Transfer rb?
- Thread starter nnelson2410
- Start date
really? the entire rb room is either receiver body types, or small rb who can catch the ball out of the backfield (this is what Dana loves) and the only other rb who has some size to him, is a millard north local guy that the staff felt they had to offer.. and we aren't sure if he is d1 talent or not at this point.
Rhule himself said they don't value the rb position.. they treat it more like another receiver position.. I can't believe I am getting multiple questions on this, as it's been obvious for years.
Why do we have a need at TE? Markway, Lindenmeyer, Echternach, Nelson, and Ingwerson are all back. Danny King also listed as a TE. Yeah you take a TE if he’s a difference maker, but Lindenmeyer is your starter and he’s going to end up on an NFL roster. I don’t say that about many of our players. Nelson and Echternach have played a lot with Echternach being a better blocking TE. I expect Nelson’s role to increase with Haarberg's departure. I’ve heard they really like Ingwerson as well but he hasn’t been able to climb the depth chart. I have no idea if Danny King will ever play or not. Didn’t we take another TE in our high school class?
well you are the king of making **** up on this site.. so at least you're being honest on this part.
Last listing was 215 and last time I saw him he looked heavier than that. That said, we have plenty of WRs. I’m not sure his hands are good enough to play WR but I’m not discounting the idea that he could.
he was recruited here as a WR.. 6-3" 180 lbs.. he's now listed close to 220 I think, which is about the right weight that you need for a RB, but his leverage is all wrong, because of his height.. you really want a guy 5'11-6'1 to be at that 220 pound weight. Everything they do in that RB room is either pass blocking or screen plays out of the rb position. When everything broke down after DR got injured, they had to resort to some counter running plays that EJ turned into his bread and butter.. but none of that was in the play rotation prior to the QB getting injured. That was just a rudimental running game wrinkle that Dana put in that EJ had success with.. until we got into the red zone, then we could not punch it in because we didn't have the personnel to do it.
We have 2 RBs on the roster over 220lbs. Nelson is right at 200 lbs. Have you ever tackled a 200 lb RB? We make it sound like 6’ 200lbs is small. That’s 15 lbs heavier than what Marlon Lucky actually played at. Shoot I don’t think Burkhead was ever over 200 lbs before he worked on his size for the combine.
This place has a bias that assumes that a kid is dog **** if he hasn’t cracked the 2 deep by the middle of his second year. That’s especially foolish for linemen and TEs but I guarantee you that Booth would be just fine as a short yardage big back IF they called on him. I think sometimes we put too much emphasis on guys who can win a 40 yard race and not enough value on guys who can run over a safety on the way to a first down.
I recall Ives being recruited as an athlete who could play RB or WR. That’s true of a lot of recruits. There are multiple guys in the NFL playing RB who were college WRs.
The one RB I'll give you on that front is Mozee. He has a WR body. Ives is tall, but not lanky, shifty, or shows flex, in my opinion.
I like the small sample size of Nelson a lot. Vision and burst in the bowl game... all behind that struggling line. Runs mean and with emotion.
I don't trust this staff's talent evaluation whatsoever as clearly evidenced by the RB position, and even overlooking EJ as long as they did. Normally I would say we need another TE. But if Ingwerson or Echternach is the next stud, we don't need another TE. I've only seen tiny slivers of Ingwerson who looks like he has potential.
Mozee had some great runs early in the year against weak teams. I’m optimistic about what he can be with more time in the weight room and maturity. He’s an explosive athlete IMO who needs to become more confident. Really he reminds me a lot of what EJ looked like early on. People forget how indecisive EJ was early on.
well this makes sense, because Rhule and Co. have an NFL mindset.. which is part of the problem.
As to Nelson, I guess he's still young.. I didn't really follow how he got here.. similar to the Mozee situation, but in the limited time, I've seen nothing out of those guys that says either are elite running backs.
See, we don't actually do that anymore.. we don't run the football, which is a big part of the problem. Matt Rhule thinks, oh, Nebraska fans want a dual threat QB.. hmm okay, and he agrees with this piece of it, to give us some mobility, but his actions, are not that of trying to build a team that can run the ball.
He does acknowledge that the offensive line needs work, but only because they suck at pass pro. When they actually needed the line to block for the run game part way through the season, it wasn't that bad, and got better by the end, so much so, that they wanted to run a heisman campaign for EJ.. the whole thing was just silly.
The point is, Matt is not getting "real" running backs in here.. not the actual elite runners.. and so whatever Colandrea gives us with mobility and some inherent run game scrambling, that will be the extent of the run game next year.
Matt has not changed his stripes, so for all of his talk of "toughness" mentality, he still wants to field a finesse team, rather than one that matches the toughness mantra that he's "sold" the fanbase.
You don’t think EJ was tough? Gottula gutted out a leg injury for weeks before he finally had to give up. Lindenmeyer wasn’t tough? You’re confusing success with toughness. You can be tough and still lose games. Football isn’t just lining up and running over people even though I wish we could. We’ve made an effort in the portal to beef up our lines. We’ll see if it helps.
Uhm, it's Rhule who is calling out that he wants a tougher team, that his players are not tough enough.. I haven't said that at all.
Here is what I think... I think Rhule sells husker fans hope with things like "toughness" etc, which creates visions of the 90's and running the ball again.. everyone knows that we need to do that again, even Fred Hoiberg.
But here we are looking at how things are shaping up with the class and the portal, and we aren't seeing a push for elite rb talent, instead we see them not wanting to pay for that at all..
They are supposedly paying out more for line talent, and that is looking decent, and they put together a good QB room, no doubt about that, and it cost them a good chunk of change.
But the actions tell me it's again trying to be more balanced of a finesse team.. he's not going out to get a tough running team.. and some people are still under the illusion that he intends to do that.
EJ got more work in the back half of the 2023 season because of injuries and the fact Grant was a bit of a knothead. We saw what he might become as a RS freshman. But because EJ was so dominant this year, Nelson and Mozee didn’t get those carries.
It seems the coaches are satisfied with the room, and the roster budget doesn’t include a bigger payout for the RB room.
it's strange to me that now that playing players is legal we are not searching high and low in every country for the next lp
I hope we just take the points and attempt a FG. Don't listen to our QB who always, 100% of the time, said we should go for it.
Nelson ran for 100 yard in his first opportinty?
Are we talking high school or something? Dude has not rushed for a 100 yards in a game!!! He barely rushed for 100 on the year. His first opportunity went for a zero gain
I think you’re rounding up for the Utah game. But he didn’t rush for 100. The problem I have with the Utah game being his bench mark is he has big run that was the benefit of an easy read. Otherwise his game was just meh. Hes a DBC back. He has no yardage after contact.
The other big problem is he lacks rhythm. He isn’t even close to where he needs to be on slower developing blocking schemes. Dudes good when it’s a quick hitter and lanes wide open but who isn’t. This isn’t high school. You aren’t going get that a lot. On many running plays you need to know the rhythm of your line. You have to follow the blocking just perfect or you’re going to be met at the line. That’s why he and Ives are hit so much at the line. They are a step early or late
he’s solid at catching the ball in the backfield. I’ll give him that. But that’s because he has to have space to do anything and he can’t create it himself
want to know who doesn’t screw around with RBs? The good teams that win. That’s who. Rhule isn’t that.
save me “I believe in Coach” spill. coach is a full season behind being .500 and has had 1 good coaching year going into year 10.
Rhule had his chance with 2 backs that are heavily contributors for playoff teams and he whiffed. These guys are clueless.
F AROUND AND FIND OUT (FAFO)
Barthel won’t be coaching in 2027. He will be next years target
Last edited:
Agreed. Unless we have confidence they’ll develop the recruits we got in the last couple classes but I haven’t seen strong evidence of that.
You don't not get carries because one RB is "dominant". You don't get those carries because the coaching staff doesn't trust you. I agree with Dingle for once in that Penn State probably had two running backs that were better than EJ. But they each didn't have near the same yardage as EJ because they were splitting carries and sharing the load. It was very obvious that EJ was completely gassed at times and yet he still wasn't subbed out because the coaching staff didn't trust anybody else.
Nelson kind of showed up out of nowhere in the summer of 24, he reclassified into the 24 class and signed in the summer. He was Kewan Lacy's replacement after he bailed on us.
Last edited:
We're failing miserably if so. There were at least 30 or so running backs better than what we have entered into the portal.
Just a bumbling moron. I could pick a poster here at random to do what he does.
You do rememberTom called LP the greatest college RB he had ever seen. Ever. Virtually everybody is looking for “the next LP” and virtually everybody is failing.
Which portal RB did you want WHO WOULD SIGN WITH US and how much were you willing to pay him?
the heavyweight champ is from ukraine...
maybe the next heismen rb is overseas?
seeing rhule probably can't be bothered to visit la urban high schools..
in all seriousness alot of the problem seems we never blow people out, so we never get a look at the second and 3rd string rb anymore...
so we don't know who the hell is there????
and for some reason rhule looks down on rb's...maybe it's cause he had a decent qb at baylor so he's more qb's minded and oblivious to the NU tradition of running the ball/moving chains/4th quarter?
and clueless how dr. tom used to develop #2 rb's with playing time
Last edited:
Only taking issue with nobody developed EJ. Simply not true, and it tells me you've never played sports. At least not well past 10 years old
Would he sign with us and at what price? You have no idea. Maybe we have talked to his agent.
It's how much you value running backs, I think if Nebraska wanted to they could have signed any of the running backs from 7-30, but instead we took three journey men defensive lineman which is also a need but I don't know if any of them are any good. A backup at Pittsburgh, a guy who missed all of last season with the injury, and Mr five schools in 5 years guy.
That’s what he just did. He added more rope to hang himself. But don’t worry he can still fire EJ next year and blame him
And you think we should have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for even the number 7 RB in the portal? Not in the country but in the portal. Mmm okay.