Wow, filling up fast. I hope this staff is as good at developing as we think…
Barta is N
- Thread starter HuskerDrew
- Start date
I'm thinking the same thing. But you know what? After years and years of grabbing higher rated guys who are still available late in the process and then later seeing those guys not accomplish a thing. I think this is a positive step for us in recruiting. I don't care how many stars these guys have. Hopefully we're getting in on guys who have the head and the heart and the work ethic to go along with their untapped potential. If we're getting the right type of kid who happens to have a lot of athletic ability, this thing is finally going to get turned around.
I guess we've tried just about every way of recruiting. May as well give this a shot, although I would hope we start winning and start recruiting against similar schools at some point.
Rhule seems to have a plan. Get fast, local kids that really want to be huskers rather than coercing guys from afar that are entitled and half ass it all time. I trust his plan. It’s worked everywhere else. I think a lot of Baylors more recent success was due to the guys Rhule identified and brought in.
With all these types of commits, NIL money should be freed up to very minimal so Trev can get that outside cash flows into university assets vs NIL/player.
Rhule really seems to have an athletic type he likes. Track speed seems to be very important along with a certain body type for the position.
NIL is a separate entity from the university. Trev has nothing to do with NIL. But you'd be foolish to think that NIL money shouldn't be used, thats a battle NU needs to be a leader in if we are to compete with osu, mi, or psu for conference titles.
Have you herd the saying “you’re looking through the wrong end of a telescope?”
The donor/spender doesn’t see donating NIL vs University as independent to the program. All they see is their budget. Let’s not be so naive. it’s all relative to the person writing the check. NIL is a competitor to university assets
Seriously thought for a second this was a troll thread about Gary Barta joining the athletic department.
Well let’s hope his S&C guy has a plan to beef them up too. We soon realized the B1G ain’t the Big 12. Need some muscle in the B1G and can’t go 11-3 in this league without beating a top 25 team.
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I like what he did when offering Donovan Jones, pretty funny!
“They offered me around noon today,” Jones told HuskerOnline on Saturday. “I talked to (Evan Cooper) first, and we just chopped it up and then handed the phone to Coach Rhule.
“Me and him were talking. It was a funny story. I was coming back from a workout, and I was in an Iowa State t-shirt. He told me to call him back when I get a Husker t-shirt on. So I threw a shirt on, called him back, and he offered me right after that.”
Some of these recruits are underwhelming on paper. Few offers, low stars etc...
But are we really expecting Rhule to compete against the elite programs right now for the elite talent? We need to get a clue where we fit in the current world of college football. We have sucked for a long, long time and none of these kids give a fink for what we used to be like in 1995.
Rhule was hired for exactly what he is doing now. Namely, identifying under the radar talent and then developing it. What that means is that our rebuild to being a "good" team might be sooner rather than later, but any hope of us returning to "elite" status is going to take a while. Rhule might be a great coach, but he is not a magician. You only become an elite team with elite talent and that will take a while to lure to Lincoln. Baby steps Dr. Marvin, baby steps.
His strategy here seems sound. Recruit local kids in the old Big 12 footprint, especially from Texas. Kids who actually want to be at Nebraska and who are going to stick around. Not the four star busts out of Florida and California who end up leaving after one year. And Rhule seems to be focusing on speed. Speed baby. Speed kills. Speed is the ticket back to being a really good team. Because speed can make up for a lot of other mistakes.
Some might say, "What is the rush? Why are we taking so many low rated guys so early in the process?" Because our older model of having three guys in our recruiting class well into the end of summer because we are waiting on a bunch of 4 star kids to say "no" to us in September and October, left us desperate and scrambling at the end. I am not saying the Rhule approach is ideal, but it does seem better suited to our actual situation right now. You send out your coaches to scout talent, and you hold camps in Lincoln to do the same. And you ignore the stars and the other offers and you just look at a kid's measurables. And if you like what you see, you offer and don't sit around waiting for that hot shot from Miami to make up his mind.
But are we really expecting Rhule to compete against the elite programs right now for the elite talent? We need to get a clue where we fit in the current world of college football. We have sucked for a long, long time and none of these kids give a fink for what we used to be like in 1995.
Rhule was hired for exactly what he is doing now. Namely, identifying under the radar talent and then developing it. What that means is that our rebuild to being a "good" team might be sooner rather than later, but any hope of us returning to "elite" status is going to take a while. Rhule might be a great coach, but he is not a magician. You only become an elite team with elite talent and that will take a while to lure to Lincoln. Baby steps Dr. Marvin, baby steps.
His strategy here seems sound. Recruit local kids in the old Big 12 footprint, especially from Texas. Kids who actually want to be at Nebraska and who are going to stick around. Not the four star busts out of Florida and California who end up leaving after one year. And Rhule seems to be focusing on speed. Speed baby. Speed kills. Speed is the ticket back to being a really good team. Because speed can make up for a lot of other mistakes.
Some might say, "What is the rush? Why are we taking so many low rated guys so early in the process?" Because our older model of having three guys in our recruiting class well into the end of summer because we are waiting on a bunch of 4 star kids to say "no" to us in September and October, left us desperate and scrambling at the end. I am not saying the Rhule approach is ideal, but it does seem better suited to our actual situation right now. You send out your coaches to scout talent, and you hold camps in Lincoln to do the same. And you ignore the stars and the other offers and you just look at a kid's measurables. And if you like what you see, you offer and don't sit around waiting for that hot shot from Miami to make up his mind.
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Exactly, the man can coach and motivate period. Has a track record of that and should be zero criticism of anything he does until at least year 3. His process at Baylor with a roster of 3 stars and hell won what 10-11 games at temple with a roster of 1-3 star guys. Like you said common theme speed and I’d imagine the character in most these guys are also vetted. Tired of the Tyson Lindsey’s no heart Cali guys and the easily homesick FL boys. Get 80% of our roster from Midwest/Texas and cherry pick the rest of the roster.
I do like that we are back to the old "Man, I love that he is getting these unranked and low ranked players" bit.
We did this with Bo and we loved it...until we found out he did not want to give the fans HJ's every single day...then we only posted about his lazy recruiting and how he hated recruiting.
We did this with Bo and we loved it...until we found out he did not want to give the fans HJ's every single day...then we only posted about his lazy recruiting and how he hated recruiting.
Brian Kelly took over a 6-7 LSU team in November 2021 and his 2022 recruiting class was Rivals ranked #15 with two 5* and eight 4*. Lincoln Riley took over a 4-8 USC team and while his 2022 class was Rivals #56 because they signed only 11 players, two of them were 5* and three 4*. Just sayin....
I basically agree with your take, but I'm a little underwhelmed with where our recruiting is at with all the contacts in college football this staff has, the energy they are putting forth, and many of the coaches being fresh from pro football. But we'll see.
I get it but even "bad" recrruiting at NU is basically a 20-25 ranked class...
That is hopefully the floor because right now it looks like a MAC ranked class.
Those teams at the end of the TO era contained players who were highly regarded as recruits, but also kids who were no great shakes coming out of HS. In 1995, starters Makovicka, Holbein, and Tomich were walkons, and plenty of guys who changed psns. Gliman was a QB coverted to TE and Minter from RB to Rover. Rhule and his crew have evaluated a lot of HS prospects over the years. They know the type of players they want.
I'd take most MAC teams vs what we've put on the field the last 7 years....
Not the same at all.
Bo and his staff did NOT have the ability to develop like Rhule’s staffs. Not even close.
Rankings of individual players can and will change over the next 6-7 months. If that even matters.
Barta’s measurables fit a 4 star profile. I think they’re confident they can develop guys who first fit the athletic profile they want. There are a ton of kids who nobody has heard of who blow up their senior year of high school and who had zero D1 offers prior to their senior year.
Personally I hope they save some spots for kids who want N once they see the product on the field.
I think they could develop but I don’t think they recruited enough speed.
I agree with the speed part. They could develop certain positions, not like Rhule’s staff, and definitely not Oline.
Ehhh, Bo put a lot of dudes in the NFL
You can never have too much speed on a football team, but, I think speed with "instincts" is really important on the defensive side of the ball. NU has had a lot kids with speed on defense, yet they have no "instincts" so they get lost in the shuffle, or if they do play, they make little impact.
When you get 2-3 kids on defense with instincts like LaVonte David, Terrell Farley, Mike Brown and others, you can cause havoc for any offensive team. We've had groups of linebackers who are total react and no football sense they just tend to exist as a position player on a team.
It seems with White's concept of causing chaos on defense is tailor-made for kids that can really run, tackle, and have an upper level instinct for the game. In watching some of the incoming kids film, some of them have really good football instincts, the question is can they transfer that to a bigger, faster game?
I am really interested in seeing if Fields can make that transition, because that cat has tremendous instincts, if he's turned loose. Not only does he have really good size and speed, but he seems like an attacking type defender.
I also think Rhule has made public comment that he thinks the kid "is" or "will be" an elite player. I doubt he would make that statement if he didn't think it was true. Almost makes me think this kid is going to be given a real shot early at playing part of the time.
I guess when Scott Frost uses high praise on a player, a couple met that appraisal, but most did not. When Rhule makes a comment like that, he uses that as a bit of a selling point for potential future players that are overlooked.
Just my opinion.
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