all a fit for Nebraska or right for the job. Maybe if talent matching such a different scheme is such an issue, we should have brought in a coach who ran a scheme that did match the talent we had on hand, or was legitimately interested and able to tailor schemes to fit that talent, and/or didn't try forcing a square peg in a round hole so much.
There is no evidence to suggest Riley can or will have success here, and we have decades of evidence to utilize for this conclusion (beyond that, the man is 62 years old). While we don't have a lot of examples (of a coach taking over a solid winning team after a firing or non-retirement related resignation), there are literally no examples to my knowledge of a coach doing substantially worse than his predecessor in his first year and then going on to have a successful tenure at that school.
If you were to objectively look at the coaching hires made this past offseason, which would you had said was the biggest head-scratcher and had the highest probability of failure? If that seems too daunting or difficult a question to answer at this point, simply look objectively at the coaching carousel between us, Oregon State, Wisconsin, and Pitt and tell me who do you think pulled the shortest straw?
When I see teams like Navy, Air Force, Memphis, Temple, Kansas State, and Pitt who I don't feel are more talented than us, but I think would beat us, that whole lack of talent thing kind of goes right out the window.
I think Nebraska fans have a right to be concerned and even outraged. I really think we are looking at a very small window of time to get this train back on track before it goes completely off the rails. We haven't won a conference championship since 1999. There are literally 2 generations of fans who have little or no memory of Nebraska ever being a very good team. Think what we may now, but I personally believe Nebraska is much closer to Minnesota, circa 1978 than it is to Alabama, circa 2008.
Do these comments now amount to platitudes? The comments about working in their system and tailoring it to the talent we had on the team, do those amount to platitudes as well?
Bottom line is Riley took over a program that won 9 games the year before. Nobody in the local or national media, nobody on this site or any message board I'm aware of, and no Husker fan I know in real life predicted this team to be this poor right now. So what is the issue? Could it be coaching?
Maybe the issue is this staff is not at all a fit for Nebraska or right for the job. Maybe if talent matching such a different scheme is such an issue, we should have brought in a coach who ran a scheme that did match the talent we had on hand, or was legitimately interested and able to tailor schemes to fit that talent, and/or didn't try forcing a square peg in a round hole so much.
There is no evidence to suggest Riley can or will have success here, and we have decades of evidence to utilize for this conclusion (beyond that, the man is 62 years old). While we don't have a lot of examples (of a coach taking over a solid winning team after a firing or non-retirement related resignation), there are literally no examples to my knowledge of a coach doing substantially worse than his predecessor in his first year and then going on to have a successful tenure at that school.
If you were to objectively look at the coaching hires made this past offseason, which would you had said was the biggest head-scratcher and had the highest probability of failure? If that seems too daunting or difficult a question to answer at this point, simply look objectively at the coaching carousel between us, Oregon State, Wisconsin, and Pitt and tell me who do you think pulled the shortest straw?
When I see teams like Navy, Air Force, Memphis, Temple, Kansas State, and Pitt who I don't feel are more talented than us, but I think would beat us, that whole lack of talent thing kind of goes right out the window.
I think Nebraska fans have a right to be concerned and even outraged. I really think we are looking at a very small window of time to get this train back on track before it goes completely off the rails. We haven't won a conference championship since 1999. There are literally 2 generations of fans who have little or no memory of Nebraska ever being a very good team. Think what we may now, but I personally believe Nebraska is much closer to Minnesota, circa 1978 than it is to Alabama, circa 2008.
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Harriedhusker
New member
If this assessment is true, it does not speak well for our current coachs.
I know we have had an inordinate amount of injuries.
I do not know if it is lack of talent, poor player development, injuries, or just sub par coaching but I do know this program is currently in shambles.
You have to go back to the Jennings era to match this disaster.
I know we have had an inordinate amount of injuries.
I do not know if it is lack of talent, poor player development, injuries, or just sub par coaching but I do know this program is currently in shambles.
You have to go back to the Jennings era to match this disaster.
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GBRedneck
Banned
Another board has a season record prediction contest. They've been doing it for about 15 years. This year they had about 140 entries. 2 guys picked 7-5. 1 guy as a half-hearted jab picked 6-6. He was declared the winner last week as no matter how many more losses there are, he will be the closest. It's the first time in the history of the contest that it didn't go down to the last week and require the use of tiebreakers to determine the winner.