A poster (ShortSideOption) on another board puts out great write-ups once in a while. He has one from today's practice. All credit to the post goes to him. I'm just posting it here because I think it'll be of interest to most Husker fans.
Scrimmage observations and thoughts
-I'll start with the first thing that I know from getting to speak to some people today and that's the fact this staff is really relying on the fans for a great spring game attendance turnout. If there is anyway anyone can convince one or two more people to show up, it would go a long ways. They are aware that attendance could dip in the second year of a 'regime' and want to do anything possible to not make that happen with how they have pumped this up to recruits coming in. They've worked hard to get kids here from a long ways away.
-The first thing anyone will notice if the get to see this team in person is just how much our kids bodies are changing. AJ Natter and Peyton Newell look like completely different guys than spring of last year. When I looked at them last year I didn't see them playing, this year they pass the eye test and quite honestly it's showing on the field for them. We have some specimens on the DL with Akinmoladun, A. Davis, Stoltenber, good to see us getting to that again. A Guy like Darlington is freaking shredded now. Marcus Newby seems to have lost some of his lower body which he needed in my opinion. We just look better out there. Does that translate to the field? Hopefully.
-The starting OL was Gates, Foster, Utter, Farmer, and Knevel (left to right). Second string was Gaylord, Barnett, Thurston, Whitaker, and Hahn (left to right again). Starting DL was Dzuris, Maurice, Davis, and Dzuris. Behind them were A. Davis, Natter, 96Davis, and Newell.
- DJ Foster looked like the best OL again to me today and that's happened every practice i've been to the last few years so at this point I don't know what to think. That being said he's entrenched at LG now so we will at least get to see him start next year.
- One on one's were owned by he OL. Gates took care of Freedom on the couple attempts. Foster was physically way too dominant for whoever he went against. Utter stone-walled a couple people. Farmer rolled. And Knevel took care of Dzuris pretty well. I will say that that is probably what should have happened with McMullen, Williams, Neal, Stoltenberg, and King all sitting out for the DL. Honestly the one on ones were owned by offense and it wasn't even close.
- To put people at ease though, once the scrimmage started the defensive line had a little bit more success, particularly Freedom and Newell.
- They are doing the flip snap now to help with not getting high snaps anymore to mess with timing. Like that they are trying new things on this to remedy it.
- I always caution people to get too worked up over one practice or scrimmage, because that's exactly what it is. In the scrimmage our 1s were running at ease against our defense, but again I would expect that with some of our DL out. But then we would throw the ball and four or five times I looked at who I was with right when the ball was thrown and say "what are we doing?" Armstrong and Fyfe made some plays that were absolutely terrible decisions, not even bad balls, just bad decisions. It's where I hope in games we would continue running or I would freaking lose it, and since it's practice we are trying to work on getting better because we can't be one dimensional. But i've seen the same thing for four years with TA every practice i've been to, so I don't have a ton of confidence that will be changing in the 2016 season.
- To be fair to TA and Fyfe, Westerkamp and Morgan didn't scrimmage, but I don't think we even got the ball to Cethan Carter to counter us not having 2 of our top 3 WRs so i'm kind of confused there.
- Speaking of Westerkamp, flew to Germany, had his surgery, then flew back. They borderline said he could play in the scrimmage. The fact that surgery isn't cleared by the FDA or whoever really is an interesting talk point.
- Speaking of TEs we didn't get much work to Carter at all today. I still don't understand why we don't just get him as an main part of the offense? He is a beast and he doesn't have to have the ball in his hands to be that way. We need to start practicing plays designed to him. Foster though did look good. Hoppes had some pretty interesting drops today. Was excited to see him because he's been getting some run.
- Bush and O'Brien for sure looked better than TA and Fyfe today. On one hand, they are playing against a secondary that isn't very good. But on the other, it was because of good decision making to check down the ball and not forcing the ball into double coverage like I saw our 1 and 2 guy do 10 times today. It was unreal how many times I saw that. I even watched Bush read what the defense was going to do before the play based on the corner backing off and float a ball over the LB to a TE that would have been a TD if not for the TE dropping the ball. POB looks like a true QB in the pocket. Armstrongs reverse spin out of the pocket when it's slightly collapsing is countered by him stepping up in the pocket and keeping his eyes downfield. He had a really good scrimmage today. And so did Bush.
- Wilbon just didn't get it going today, and Ozigbo looked like the man. Newby though did break thru his inability in my mind to make people miss and run hard, he was a tough tackle today. That being said, I will give Wilbon that his second string OL was not as good as the second string DL and LBs he was going against. While the first string OL was having their way with the first string DL.
- Donovan McDonald was really impressive today, after one viewing of him he's not on a Stanley Morgan level of "watch for him". But he was making plays. He got in a little trouble from the defense when he came back and cracked a defender and Kalu came off the sidelines to express his displeasure. I think it was a case for a kid trying to make a name for himself and earn playing time and Kalu and the defense letting him know that's not how we do things to teammates here.
- Ty Betka is listed at 5'7" but probably isn't even that, but he was pretty good today. They threw a fade to him where while the ball was in the air he did a little stutter to make the defender think the ball was underthrown then sprinted again for the separation, catch, and TD.
- Skunkman, Mazour was playing some RB and getting some massive holes from his OL. Don't think he's close to getting on the field yet but his scrimmage was pretty good.
- Reid Karel had a really good scrimmage at safety, and I also love Nolan Graham from Norris' demeanor. Both these kids aren't quite there yet, but if they make a leap in the offseason could really help us on special teams for sure.
- Eric Lee had some issues playing the ball in the air, don't know the deal, hopefully it was the wind but Boaz Joseph and he are definitely not quite where I saw Kalu and Jones before his injury. Corner concerns me a bit.
- Charles Jackson actually played pretty well at corner though, but he was going against some people I didn't really know.
- Jordan Nelson at RB is freaking good... like, really good. Hope we can find a way to get him on the field and I think we will at returner.
- Morgan and Coach Williams son were working on returning punts and they spent a long time working on special teams as a team.
- Dedrick Young could very well be all-conference this year and our best LB, he looks unbelievable.
- It's weird the separation between our 2s and 3s for LB compared to our starters. Keeping Dedrick Young out of it, our backups like Newby, Ferguson, Barry are all far more athletic and have much higher ceilings than our starters, in my opinion. But are they as good of football players is what remains TBD. Rose-Ivey was diagnosing stuff so quick last year that if we could ever get Newby or Barry on that level learning from him it would be unreal. Weber still shows flashes of taking the MLB job and is a great option for depth. We were unreal at this position today and that's before we even get our recruits in.
*Couple things not scrimmage related*
- It appears Farmer had a conversation with his position coach that if any of us heard it we would think he was transferring. Massive props to Farmer for not tucking his tail and pouting, he chose to listen to what was being said and do something about it. His weight had sky-rocketed and while he was the strongest on the team, he knew he could afford to lose some strength to shed some bad weight and go back to being a dual-sport guy that got him to his four star status in high school. He looks like a totally different player and he lost somewhere around 40-45 pounds before spring ball. I had no idea he was that big, but that's a good reason why he wasn't playing much last year then. He had a great day of one on ones and i'm excited to see if he can hang on to the RG spot and what he can do in 2016.
- Things are interesting between the football team, the strength staff, and Epley right now. I hope they get it worked out.
- So there's a couple things I just never agreed with from the past that this staff is doing a good job of embracing:
1) That Nebraska is just too tough to get kids to. I think it is if you don't work at it and dont try to develop the relationships. But I think it's well documented that the old staff would not offer high profile kids that were far away because they didn't feel they had a good chance, or they wouldn't pursue if they didn't have interest.
2) That Nebraska is a big fish bowl with the media and ex-athlete radio shows and regular radio shows.
So with that, this staff is using it all as a positive. This isn't the 90s anymore and what I mean by that is that the average joe has access to celebrities and people they normally wouldn't be able to see unless traveling to watch a sporting event or heading to Hollywood with the invention of Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. What the old staff had right is that you don't want to spin your wheels. What I mean by that is you don't want to go waste time visiting people that aren't reciprocating interest that are long shots. But twitter and facebook make things so easy to generate interest, you don't have to hand write letters and mail them and wait for 3 days for a response. You can direct message someone to generate that interest, you can literally copy a message and shoot it out to 100 recruits you've never spoke to. Then see who sends things back. Then you can decide who to go visit based off reciprocated interest. They also are using the five rivals reporters, five OWH reporters, 3 LJS reporters, 15 radio hosts, etc., as a plus and not a minus. In a world where kids distinguish who is the best football player by how many twitter followers they have, in a world where recruits tell fan bases to follow them so they can get "shown the love", what better way to do that than show a picture of 32 reporters circling your head coach after a PRACTICE. What better way to do that than 12 reporters interviewing a redshirt freshman after practice and behind him in the picture is another player with another 10 reporters around him? Nebraska can be the best place to coach on earth if you harness it correctly, because the fans want what you want. But you have to have leaders in the lockerroom that promote positivity. We had a leader voted as captain that absolutely hated the media, our players took after the personality and some of the negativity of their leader. I can't blame them there, but it's where we need to get better.
- Local recruiting is going to get real interesting, already 4 2017 kids with FBS offers and I bet we creep closer to 10. Cav has a choice to make because Ciurej, Stofer, and Arnold are all going FBS and that's before anyone else gets evaluated. I think 2 of the 3 are going to be left out unfortunately.
- Bray and Williams could coach and recruit at any school in America and that includes Ohio State and Bama.
- That being said i'm interested to see how Cav and Davis recruit this year with not much "ins" with recruits. I also know that Parrella is generating interest, but can he get them on campus? That's what we are going to need to see.
Scrimmage observations and thoughts
-I'll start with the first thing that I know from getting to speak to some people today and that's the fact this staff is really relying on the fans for a great spring game attendance turnout. If there is anyway anyone can convince one or two more people to show up, it would go a long ways. They are aware that attendance could dip in the second year of a 'regime' and want to do anything possible to not make that happen with how they have pumped this up to recruits coming in. They've worked hard to get kids here from a long ways away.
-The first thing anyone will notice if the get to see this team in person is just how much our kids bodies are changing. AJ Natter and Peyton Newell look like completely different guys than spring of last year. When I looked at them last year I didn't see them playing, this year they pass the eye test and quite honestly it's showing on the field for them. We have some specimens on the DL with Akinmoladun, A. Davis, Stoltenber, good to see us getting to that again. A Guy like Darlington is freaking shredded now. Marcus Newby seems to have lost some of his lower body which he needed in my opinion. We just look better out there. Does that translate to the field? Hopefully.
-The starting OL was Gates, Foster, Utter, Farmer, and Knevel (left to right). Second string was Gaylord, Barnett, Thurston, Whitaker, and Hahn (left to right again). Starting DL was Dzuris, Maurice, Davis, and Dzuris. Behind them were A. Davis, Natter, 96Davis, and Newell.
- DJ Foster looked like the best OL again to me today and that's happened every practice i've been to the last few years so at this point I don't know what to think. That being said he's entrenched at LG now so we will at least get to see him start next year.
- One on one's were owned by he OL. Gates took care of Freedom on the couple attempts. Foster was physically way too dominant for whoever he went against. Utter stone-walled a couple people. Farmer rolled. And Knevel took care of Dzuris pretty well. I will say that that is probably what should have happened with McMullen, Williams, Neal, Stoltenberg, and King all sitting out for the DL. Honestly the one on ones were owned by offense and it wasn't even close.
- To put people at ease though, once the scrimmage started the defensive line had a little bit more success, particularly Freedom and Newell.
- They are doing the flip snap now to help with not getting high snaps anymore to mess with timing. Like that they are trying new things on this to remedy it.
- I always caution people to get too worked up over one practice or scrimmage, because that's exactly what it is. In the scrimmage our 1s were running at ease against our defense, but again I would expect that with some of our DL out. But then we would throw the ball and four or five times I looked at who I was with right when the ball was thrown and say "what are we doing?" Armstrong and Fyfe made some plays that were absolutely terrible decisions, not even bad balls, just bad decisions. It's where I hope in games we would continue running or I would freaking lose it, and since it's practice we are trying to work on getting better because we can't be one dimensional. But i've seen the same thing for four years with TA every practice i've been to, so I don't have a ton of confidence that will be changing in the 2016 season.
- To be fair to TA and Fyfe, Westerkamp and Morgan didn't scrimmage, but I don't think we even got the ball to Cethan Carter to counter us not having 2 of our top 3 WRs so i'm kind of confused there.
- Speaking of Westerkamp, flew to Germany, had his surgery, then flew back. They borderline said he could play in the scrimmage. The fact that surgery isn't cleared by the FDA or whoever really is an interesting talk point.
- Speaking of TEs we didn't get much work to Carter at all today. I still don't understand why we don't just get him as an main part of the offense? He is a beast and he doesn't have to have the ball in his hands to be that way. We need to start practicing plays designed to him. Foster though did look good. Hoppes had some pretty interesting drops today. Was excited to see him because he's been getting some run.
- Bush and O'Brien for sure looked better than TA and Fyfe today. On one hand, they are playing against a secondary that isn't very good. But on the other, it was because of good decision making to check down the ball and not forcing the ball into double coverage like I saw our 1 and 2 guy do 10 times today. It was unreal how many times I saw that. I even watched Bush read what the defense was going to do before the play based on the corner backing off and float a ball over the LB to a TE that would have been a TD if not for the TE dropping the ball. POB looks like a true QB in the pocket. Armstrongs reverse spin out of the pocket when it's slightly collapsing is countered by him stepping up in the pocket and keeping his eyes downfield. He had a really good scrimmage today. And so did Bush.
- Wilbon just didn't get it going today, and Ozigbo looked like the man. Newby though did break thru his inability in my mind to make people miss and run hard, he was a tough tackle today. That being said, I will give Wilbon that his second string OL was not as good as the second string DL and LBs he was going against. While the first string OL was having their way with the first string DL.
- Donovan McDonald was really impressive today, after one viewing of him he's not on a Stanley Morgan level of "watch for him". But he was making plays. He got in a little trouble from the defense when he came back and cracked a defender and Kalu came off the sidelines to express his displeasure. I think it was a case for a kid trying to make a name for himself and earn playing time and Kalu and the defense letting him know that's not how we do things to teammates here.
- Ty Betka is listed at 5'7" but probably isn't even that, but he was pretty good today. They threw a fade to him where while the ball was in the air he did a little stutter to make the defender think the ball was underthrown then sprinted again for the separation, catch, and TD.
- Skunkman, Mazour was playing some RB and getting some massive holes from his OL. Don't think he's close to getting on the field yet but his scrimmage was pretty good.
- Reid Karel had a really good scrimmage at safety, and I also love Nolan Graham from Norris' demeanor. Both these kids aren't quite there yet, but if they make a leap in the offseason could really help us on special teams for sure.
- Eric Lee had some issues playing the ball in the air, don't know the deal, hopefully it was the wind but Boaz Joseph and he are definitely not quite where I saw Kalu and Jones before his injury. Corner concerns me a bit.
- Charles Jackson actually played pretty well at corner though, but he was going against some people I didn't really know.
- Jordan Nelson at RB is freaking good... like, really good. Hope we can find a way to get him on the field and I think we will at returner.
- Morgan and Coach Williams son were working on returning punts and they spent a long time working on special teams as a team.
- Dedrick Young could very well be all-conference this year and our best LB, he looks unbelievable.
- It's weird the separation between our 2s and 3s for LB compared to our starters. Keeping Dedrick Young out of it, our backups like Newby, Ferguson, Barry are all far more athletic and have much higher ceilings than our starters, in my opinion. But are they as good of football players is what remains TBD. Rose-Ivey was diagnosing stuff so quick last year that if we could ever get Newby or Barry on that level learning from him it would be unreal. Weber still shows flashes of taking the MLB job and is a great option for depth. We were unreal at this position today and that's before we even get our recruits in.
*Couple things not scrimmage related*
- It appears Farmer had a conversation with his position coach that if any of us heard it we would think he was transferring. Massive props to Farmer for not tucking his tail and pouting, he chose to listen to what was being said and do something about it. His weight had sky-rocketed and while he was the strongest on the team, he knew he could afford to lose some strength to shed some bad weight and go back to being a dual-sport guy that got him to his four star status in high school. He looks like a totally different player and he lost somewhere around 40-45 pounds before spring ball. I had no idea he was that big, but that's a good reason why he wasn't playing much last year then. He had a great day of one on ones and i'm excited to see if he can hang on to the RG spot and what he can do in 2016.
- Things are interesting between the football team, the strength staff, and Epley right now. I hope they get it worked out.
- So there's a couple things I just never agreed with from the past that this staff is doing a good job of embracing:
1) That Nebraska is just too tough to get kids to. I think it is if you don't work at it and dont try to develop the relationships. But I think it's well documented that the old staff would not offer high profile kids that were far away because they didn't feel they had a good chance, or they wouldn't pursue if they didn't have interest.
2) That Nebraska is a big fish bowl with the media and ex-athlete radio shows and regular radio shows.
So with that, this staff is using it all as a positive. This isn't the 90s anymore and what I mean by that is that the average joe has access to celebrities and people they normally wouldn't be able to see unless traveling to watch a sporting event or heading to Hollywood with the invention of Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, etc. What the old staff had right is that you don't want to spin your wheels. What I mean by that is you don't want to go waste time visiting people that aren't reciprocating interest that are long shots. But twitter and facebook make things so easy to generate interest, you don't have to hand write letters and mail them and wait for 3 days for a response. You can direct message someone to generate that interest, you can literally copy a message and shoot it out to 100 recruits you've never spoke to. Then see who sends things back. Then you can decide who to go visit based off reciprocated interest. They also are using the five rivals reporters, five OWH reporters, 3 LJS reporters, 15 radio hosts, etc., as a plus and not a minus. In a world where kids distinguish who is the best football player by how many twitter followers they have, in a world where recruits tell fan bases to follow them so they can get "shown the love", what better way to do that than show a picture of 32 reporters circling your head coach after a PRACTICE. What better way to do that than 12 reporters interviewing a redshirt freshman after practice and behind him in the picture is another player with another 10 reporters around him? Nebraska can be the best place to coach on earth if you harness it correctly, because the fans want what you want. But you have to have leaders in the lockerroom that promote positivity. We had a leader voted as captain that absolutely hated the media, our players took after the personality and some of the negativity of their leader. I can't blame them there, but it's where we need to get better.
- Local recruiting is going to get real interesting, already 4 2017 kids with FBS offers and I bet we creep closer to 10. Cav has a choice to make because Ciurej, Stofer, and Arnold are all going FBS and that's before anyone else gets evaluated. I think 2 of the 3 are going to be left out unfortunately.
- Bray and Williams could coach and recruit at any school in America and that includes Ohio State and Bama.
- That being said i'm interested to see how Cav and Davis recruit this year with not much "ins" with recruits. I also know that Parrella is generating interest, but can he get them on campus? That's what we are going to need to see.
