The fights started between Husker fans well before the season did, and I was on the correct side of them. In this case, I really do hate to say, "I told ya so." The fights have only intensified as the losses have mounted. You do know the fights, right?
- Fire Bo vs. Bo needs more time
- Riley is the next Tom Osborne vs. Riley is the next Frank Solich
- Run the Ball vs. We Can't Run the Ball
- Burn the whole things down vs. Let's just all take a deep breath
Let's put that first point to bed right now. No matter how bad this team is (and they're horrible), Pelini had to be fired.
I'll put it to you this way: Would you give somebody relationship advice by telling them to go back to an ex who cheated on them repeatedly because that wasn't as bad as the new one who hits them? Or should they probably aspire to something greater and not be with either of those people?
So let's address Mike Riley and staff.
My reaction to the Mike Riley hire was about the same as every other Husker fan's:
As the facts on Riley and the coaches he brought with him--almost completely intact from his Oregon State crew--trickled in, my suspicions were in place.
I began telling anyone who asked that Riley's ceiling was as a "caretaker hire." A guy to say the right things, heal the players' and fans' wounded psyches, recruit a few good classes...then retire quietly into the good night when Nebraska finally had a signature on the dotted line from a big name.
It was a crossroads of opportunity for an Athletic Director who needed a coach who would never call him a "cunt" and a nice-guy coach who needed to leave his job before he was shown the door. At best, Riley might turn Nebraska's bigger spotlight and budget into the recruiting boom Corvallis could never offer. At worst, at least if Riley didn't win, he wouldn't lose while cussing out everyone in sight and giving his players Stockholm Syndrome.
If it worked, it would be genius. Eichorst would risk everything by hiring the wrong guy to set up the right guy like Maverick bringing the bogey in closer to pull the old "hit the brakes, he'll fly right by" maneuver.
Mike and crew won the offseason in a blowout. They said and did all the right things, saved a few key recruits, marketed the program on Twitter, made inroads with blue chip high school prospects. A promising QB committed, Keyshawn Johnson has been visible in Lincoln early and often. Former players were welcomed back like royalty.
Like the poster on Fox Mulder's wall, you wanted to believe.
It was all as warm and reassuring as a Mike Riley smile. Except that it wasn't, if you knew where to look.
A lifelong Bears fan, I had just learned a harsh lesson about how well a Grey-Cup-winning, say-all-the-right-things, savvy-pro-style-offensive-mind translates into the head coaching position nobody seemed to want to give him. Marc Trestman seems like a super nice guy and a great caller of pass plays. He was a disaster as a head coach. After a brief flash of promise, the Bears nose-dived into one of the worst teams in the NFL. They chucked the ball all over the field, treating rushing like an afterthought, and put increased pressure on an already-suspect defense. The flash of promise disappeared, the losses mounted, and Trestman was fired, as was the GM who hired him.
Soon after, here came Riley with his kind words, Grey Cup, and absolutely no achievements of substance or promotions to big jobs in college football. I had seen this movie before.
Now, here we are. It's November, and Nebraska just gave up 55 to Purdue. I say again, Nebraska just gave up 55 to Purdue. The words "rock bottom" have appeared in every article I've read about the team over the last two days.
^ Get it? It's the Rock Bottom.
Eichorst's bold plan is looking less like a slick move that positions him for missile lock and more like this:
You'd tell me I'm wrong...but I'm not. Tell me that this isn't the PERFECT background music for how you feel when you realize NU is going to lose its last two games and miss out on a bowl. You look at that box score and something inside you goes, "GOOOOOOOOOSE!!! Awwww no......aw no...."
I've seen enough by now to tell you this: Mike Riley and this staff will never turn Nebraska into an elite program.
You might as well fire them now and save yourself another three years of arguing over it.
Don't start. I hear you thinking it, and shut...the hell...up. "If we fire a coach after one year then nobody will ever..."
Shut up. Nobody wants the job now.
Nobody wanted the job last year. That's how we wound up with a nobody hire.
Whatever Nebraska football was in the 70s, 80s, 90s, that's dead now and the really good coaches don't want the Nebraska job. How do I know? The best NU could do with a coaching vacancy was Mike Riley. If you believe for one minute he was their first choice for head coach and nobody else turned them down, I wanna sell you some oceanfront property just outside of Lincoln.
Nebraska has made 3 coaching hires in 11 years and Pelini was the only one that made a scrap of sense at the time.
Michigan got Harbaugh, Texas got Charlie Strong. Pat Narduzzi, defensive mastermind behind Michigan State's elite defenses of late, went to Pitt. Fucking PITT. Okay, so maybe you didn't want to hire the defensive coordinator with the Italian last name so soon. But hell, even Wisconsin got Paul Chryst. I don't think a ton of Chryst, but at least he appeared on short lists for big jobs. Strong is a disaster at Texas, but while he was pulling upsets at Vandy, everyone was calling him. At least the 'Horns can look back and say, "It seemed like a good idea at the time."
Know whose name was on zero lists of coveted coaches? Give yourself a piece of leftover Halloween candy if you said "Mike Riley." No hire is a sure thing, but the fact that Nebraska settled for a 61-year-old you've never heard of tells you everything you need to know about how prestigious the Huskers are outside their own fanbase. This hire seemed like a confusing idea from the start.
And that's where Nebraska is in 2015. So don't tell me nobody will want us if we do this. Nobody does want us. Nobody has wanted us.
This staff will never be good for the same reason that Michigan is already good again: Soft football. Michigan was a soft team loaded with talent in 2014. The Wolverines did away with soft football the minute Harbaugh stepped on campus. At Michigan from here on out, you'll fight for your job and fight dirty, or you'll ride pine, and then you'l leave. If you come to Ann Arbor in 2015 and beyond, you can expect to leave bruised and battered whether or not you leave a winner. Just like that, they're a competitive football team again.
If you come to Lincoln, you can expect a team that starts its worst runner at running back and throws 45+ times a game because gosh, it sure has been "tough sledding" trying to run the ball. A team that considers 3rd & 3 a passing situation. An offensive coordinator who (we must assume) will spontaneously combust if he calls three run plays in a row.
That's losing football. It's not a sin to pass, but no coach has ever won it all that answered "both" when asked if it couldn't run or wouldn't run. Power football is about a 70/30 above the neck/below the neck proposition. Name for me the National Champion, recent or otherwise, that couldn't or wouldn't run the ball. I'll wait.
A throwing team that can't run peaks at mediocre. A running team that can't throw peaks at #1. Ask Scott Frost and Tim Tebow, two barely-serviceable passers with two things in common: The will to drop a shoulder into linebackers for tough yards until somebody's will broke, and championship rings.
In 2015, Nebraska's coaches say running is just too tough. So they have to throw first and run just a little, when it looks easy. That never works. With an NFL QB in Manion throwing to NFL WRs in Cooks and Wheaton in Langsdorf's offense, Oregon State was still pretty bad. So bad that hometown nice guy Mike Riley was wearing out his welcome at a doormat school. Even when June Jones's Run & Shoot was clicking in Hawaii and Colt Brennan was shattering passing records, that team was pretty bad. Passing teams don't win college football titles.
Neither do these coaches. Riley is 62. His coordinators are not young men, either. If they were world beaters, you'd have heard about it by now. This isn't the chance they never got, it's the chance they never earned.
So fire them now and start again. Skip the part where you give them more time. Skip the part where a scapegoat coordinator or position coach gets replaced. Skip Patrick O'Brien throwing for 400 yards in 45-52 losses. Skip three more years of soft football. Burn the whole thing down.
Who do you hire next? I don't know. You can't know who the next great coach will be, you can only know who it isn't. It isn't Riley. It wasn't Pelini, either.
The 90s are dead and gone, and so is this staff. We just haven't told them yet. We'll be having this same conversation in 2017, about whether this team can't run or won't, which of those begets the other, and how much time is enough time for a coach. We shouldn't...but we will. Then Riley will be forced out and we'll start the process again.
Have a nice three years.
No comments:
Post a Comment