Must Listen - Rob Zatcheka
- Thread starter jflores
- Start date
Damn. Rob sounds like.....me. Exactly my sentiments right now. Get freaking comfortable.... and even FORCE the run game, DL.
Shatel actually had a common sense comment today, saying that in college football teams do NOT have to have balanced offenses to win consistently. Wisconsin and the Mike Leach led TTech teams come to mind as teams that are almost committed to being one dimensional offensively and yet achieve/d Top 15 status consistently. To be a playoff team, you probably need balance, but you have to start off by doing one thing really well.
One thing said I fully agree with is our O-Line really isn't that good. It hasn't been for years. AA made it look a lot better than it was. Even when TM played, his quickness helped make the O-Line look decent at times. If the team was going to focus more on running the ball, the back who is best at making plays out of nothing is needed. Currently I don't believe that is what the coaches are looking at. They are more interested in pass protection and catching out of the backfield.
There are a couple things he is off on some assessments. He mentioned a hick-up year for Urban Meyer are Florida was 9 or 10 wins. Half his years at Florida were 8 or 9 wins and the other half were 13 wins. Not a huge mistake, but still not factual.
He then talks about how great SEC is at attending games. The gameday atmosphere may be better at some of the stadiums in the SEC, but I don't know as I haven't attended games there. I won't argue anything about that.
What I will say is Rob tried to make the claim the SEC has bigger stadiums so they don't fill them up as much. He fails to understand Michigan and Penn St still have bigger stadiums than A&M, Alabama and LSU. Ohio St is now 2k seats lower than A&M since A&M just finished their expansion. So looking at the past 4 years of attendance really doesn't support what was said. Michigan blows everyone away with attendance averaging over 110,000 people per game. Next would come Ohio St followed by Alabama. Going back to the 90's for capacity, Nebraska was around 74k in the late 90's. LSU was around 80k, Alabama around 70k and A&M was at 58k. His argument that the SEC stadiums are just so much bigger so they can't have a sellout streak that lasts 50 years is bogus. Last year's numbers support the statement, but 2013 doesn't as LSU averaged 91,418 and A&M averaged 87,125 while Nebraska averaged 90,933.
There are a couple things he is off on some assessments. He mentioned a hick-up year for Urban Meyer are Florida was 9 or 10 wins. Half his years at Florida were 8 or 9 wins and the other half were 13 wins. Not a huge mistake, but still not factual.
He then talks about how great SEC is at attending games. The gameday atmosphere may be better at some of the stadiums in the SEC, but I don't know as I haven't attended games there. I won't argue anything about that.
What I will say is Rob tried to make the claim the SEC has bigger stadiums so they don't fill them up as much. He fails to understand Michigan and Penn St still have bigger stadiums than A&M, Alabama and LSU. Ohio St is now 2k seats lower than A&M since A&M just finished their expansion. So looking at the past 4 years of attendance really doesn't support what was said. Michigan blows everyone away with attendance averaging over 110,000 people per game. Next would come Ohio St followed by Alabama. Going back to the 90's for capacity, Nebraska was around 74k in the late 90's. LSU was around 80k, Alabama around 70k and A&M was at 58k. His argument that the SEC stadiums are just so much bigger so they can't have a sellout streak that lasts 50 years is bogus. Last year's numbers support the statement, but 2013 doesn't as LSU averaged 91,418 and A&M averaged 87,125 while Nebraska averaged 90,933.
Pretty accurate reflection of the status of this season and this team by a Nebraska alum. The one thing that hit home was the fact that there is such a FINE LINE between winning or losing these close games that you CANNOT AFFORD to make coaching mistakes and that is what they have done. Interesting to get Zatcheka's take on Langsdorf and Riley's "comfort zone" being a pass first offense and you can see how that has really hurt us in a few of the tight games when we just needed some smarter running plays that probably would have iced these games--namely Illinois and Wisconsin and to some extent BYU.
Maybe the coaching staff has one of those "ah hah" moments and the light goes off on how to call effective running plays (like actually setting up the fullback trap or jet sweep before you call it so the defense is not expecting it). I think if that happens this staff can have a lot more success right away because they are so close right now even with the injuries and bare cabinets.
Maybe the coaching staff has one of those "ah hah" moments and the light goes off on how to call effective running plays (like actually setting up the fullback trap or jet sweep before you call it so the defense is not expecting it). I think if that happens this staff can have a lot more success right away because they are so close right now even with the injuries and bare cabinets.
I think Rob was making a generalization about the size of the stadiums and game day atmosphere in the SEC as it relates to their fan base and the pressure the coaching staffs are under and compares that to the criticism of MR and company by Nebraska fans today.
Interesting to know Urban Meyer patterned his offense using an Osborne chassis---doesn't surprise me one bit. Smart man.
I wish Travis would have asked the good doctor if he thought we could we a National Championship
if we had a coach who swears by power running the damn ball. I think that is our best chance by far.
Some of the things that surprised me about what he had to say:
1. He opened with "there are only an extremely few and far between (read Saban and Meyer) uber elite coaches and they probably wouldn't view NU as a career job".
2. NU is therefore shopping in another tier down for coaches, a tier than contains "Bo Pelini, Bret Bielema, and Gary Anderson".
3. Talent is an issue. Specifically calling out the OL and Secondary, but noting the lack of depth everywhere.
4. He felt that the NU fan base was too jumpy after giving BC however many years, and now are already off the bandwagon 4 or 5 games in this year.
The stuff about running more and making some bad coaching decisions didn't surprise me at all.
He didn't come out and say it, but even though he wants DL to push the run more, I didn't get the vibe that he was going to take the tack that you can't win with a 50/50 split. He seemed much more revolved around the fact that if you are going to do such a thing, then its going to take time to build a team like that that is talent appropriate.
How many "cold-climate" teams have won consistently by being one-dimensional passing teams? I think it will be very difficult to ever win the Big Ten without a very good running game.
Plus, down in Texas, all the high schools run the Baylor-Texas Tech style spread passing offense, so all the players they recruit already have been running that offense for years. It's like how all the high schools in Nebraska used to run the option. In my opinion, it will be difficult to consistently recruit the level of talent here we need to run a dominant West Coast Offense.
I agree with all of this. Having said this, I don't think Riley wants to be a one dimensional passing team. I know Shatel was mentioning it, but I don't see it happening here. Number 1, Riley does seem to want more balance, and number 2, it won't work.
Similar threads
