https://forum.huskermax.com/threads/the-offensive-staff-change-and-moving-forward.115437/
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'll try to shed some light on what I know and things i've put two and two together on...
It's no secret that our wide receiver room hasn't quite developed the way we wanted it to. Troy Walters signed Andre Hunt, Katerian LeGrone, Dominick Watt, Justin McGriff, Jaron Woodyard, and Mike Williams in his first recruiting class. 1 player didn't make it, one left after one season, two of them were booted after the first season, and the two JUCOs couldn't help at a position that desperately needed it. While I think Stanley Morgan was great, when you think about an undrafted Morgan leaving and then Warner being out all year essentially crippling our outside WR game, it's tough to fathom. But we gave Walters a pass for 2018 as they were trying to just put together a class. We then got excited for the 2019 class with Demariyon Houston running 10.5 100 meter dashes, Jamie Nance and Darine Chase as well with one of those being here for the spring as an early enrollee, we thought we wouldn't miss a beat. We were wrong.
You then couple what you were hearing on the recruiting trail for our 2020 class. From the outside looking in, our WR class may be the best position for 2020 that inked in the early signing period. But Marcus Fleming had a lead recruiter of Travis Fisher, Omar Manning's lead recruiter was Ryan Held, and Zavier Betts is a Nebraska kid that Barrett Ruud was a huge part with extending the offer to him and showing confidence he would get his academics in order. So essentially our top WR recruits, the position coach was a bit of an "added bonus" and not essential to landing them. I can also share with you that I heard from more than one coach in the metro that Walters was the least impressive when he would come to the schools compared to other FBS or FCS coaches. For example, a guy like LeVar Woods from Iowa or Dan Jackson from South Dakota State would text a few days earlier and say "hey, i'm going to be in Omaha on Friday, what time works best for you? I want to look at Player X, Player Y, and Player Z. Let me know if there's someone i'm missing." They would then work around the coaches schedules and if a coach said "hey, we also have Player A that Northern Illinois is looking real hard at, you should take a look" they obviously would at the very least humor the coach and evaluate them. Why not? You're already there, right? What I just described in this paragraph doesn't seem so difficult or
even worth highlighting, so why did I?
I was told that as recently as this December, when Coach Walters would be out in the metro, some coaches would get a call from a secretary stating "Coach Walters will be at your school tomorrow at 830AM" and basically just leave that voicemail. It wasn't even him. The coach would have to call back and leave a voicemail "Well, that's fine but I have class from 8-850 so I can catch up with him after". Being there, it was almost like he was putting in his time, the coach would throw out another name and he would come with "We will catch them next time, coach." It was just odd, and quite frankly, I was hoping something was up. Less than 24 hours notice compared to 72 hours notice from other coaches, telling you when he will be there as opposed to giving options as a courtesy, not giving his cell phone and having a secretary call them so it's less personal than what Iowa, Iowa State, Minnesota, or South Dakota State were doing, and then the easiest thing ever of just being engaged while you're there and making the coach and player feel important and worth your time.
With that said, I don't want to rag on him too much. Some of those things are process related, not Walters related. Other Nebraska coaches just show up, other coaches have the secretary call as well, but when you look at the totality of things, a lot of it was on Coach Walters. I do think that we have been working on his replacement for close to a month, so he was just checking boxes for the staff more than likely. And he had to of done a decent job prior to this past December on the trail, it's not like he wasn't excited for a Power 5 job. But I wonder why we even send him on the road if that's the level of effort we were going to get? If it wasn't for these coaches and players being from Nebraska, whatever was said would have fallen on deaf ears in my opinion. Again, I do think we were looking for a replacement, Walters knew it, we just hadn't made the hire yet. And it's well documented he was of the opinion that even though he didn't get the UCF head job, he thought we would just roll thru people offensively the first two years and a head job would come calling. We all know how that went.
But the stuff coming out of North Stadium is just odd. If we truly had this locked up a few weeks ago, why were we waiting? Why was Troy Walters working in January for us? Lubick wasn't even working, so it's not like we had to wait. The more likely scenario is Lubick was a top candidate, but so was Joseph. Joseph wasn't going to entertain or say yes to anything until his national title game was over. And after that, he still wasn't interested, which leads us to our announcement this past Friday. I do think Lubick and Joseph were 1A and 1B, it just turns out we never really had a shot with Joseph at all, and we probably didn't get much past an initial conversation. The athletic department coming out and saying they never offered the job to Joseph is probably true, but we talked to him. It's basically like me working on a girl at a bar around midnight, not getting anywhere with her, then telling my friends I wasn't interested anyway.
The good news is, Coach Lubick is an upgrade from what we've had here in 2018 and 2019 in regard to coaching and recruiting. We don't need to spin it or play damage control. That's a damn good hire. Here's to our first bowl game since 2016 for 2020!
I don't want to beat a dead horse, but I'll try to shed some light on what I know and things i've put two and two together on...
It's no secret that our wide receiver room hasn't quite developed the way we wanted it to. Troy Walters signed Andre Hunt, Katerian LeGrone, Dominick Watt, Justin McGriff, Jaron Woodyard, and Mike Williams in his first recruiting class. 1 player didn't make it, one left after one season, two of them were booted after the first season, and the two JUCOs couldn't help at a position that desperately needed it. While I think Stanley Morgan was great, when you think about an undrafted Morgan leaving and then Warner being out all year essentially crippling our outside WR game, it's tough to fathom. But we gave Walters a pass for 2018 as they were trying to just put together a class. We then got excited for the 2019 class with Demariyon Houston running 10.5 100 meter dashes, Jamie Nance and Darine Chase as well with one of those being here for the spring as an early enrollee, we thought we wouldn't miss a beat. We were wrong.
You then couple what you were hearing on the recruiting trail for our 2020 class. From the outside looking in, our WR class may be the best position for 2020 that inked in the early signing period. But Marcus Fleming had a lead recruiter of Travis Fisher, Omar Manning's lead recruiter was Ryan Held, and Zavier Betts is a Nebraska kid that Barrett Ruud was a huge part with extending the offer to him and showing confidence he would get his academics in order. So essentially our top WR recruits, the position coach was a bit of an "added bonus" and not essential to landing them. I can also share with you that I heard from more than one coach in the metro that Walters was the least impressive when he would come to the schools compared to other FBS or FCS coaches. For example, a guy like LeVar Woods from Iowa or Dan Jackson from South Dakota State would text a few days earlier and say "hey, i'm going to be in Omaha on Friday, what time works best for you? I want to look at Player X, Player Y, and Player Z. Let me know if there's someone i'm missing." They would then work around the coaches schedules and if a coach said "hey, we also have Player A that Northern Illinois is looking real hard at, you should take a look" they obviously would at the very least humor the coach and evaluate them. Why not? You're already there, right? What I just described in this paragraph doesn't seem so difficult or
even worth highlighting, so why did I?
I was told that as recently as this December, when Coach Walters would be out in the metro, some coaches would get a call from a secretary stating "Coach Walters will be at your school tomorrow at 830AM" and basically just leave that voicemail. It wasn't even him. The coach would have to call back and leave a voicemail "Well, that's fine but I have class from 8-850 so I can catch up with him after". Being there, it was almost like he was putting in his time, the coach would throw out another name and he would come with "We will catch them next time, coach." It was just odd, and quite frankly, I was hoping something was up. Less than 24 hours notice compared to 72 hours notice from other coaches, telling you when he will be there as opposed to giving options as a courtesy, not giving his cell phone and having a secretary call them so it's less personal than what Iowa, Iowa State, Minnesota, or South Dakota State were doing, and then the easiest thing ever of just being engaged while you're there and making the coach and player feel important and worth your time.
With that said, I don't want to rag on him too much. Some of those things are process related, not Walters related. Other Nebraska coaches just show up, other coaches have the secretary call as well, but when you look at the totality of things, a lot of it was on Coach Walters. I do think that we have been working on his replacement for close to a month, so he was just checking boxes for the staff more than likely. And he had to of done a decent job prior to this past December on the trail, it's not like he wasn't excited for a Power 5 job. But I wonder why we even send him on the road if that's the level of effort we were going to get? If it wasn't for these coaches and players being from Nebraska, whatever was said would have fallen on deaf ears in my opinion. Again, I do think we were looking for a replacement, Walters knew it, we just hadn't made the hire yet. And it's well documented he was of the opinion that even though he didn't get the UCF head job, he thought we would just roll thru people offensively the first two years and a head job would come calling. We all know how that went.
But the stuff coming out of North Stadium is just odd. If we truly had this locked up a few weeks ago, why were we waiting? Why was Troy Walters working in January for us? Lubick wasn't even working, so it's not like we had to wait. The more likely scenario is Lubick was a top candidate, but so was Joseph. Joseph wasn't going to entertain or say yes to anything until his national title game was over. And after that, he still wasn't interested, which leads us to our announcement this past Friday. I do think Lubick and Joseph were 1A and 1B, it just turns out we never really had a shot with Joseph at all, and we probably didn't get much past an initial conversation. The athletic department coming out and saying they never offered the job to Joseph is probably true, but we talked to him. It's basically like me working on a girl at a bar around midnight, not getting anywhere with her, then telling my friends I wasn't interested anyway.
The good news is, Coach Lubick is an upgrade from what we've had here in 2018 and 2019 in regard to coaching and recruiting. We don't need to spin it or play damage control. That's a damn good hire. Here's to our first bowl game since 2016 for 2020!