Why I dislike Mike Riley

chainsaw said:
you musta been really young when TO was being blasted for his coaching ability for the first 20yrs he coached.  It took him 20yrs to figure out how to recruit defensive players and quit meddling into a portion of the football that he was naive about.    devaney was a smart dude and hired cord and let them do  there job!  Too bad it took TO so long to figure that out!
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Riley has been coaching for 30+ years, he's in his 60's, he doesn't have twenty years to figure it out.  

 
There are some similarities between Riley and Osborne but there are differences as well.  Riley is more like Osborne than Pelini and Pelini is more like Devaney but Devaney and Pelini were not like twins either.  Callahan was not much like any of the above.  I don't think I would compare Solich to any of the above either and he had some of the traits of all of the above.  He just wasn't a play caller.  He struggled mightily to sequence plays.   

I think the biggest problem with Riley is the sequencing of plays and while there may be a fairly large number of plays in the play book, they don't seem to use many in any given game.  I believe I read on here or elsewhere that Cavanaugh said in one recent game they actually ran the same running play 31 times during the game.  That sounds crazy to me and must represent about 75% of ALL the run plays used.  These are college football players which means they are college students and surely capable of learning and mastering more than a half a dozen different plays per game.  Any defense will figure out what you're trying to do if you keep doing it over and over.  Now, the fact that we ran the ball fairly well (I'd give us a C- anyway.  That's not bad if the defense, albeit not a very good one, still can't stop you from gaining 3 or 4 yards per play fairly often.  The defense got worn down somewhat as Ozigbo did his thing quite well as the game wore on.   Ozigbo (my preferred starter at this point) can wear a defense out and could easily handle 22 carries a game, spaced out as 8 in the first half, 5 in the third and 9 down the stretch

As for the team with fire and brimstone, I think he probably has his way and his teams have NOT given up, generally.  It seems they are slow getting started but in fairness to the players, it may be that the game plan is very 'conservative' and cautious and this leads to a less agressive and firey team if you will.   I think the team seems to be playing more and more confidently as the games pass - we needed that in game 1, not game 4.   The players should have been more ready for game one in my view.  Not sure why except again, as has been mentioned in other discussions, there is a phobia of injuries and therefore they are minimizing the physical contact and blocking and tackling full speed in practice.  I know we lack depth but we need to be tougher and the more physical, better conditioned, stronger team.  This requires a task master type of leader.    

 
I thought it was a little tacky when I first saw the title but Coach Riley and his assistants really need to know what people expect if they plan to stay around. 

Everyone assumes it’s a foregone conclusion that they’re  done after this season and I don’t think that’s the case if they make a good showing the rest of the season.

If the crowd favorites drop out of consideration after the season is determined to be a lost cause,the administration is once again confronted with a crap shoot by going after an unfamiliar coach.

I don’t think anyone is comfortable going down that road no matter how much they say they are.

 
timmytbro said:
you cannot eat it very often or you'll look like sh#t. but if you treat it like a treat, boy i tell you what, its like if ava adams scene from brazzers, but in your mouth.
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@Huskerzoo you missed this post in your ethnic cleansing of this thread of cheese fry posts.  But TBH it's kind of a creepy nonsequiter no matter which thread it's in.  

 
Husker_Bohunk said:
There is nothing wrong with running the same play until the defense figures out how to stop it.
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Agreed. If you have a power run play they can't stop I consider it a good thing to keep running that play down their throats until they show they know how to defend it. It's demoralizing to a defense when they know what's coming and still get beat on the play. 

 
I mean, the reason we are so well known for the option is TO ran the s#!t out of it. Sure there are slight variations of the play, but we had a pretty common component, especially with Tommie Frazier.

 
84HuskerLaw said:
 I don't think I would compare Solich to any of the above either and he had some of the traits of all of the above.  He just wasn't a play caller.  He struggled mightily to sequence plays.  
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Jumped straight from position coach to head coach. Like I was saying in the Frost thread, I'd prefer someone with recent experience as a coordinator at a top-tier program.

But yeah, there were times when it seemed like Solich had just plain given up with his playcalling.

 
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