MY biggest pet peeve of the staff to date. I would have all the young guys out there playing and roll with them. Get the fastest and most athletic kids on the field and live with it.
I haven't done extensive roster review of who has played but I think we are pretty young or at least inexperienced across the board. Maybe this afternoon I can look at that.
The other side of the coin is expectations. There is a fine line between just playing young players and giving the impression that you have given up on the season. Riley isn't in a position to "fail with youth", he should have year one, but I believe Riley inherited job that wasn't exactly what he was told it was, but that is another topic entirely. With that said...
Since the scholarship numbers dropped to 85, and especially now with the onset of guaranteed 4 year scholarships, I have been an opponent of redshirting players. It was a valuable tool when you had 25 OL, half of who were walk ons. That isn't the case anymore. I try to break it down into groups and then do a risk/ reward sort of evaluation.
Group 1 is the stud recruits. These guys come to play and play immediately. Lamar Jackson, Bookie, Parsons, are examples. If they are as good as advertised, they won't be here 5 years anyway, so don't waste the time redshirting.
Group 2 is your average recruit. The average recruit is what he is. And there are more of them then any other recruit. Some develop some don't. The guys that develop will play and the guys that don't won't. The guys that don't will be replaced annually by other average recruits, where again some will work out and some wont. Again what is the reward for keeping a guy for 5 years when similarly talented players come into your program every year.
Group 3 are your reaches. You hope that you don't have many or any of these but the reality is you will. Again some will play but the majority won't why do you want a non contributor on your roster for 5 years instead of 4.
To me it is always a numbers game. Nebraska is a place where you should be able to recruit to. So getting 25 players a year, shouldn't be an issue. But when you redshirt large portions of classes, you don't bring in 25 per year, its more like 20. Over a 5 year period, without redshirting, you will bring in 125 players, where with redshirting that number is closer to 100. That is 25 more chances to get the stud, or the average recruit that will produce.
I do agree with your thoughts that the most athletic and talented players should be playing. I just don't believe we have a staff, especially offensively, that thinks that way. They seem to value experience more.
I know Jay Foreman or maybe it was Eric Warfield, said that he would rather play a lesser athletic player that knew where to be than an athletic player that didn't. So there is another side to it. Again, like you, I believe over time, the more athletic player will make more plays with pure athleticism than the lesser athlete makes by simply being in the right spot.
