The number one position you HAVE to hit on is QB. A very good QB can cover up a lot of deficiencies for you offense and take some "strain" off your defense. I'm not completely ready to dump on Adrian but man his turnovers have been a killer. My HOPE is that finally we have the pieces for our O line. Man Adrian has some physical tools but the between the ears thing has been a problem.
The WR situation is one reason Troy Walters had to go. IMO, we've got some dudes now at WR and we should be much better there. I like Scott at RB a lot and hopefully Stepp is a beast for us next fall. IMO, from RB to WR to O line, Frost I believe has filled some needs but damn we're going to be very young on the O line next fall. That makes me think that next fall could be tough again and has me pointing to 2022 for when things should finally come together for NU. Defense is going to have to win some games for us in 2021 I think.
Adrian has been excellent at times and mediocre-to-bad at a lot of other times, there's no way around it. They botched 2018 by announcing Adrian as the starter while Gebbia still had time to bail and he did. Adrian got hurt, NU lost games with awful backup play. We don't know if Gebbia would have been better but he couldn't have been much worse. Like we saw this year, Gebbia could well have won the starting job if he played well in Adrian's absence.
2019 they desperately wanted to keep Luke's redshirt. Adrian got hurt, NU lost games with awful backup play. Laughable in retrospect to keep Luke's RS but based on what we know now, they probably could see he wasn't remotely close to being ready to play QB at a P5 level. Adrian was a mess physically and psychologically.
2020, we saw what happened there.
The lesson should be: Recruit over kids, recruit over kids, recruit over kids. Easier said than done at a losing program, you need to be able to win and have some good QB play before you can be like, "My job is to constantly bring in guys who are trying to take yours."
Because here's the thing: IDGAF what you and this kid and his dad said to each other, if he's not playing he's leaving. That's how highly-rated QBs are now. They don't switch positions, they don't stick it out, they leave. So recruit. the f**k. over them.
If we had done that, we wouldn't be looking at a longshot of a 3* kid out of Kearney or whatever suddenly needing to grow up fast or we better find a portal QB.
Lots of hard lessons being passed out to this staff, I really hope they're learning from them.