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Some recent observations during winter workouts

I am in agreement.

The quandry is how do you maximize your offense and getting the ball to playmakers while also minimizing the opportunities that Martinez has to turn the ball over.

1. find a couple backs and focus on the running game
2. Limit Martinez carries to meaningful times when you have a legit shot to pick up a first down or score. I believe they will need his running ability so use it when the reward is there. Otherwise, get ball out of his hands as much as possible in the running game
3. Try to avoid throwing downfield in obvious passing situations unless Martinez earns the trust or you have no other choice. Close ball game and 3rd and ten on your side of field you punt and on opponents you kick field goals.

This is an area that frustrates me a bit. Staff appears to have put together what could be a strong offensive unit for at least next two years. However, we have starting quarterback, that while explosive and has all the tools, is turnover and poor decision prone enough to erode trust and lose games. On top of that, no competitor and likely only 1 other guy that would have any chance at playing at a D1 level if Martinez goes down.

If I had a five million dollar job I wouldn't have all my eggs in that basket.
I honestly think they should throw the ball downfield more often. it's proven those attempts, while less likely to be complete, are also less likely to be picked.

dinking and dunking only ups the snap count, and, in turn, the chances AM has to turn it over.

that said, I hope we hand it off on darn near every play this year.
 
Did you you listen to HOL radio. Sean explained exactly what the plan was and it was not adding a 13th game. The late season non con would be moved up but another opponent needs to be found because current contract non con does not have an open date. I imagine it would cost to get out of that contract.

No I didn’t, I’m horrible about listening to those things. I just read his initial post he put out. The rest of that, I have no clue how it all works.
 
Special teams has to be addressed. Its been a dumpster fire and one could argue Nebraska has lost at least 7 games during Scott's tenure SOLELY due to special teams:

- Troy in 2018
- NW in 2018
- Iowa in 2018
- Colorado in 2019
- Iowa in 2019
- NW in 2020
- Iowa in 2020

That doesn't mean Nebraska refrained from making costly mistakes in other facets of those games. Its quite the contrary. But, if you take away the dreadful special teams play in those games above, Nebraska conceivably could've won all 7 of them.

Great point

One of reasons I don't commit much on records even thought I think offense will be good and defense solid. When you are often losing a net 20 yards per possession because of special teams return/coverage teams it makes it really hard to beat teams in the big ten Like Iowa, Wisconsin and Northwester that are very effective in that area. Throw in the turnovers and winning is not easy.

I also get the fact that when you take over a program as broke as Nebraska you cannot fix everything at all at once but most coaches that have successful rebuilds know you start with special team. It is much easier to choose to be good on special team by simply placing an emphasis on it and putting starters out there if needed. Much more difficult and requires a whole different level of coaching, players and development cycle to be good offensively or defensively.

With the players we have there are probably 60 coaches out there that could field competitive special teams return and coverage units if we just choose to focus on it and allow them the time and players they need to make it work. I am hoping they understand that while this may not have recieved the attention needed in past it is something that can be quickly fixed and make a huge difference assuming offense and defense are solid.
 
Here are some observations from someone who has seen workouts. These are not my opinion, i'm just relaying someone else's observation and thoughts.

- Fidone reminds him of a much bigger Cethan Carter. Now when I heard that comparison, I was a bit disappointed. Cethan Carter was a good and very productive player at Nebraska, but I would like to think Fidone can be better. But then it was pointed out that Cethan Carter's height and weight were both grossly exaggerated at Nebraska. Carter was really only about 6'2 220 lbs with socks on. Fidone is a legit 6'5 barefoot and has an extra 10 inches in his wingspan with much larger hands. The cool thing about that comparison is Fidone moves like Carter. He has excellent open field speed and cuts well in and out of his break. Don't be surprised to see Fidone play a lot of the X this season.

- Samori Toure - laughed at this one: "He's Kenny Bell, if Kenny Bell had ever lifted weights."

- Markese Stepp - dude is powerful and runs with a terrific low center of gravity. The kid is a complete 180 from Mills because he's charismatic and leadership is natural. He apparently sees a massive opportunity at Nebraska because of the offense compared to the Air Raid at in USC. His body style is very similar to Cody Glenn.

- Omar Manning - There have allegedly only been five athletes like Omar over the last 15+ seasons in Lincoln. By "like Omar," that means they had freakishly long and lean bodies, possessed elite explosiveness, and could out muscle, out hustle, and out run anyone on any given play : Zach Bowman, Prince Amukamara, Lavonte David, Quincy Enunwa, and Stanley Jean-Baptiste.

- Zavier Betts is nowhere near his ceiling, but his talent level right NOW is basically at the ceiling of a former Husker like Alonzo Moore. If Betts can produce like the 3rd or 4th year Alonzo Moore in 2021, Nebraska will probably be pretty damn good on offense.

- Oliver Martin - has a terrific attitude and work ethic which was surprising considering he's on his 3rd school in 4 years. I won't blow smoke up your butt and say he's Nate Swift, but his body type, skill set, and athletic ability is VERY reminiscent.

- Heinrich Haarberg - Kid is built better than some of the Outside Linebackers. He's an impressive looking kid and easily the biggest QB to play at Nebraska this century.



I will try to find out more stuff after Spring Practice starts.
Thanks so much for the updates!
 
No but we would likely have had one more W towards bowl eligibility and 5-8 million more in the AD bank account when it was all said and done. Concessions in and around the stadium are a HUGE deal in addition to a gate of over 4.5 million. Concessions are said to generate more than the gate. People bitched about a 4 million buyout to a coach. We generated twice that much for one home game.
Maybe they will consider ALCOHOL! I think I can speak for most when I say we'd rather raise revenue by booze than pulling out of the OU game, long term better money too.
 
I think you are seriously underestimating how good Toure is. He was a huge pickup for us.
He needs to certainly develop more physically, so I’d love to see him add a bit of muscle before fall.
A guy who can catch 84 passes and 1400 yards is an upgrade for us even if it was on an empty field.
Run route/catch ball/run for more yards.
We’ve not quite found consistency with those basics.

Now getting an accurate ball delivered on time will be the key.
 
I honestly think they should throw the ball downfield more often. it's proven those attempts, while less likely to be complete, are also less likely to be picked.

dinking and dunking only ups the snap count, and, in turn, the chances AM has to turn it over.

that said, I hope we hand it off on darn near every play this year.
Dinking and dunking only really work if 1. you have playmakers who can catch a 2 yard pass, make a move and take it to the house, or 2. you possess a level of consistency to sustain a 10-15 play drive without making drive killing mistakes. I know we don't have number 2, and I'm not sure we have number 1.
 
you already named them.

we'd have gotten beat by louisiana, coastal carolina and liberty.
What ever fits your agenda on this issue...My agenda was it wasn’t a normal bowl experience so under the circumstances it was better not to play like Penn St, Minnesota, Michigan St and Rutgers...
 
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That piece wasn't a king so she couldn't jump backwards (after the first 3 jumps in this case) right? Or have I been checkers wrong all these years?

The boys' reaction was hilarious!
 
Here are some observations from someone who has seen workouts. These are not my opinion, i'm just relaying someone else's observation and thoughts.

- Fidone reminds him of a much bigger Cethan Carter. Now when I heard that comparison, I was a bit disappointed. Cethan Carter was a good and very productive player at Nebraska, but I would like to think Fidone can be better. But then it was pointed out that Cethan Carter's height and weight were both grossly exaggerated at Nebraska. Carter was really only about 6'2 220 lbs with socks on. Fidone is a legit 6'5 barefoot and has an extra 10 inches in his wingspan with much larger hands. The cool thing about that comparison is Fidone moves like Carter. He has excellent open field speed and cuts well in and out of his break. Don't be surprised to see Fidone play a lot of the X this season.

- Samori Toure - laughed at this one: "He's Kenny Bell, if Kenny Bell had ever lifted weights."

- Markese Stepp - dude is powerful and runs with a terrific low center of gravity. The kid is a complete 180 from Mills because he's charismatic and leadership is natural. He apparently sees a massive opportunity at Nebraska because of the offense compared to the Air Raid at in USC. His body style is very similar to Cody Glenn.

- Omar Manning - There have allegedly only been five athletes like Omar over the last 15+ seasons in Lincoln. By "like Omar," that means they had freakishly long and lean bodies, possessed elite explosiveness, and could out muscle, out hustle, and out run anyone on any given play : Zach Bowman, Prince Amukamara, Lavonte David, Quincy Enunwa, and Stanley Jean-Baptiste.

- Zavier Betts is nowhere near his ceiling, but his talent level right NOW is basically at the ceiling of a former Husker like Alonzo Moore. If Betts can produce like the 3rd or 4th year Alonzo Moore in 2021, Nebraska will probably be pretty damn good on offense.

- Oliver Martin - has a terrific attitude and work ethic which was surprising considering he's on his 3rd school in 4 years. I won't blow smoke up your butt and say he's Nate Swift, but his body type, skill set, and athletic ability is VERY reminiscent.

- Heinrich Haarberg - Kid is built better than some of the Outside Linebackers. He's an impressive looking kid and easily the biggest QB to play at Nebraska this century.



I will try to find out more stuff after Spring Practice starts.
Thank you for relaying the information. I'm always interested in that stuff BUT these days I've been burned too many times by optimistic views. As much as I want to be optimistic, I'm going to wait to see it pan out on the field of play before I ever get optimistic again about Nebraska football.
 
Comparing Fidone to Cethan Carter is strange because they are two completely different body types. Carter was also a very solid blocker. Just going off Fidone's last pics, he is a very wiry looking guy at the moment so I doubt his blocking is at that level right now.

Also the WR weight is a non-issue. Alabama's best player was 170 pounds soaking wet and had no problem torching everybody on his way to the Heisman last season. Kenny Bell's career stats also suggest that he was doing just fine with whatever his training regimen was.

Thanks for the write-up.
 
How are people estimating an extra 4-5 million in revenue if Nebraska would have got out of the OU game? Going to have to pay the opt out penalty plus pay a million for a garbage team that just may end up upsetting you (unless it was Frosts buddy that ran the team like we have saw before for a guaranteed win) a million bucks. There is also zero guarantee that Warren is going to allow full stadiums. Say they only allow even half capacity then you just cut your earnings in half.

If you do want to think about getting out of it, you do it the smart way and go to OU's AD first and say hey look, we are all hurting after last season. Is there any way we can push this back a few years so we can make some extra cash by getting us an extra home game this year. If he says no we want to play this game as its the 50th anniversary of the GOC and its a guaranteed blowout win for us, then you squash the thought of a search and move on. Imagine if roles were reversed and OU tried that shit. Our fans (including the people saying its a smart business decision) would be slamming on OU for ducking us. It was one of the dumbest decisions an AD could have ever made.
 
Comparing Fidone to Cethan Carter is strange because they are two completely different body types.

That was my first thought as well but then realized the author was only looking at it from a route running perspective. That's why it was qualified as a 'bigger' Carter.
 
Good. Wouldn’t want that dam off season koolaide pissing everyone off.

But seriously cover your eyes if seeing Nebraska football players working hard and doing things upsets you.



Yeah heaven forbid he’d rather read real results instead of watching hype videos of warmups, 3/4 squats, and dudes playing dodgeball or something.
 
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You do know there aren’t any games right now. God forbid people talk about football in the off season. The worst.

The post you responded to was a guy requesting testing results. That is football, and some semblance of results. Talk about whatever you want, but he wanted tangible information that would indicate improvement, and I’m with him.

You posted tic tok sh!t and talked down to him while doing it.
 
The post you responded to was a guy requesting testing results. That is football, and some semblance of results. Talk about whatever you want, but he wanted tangible information that would indicate improvement, and I’m with him.

You posted tic tok sh!t and talked down to him while doing it.

No it wasn’t. He just said “won’t hear shit”. We would all love to see testing results, but some of us are still here to talk football, not just bitch endlessly.
 
In regard to training day results being made public - I wouldn't be surprised if it's because of data collection.

The amount of stuff you could do if you knew all the 40-times or the verticals of all the players - You could easily build matchups that would benefit one team vs another.

I'm not saying it happens, but i bet it does.
You can already build programs that would decipher sideline signals - facial lip reading programs - and predict what a team will do on 3rd down.

I have no actual knowledge this happens but when you have University football programs bringing in north of 100mm a year -I wouldn't put anything past people.
 
Way more to it than that

The previous year NU was 4-8, lost 6 games by 20 or more and had the worst statistical defense in Big Ten.

In 2018 one of the seven losses was a game Martinez was winning against Colorado before he got hurt and we lost the next game playing his backup who wasn't a D1 player. It also took a while as a first year coach to get Conrad off the field at Center and replace him with the Farmer and then Wilson at guard. Wilson wasn't great but compared to Conrad he might as well have been all big ten. Also took a bit of time to identify Ozigbo and give him the carries he needed . While the 2018 team only won 1 more game they only lost one game by more than 20 and improved significanlty statistically on offense and a couple spots on defense going from the worst defense to just bad. They were also playing pretty good football the last 6 games of year going 4-2 with a 3 point loss to Iowa and 5 point loss to number 9 OSU.

Then you get into 2019 and complete dumpster fire lead by the worst performing interior line in Big Ten and unability to effectivley replace Zig and Morgan. While that is on Frost, I am more concerned about where the roster stands right now and I believe both WR and Oline have been fully addressed and are ready to go and slowly but surely the defense is moving to top half statistically.

My opinion, whether you share it or not, is the program was in much worse shape than some want to admit and that Martinez has a proven upside with the right players around him. Some folks think Scott sucks and it is a certainty we are losing in 2021 and he will be fired. I believe based on players and coaches that we may be a pretty good football team in 2021 and 2022 and this staff might be here for a while.

A damn fine post sir. Very well stated. If the OLine really does improve this year (I think there's a good chance!) we'll all be happy campers. "Any" kind of improved special teams will be massively appreciated. The defense just keeps improving.....maybe we'll all start having fun. :)
 
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This is laregely because we’ve found ways to be just worse than the terrible teams that beat us.

I’d bet the avg final record of teams we’ve lost to in the last 3 years is somewhere around 7-6

Please do the home work and get back to us with your final assessment..
 
I went ahead and looked.

Average record of the teams we lost to:

2018: 9-4
2019: 9-4
2020: 5-3

Obviously the 2020 opponents would have had better records with OOC games.

Someone owes us an apology headcardLaughing
 
This whole thread reminds me of the NFL draft.

A player who was barely good enough to get an NFL combine invite preps so hard for the combine and blows it up and jumps way up everyone's draft board when his football tape shows very little. And after a couple years in the league everyone is astonished he was a bust.

Work out warriors and off season numbers mean very little to me; what does impress me is seeing FOOTBALL PLAYERS producing on the field & not workout warriors in the off season.

(I am not saying off season numbers are not important, but they do not impress me when I do not see production on the field)
 
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So athletic director Bill Moos basically says it was him and Frost's idea on trying to duck out of the OU game to try to raise revenue.

There were some that thought maybe this was being looked at by others outside the athletic department, but it's pretty clear it's Scott Frost's show down there. I just love the last line by Bill.. what a bunch of clowns..

"
“We were just exploring different ways of addressing our financial problem, and that was one of them, and not even that we were dead set on doing it,” Moos said. “What would an eighth home game look like financially? Not that we’re going to do it, but let’s get it on paper and see what it would do, and if it would be a big enough impact on our situation.

“It got out before it had any wheels or before it was going to have any wheels.”

Coach Scott Frost, Moos said, “has been in the conversations” about all of the options on the table.

“It’s been primarily him and me, and then updating upper administration,” Moos said. “The good thing is, that’s behind us now, and we know we’re playing Oklahoma.”"

https://omaha.com/sports/huskers/fo...476ab568-8775-11eb-81ed-0b7c5deb196c.amp.html
 
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