I continue to believe this team is so fundementally different from coaching and QB that might as well have a new coach and nothing that is occured the last 10 years is relevant to predicting outcomes for future results this year.
Colandrea >> Raiola (in a Holgerson offense with imperfect oline)
Jeepe >>>>> Donnie (Traded the worst Oline Coach in FCS for a good FCS line coach)
The combination of the getting a QB that provides a true dual threat and having a competent oline coach is game changer on that side than cannot be overstated. Additionally, Colandrea has been much better at protecting the football in this offense than he was in past increasing his likelyhood of winning games.
Aurich >>>>>>>>>> Butler
Butler was completely in over his head and running that stupid 3 man front with Juedy seemingly daring teams to run it down our throat. Was semi effective until Penn State took us up on the offer and other power running teams followed suite with Butler making no adjustments. Aurich has us in a much better scheme for talent, seems to develop guys as defense meshing much better and has guys playing much fastser and with greater physicality. Additionally I love the 3rd down package with Nwareni at end and Merrit/D Jones/or a corner like oden blitzing. Such a huge upgrade from Butler. How that hire was ever made last year is beyond me and effecitely eliminated any chance for break out in year 3.
Short of it is Rhule simply made some terrible hires early on picking guys that were not Big Ten level coaches and in some cases not FCS coaches with most offensive of those hires listed.
Satterfield as OC
Foley as Special Teams Coach
Butler as DC
Additionally we touched upon retaining the worst oline coach in FCS football to get a highly ranked legacy QB that was not a great fit and was not mobile. That was a double whammy that made us soft upfront on offense and lended itself to calling a soft game plane for QB strengths. Kong likes to troll, but was 100% right that this was a soft a$$ team last year.
I think we have addressesd most of the staff issues ands now have a competitive Big Ten coaching staff with a potential high end DC if Aurich develops the way I think he will.
Base on all that I am drinnking Kool-aid and ignorning the negative for now (there are some). My updated my season predictions
8-4 or 9-3
This is aligned with current ESPN FPI projecting 8.8 wins and 14 best team in country. Model expected roughly 10 point win against MSU on nuetral field and game played out that way. Following is order of projected outcomes, best to worst from current FPI
Maryland, Rutgers, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Oregon, OSU
On nuetral field model has us favored (average outcome) in every game through Iowa where we are slight favorites or basically pick em. It has us as roughly 5-8 point dogs against Indiana/Oregon and predicts OSU would win by double digits. Interestingly this model would expect 6-10 point losses (location based) to both Oregon and Indiana so those will be interesting games to see if we have truly made that much progess in ability to compete against good teams. For the gamblers, the current Oregon line is vastly disconnected from predictive models at 23.5. Oregon is fully capable of beating most teams by that margin at Autzen but still interesting enough to think about for gamblers.
Looking at eyeball test, I believe the team is aligned to being a 8-9 win team with this schedule assuming 4-5 guys (including Rhule/Colandrea) stay healthy and team improves some like they should. While this may trigger some folks that are fans of other teams or hate Matt Rhule, model does give us a 25% chance to make playoffs which was much higher than I expect or truly believe is accurate. At that percentage, it is assuming there are 9-3 scenarios where Nebraska gets in as model only predicts 8 teams winning more than 10 games.
FPI High Level Nuggets
Win Total - 8.8
Playoff % - 25%
Likelyhood of losing to both Indiana and Oregon - 48%
Colandrea >> Raiola (in a Holgerson offense with imperfect oline)
Jeepe >>>>> Donnie (Traded the worst Oline Coach in FCS for a good FCS line coach)
The combination of the getting a QB that provides a true dual threat and having a competent oline coach is game changer on that side than cannot be overstated. Additionally, Colandrea has been much better at protecting the football in this offense than he was in past increasing his likelyhood of winning games.
Aurich >>>>>>>>>> Butler
Butler was completely in over his head and running that stupid 3 man front with Juedy seemingly daring teams to run it down our throat. Was semi effective until Penn State took us up on the offer and other power running teams followed suite with Butler making no adjustments. Aurich has us in a much better scheme for talent, seems to develop guys as defense meshing much better and has guys playing much fastser and with greater physicality. Additionally I love the 3rd down package with Nwareni at end and Merrit/D Jones/or a corner like oden blitzing. Such a huge upgrade from Butler. How that hire was ever made last year is beyond me and effecitely eliminated any chance for break out in year 3.
Short of it is Rhule simply made some terrible hires early on picking guys that were not Big Ten level coaches and in some cases not FCS coaches with most offensive of those hires listed.
Satterfield as OC
Foley as Special Teams Coach
Butler as DC
Additionally we touched upon retaining the worst oline coach in FCS football to get a highly ranked legacy QB that was not a great fit and was not mobile. That was a double whammy that made us soft upfront on offense and lended itself to calling a soft game plane for QB strengths. Kong likes to troll, but was 100% right that this was a soft a$$ team last year.
I think we have addressesd most of the staff issues ands now have a competitive Big Ten coaching staff with a potential high end DC if Aurich develops the way I think he will.
Base on all that I am drinnking Kool-aid and ignorning the negative for now (there are some). My updated my season predictions
8-4 or 9-3
This is aligned with current ESPN FPI projecting 8.8 wins and 14 best team in country. Model expected roughly 10 point win against MSU on nuetral field and game played out that way. Following is order of projected outcomes, best to worst from current FPI
Maryland, Rutgers, Washington, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Oregon, OSU
On nuetral field model has us favored (average outcome) in every game through Iowa where we are slight favorites or basically pick em. It has us as roughly 5-8 point dogs against Indiana/Oregon and predicts OSU would win by double digits. Interestingly this model would expect 6-10 point losses (location based) to both Oregon and Indiana so those will be interesting games to see if we have truly made that much progess in ability to compete against good teams. For the gamblers, the current Oregon line is vastly disconnected from predictive models at 23.5. Oregon is fully capable of beating most teams by that margin at Autzen but still interesting enough to think about for gamblers.
Looking at eyeball test, I believe the team is aligned to being a 8-9 win team with this schedule assuming 4-5 guys (including Rhule/Colandrea) stay healthy and team improves some like they should. While this may trigger some folks that are fans of other teams or hate Matt Rhule, model does give us a 25% chance to make playoffs which was much higher than I expect or truly believe is accurate. At that percentage, it is assuming there are 9-3 scenarios where Nebraska gets in as model only predicts 8 teams winning more than 10 games.
FPI High Level Nuggets
Win Total - 8.8
Playoff % - 25%
Likelyhood of losing to both Indiana and Oregon - 48%