Early Assault on Bo Unfair
Fickle Husker fans need to give Pelini's staff, recruiting methods time
by Samuel McKewon
December 19, 2007
Courtesy of Huskers.com
Bo Pelini already taken shots on the message boards for his young, Nebraska-flavored staffPop quiz time. Quick - off the top of your head, name four assistant coaches for the following staffs: Alabama, Georgia, Ohio State, and Virginia Tech. Now, for those same teams, name the top four players from last year's recruiting class. How's that working for you? All blanked out yet?
Analysis paralysis has hit Nebraska football fans. Just two weeks after Bo Pelini was brought aboard and a couple days after he officially assembled his staff, NU fanatics are melting message boards with dire proclamations of impending doom.
Pelini's gang isn't experienced enough! Tom Osborne forced Bo's hand into hiring a bunch of Husker retreads! None of them know how to recruit - they need to visit a motivational speaker! Wha, wha, wha what's happening to our great legacy of talent Bill Callahan built up in his four gloriously mediocre seasons?
I feel like Peppermint Patty, and these fans are the teachers.
From this point of view, Pelini's done just about everything right. Just about everything. The staff. The no-nonsense recruiting. The decision to coach Louisiana State in the BCS National Championship game. Whatever minor fuss his moves cause now won't even be a pimple by spring.
He's got a young, motivated staff, and if you consider how he's put together, it's pretty darn smart, and more complex than you may think.
He scrapped any remnant of Kevin Cosgrove's defensive brain trust, even safeties coach and crack recruiter Bill Busch. Good. Had to happen. The crucible Pelini will put this defense through in the spring made it necessary to get them out. There can't be any Cosgrove-style shoulders to cry on. Pelini had to have his guys. Young, energetic, a little wild.
Are they geniuses with scheme?Maybe not. But Pelini is, and he prefers a base, simpler style anyway. Nebraska will run cover two and cover three. Beyond that? Maybe not much. Pelini loves those base packages, with all kinds of nasty blitzes out of them. He'll demand more out of his safeties than you can imagine. His linebackers, too. As he's said more than once to reporters - it's not what you do, it's how you do it. So he hired men who can fixate on the how. Can anybody argue that the Blackshirts need that more than anything else?
Pelini was equally wise with the offense. He kept Offensive Coordinator Shawn Watson. He hired Barney Cotton, who's also been an offensive coordinator for many years, and before you scoff, know this: Nobody is an offensive coordinator in college football without knowing more than you can forget. Pelini also retained Ted Gilmore, who has experience with the spread offense at Purdue. And he brought back Ron Brown, who specializes in blocking, but can also get tight ends to catch the ball, too.
At a glance, those four bring a lot of ideas to the table, and they bring them from a Big 12 perspective. Think about that. Now, the Internet experts who wring their hands over Watson's work at CU and Cotton's coaching methods are welcome to do so. But, from this perspective, there's continuity, chemistry and a consistency of thought. These four, plus a new running backs coach, will be on the same page, and it will resemble last year's page, only it will be tougher and simpler.
Overhaul the defense in attitude and aggression.
Simplify the offense while keeping the essence of it.
That's what Pelini's staff is built to do.
Now think about two of the great failures of the Bill Callahan era.
The defense looked lost, ticked off, and trapped inside its own collective brain.
The offense, meanwhile, had its moments, but often couldn't get out of its own way when it really needed to score.
So Pelini's staff is designed to perform triage on two major wounds of Callahan's regime.
And Pelini's doing a bad job?
You wanted more credentialed assistants? Why? Staff continuity and chemistry is far more crucial than credentials. Phil Elmassian had a ton of credentials as a defensive backs coach. His guys also made an art out of face-guarding.
You wanted better recruiters? Give it time.Clearly, Pelini's hitting the trail with a different message than Callahan's troops did.
There's a difference between straight talk and sweet talk.
That's not to say Callahan was a liar or a flake; he wasn't.
When he told kids they'd play as true freshmen, hey, he meant it: Look at the 2007 team. When he told JUCO studs he planned to play them right away, too, he meant that, because a lot of them have. Carl Nicks probably doesn't regret signing with Nebraska. And, after he had a couple years with Pelini, neither will Armando Murillo. Callahan had the ambition to build a pipeline to the NFL, so he said so.
He also liked using signature recruits to encourage other, lesser recruits to join the party. That's part of why NU's lost a couple high-profile verbal commitments in recent weeks.
Did Bo and Co. get a little outflanked when they assumed a bunch of guys who were visiting in January wouldn't "commit" to Colorado last weekend before they ever came to Nebraska? Maybe. Score one for CU's Dan Hawkins, a man who, mark these words, will be a formidable foe of NU's for many, many years.
Did Bo and Co. send an odd symbolic message when they offered the equivalent of a golden ticket to a West Point kid named Micah Kreikemeier just hours after Pelini was hired? The timing probably could have been better.
It hasn't all been perfect. But, then, none of 2007 has been. This transition, given the stature of this program and the swiftness with which NU swept four years under a rug as if it were bloody booger, was bound to throw some kids off.
Michigan, by contrast, will have a very smooth three months after hiring Rich Rodriguez, because "RR" is a big name with solid credentials. Arkansas will enjoy the same honeymoon with Bobby Petrino. But just wait until those two start playing bull in the university bookstore. The Wolverines and Razorbacks may well have found their program saviors, but don't expect those transitions to be seamless. Just like it looks ugly at Alabama right now while Nick Saban tries to rebuild that team in his image.
Pelini, a player's coach, will face some of those obstacles, but he's smoothed some of the bumps by resisting the urge to remake everything.
And it's much wiser than you may think to draw upon the wellspring of success Nebraska once had.This is a team that, frankly, has been living disconnected from its tradition for four years. A team that hardly knows how special it is. Pelini's aim is to jump their pilot light with an embrace of those things, coupled with the energy he used in 2003 to turn NU's defense around.
The approach worked brilliantly that year.
Doesn't he deserve the benefit of the doubt now?
It's a no-brainer. Of course he does.
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Email Samuel McKewon at sam@ne.statepaper.com
Early Assault on Bo Unfair
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