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In
2004 Steve Pederson hired Bill Callahan as the new football
coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Big Red fans where
ecstatic. After a 5-6 record in 2004, an 8-4 season in
2005, Callahan and the Huskers came back in 2006 with
a 9-5 record and won the Big 12 North for the first time
since 1999. Everyone thought 2007 would be NU's year.
What happened? How did this train go so far off the tracks? |
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I
think that we can trace this back to that fateful day of August
24th, following practice that very afternoon. What seemed at
the time to be routine in fact turned out to be the beginning
of the end, albeit in retrospect. You see that is when Bo Ruud,
Brett Byford and Zack Bowman were elected captains of the 2007
Nebraska Cornhuskers by
their peers.
Why this date you may ask? Well, there was one vocal player
who thought that he should have been elected captain - none
other than everyone's favorite sound byte, Corey McKeon. From
that point on he seemed to make it a point to act out against
the coaching staff and many of his teammates. The locker room
seemed to have another dynamic in which to cope with - an extremely
unhappy McKeon.
The late nights out on the town seemed to get later, and more
frequent. He herded in his closest compatriots on the team,
and they have drawn a divide between the team. There is a faction
of the team who had begun to foster the disdain towards the
walk-ons, as this too has been aided by our very own coaching
staff. They have been treated as almost a second citizen, a
lower life form if you will.
The losses began to mount and the pressure has been thrust upon
these coaches. They have in turn turned on some of the current
players. These players, and others, have then turned on one
another. There is no trust left in that locker room and no one
seemingly willing to step in and fill the leadership void. This
is evidenced by Zack Bowman turning in his "blackshirt"
and nary a soul following his lead. Even our own Defensive Coordinator,
Kevin Cosgrove, has seemed unwilling to step in and put an end
to this fiasco on his defense.
There is no longer any trust between these kids, there is no
leadership. Where does that start? Where does it stop? Well
you need look no further than the man charged with leading this
program back to the top of the college football landscape. In
what is eerily reminiscent of his last days as an Oakland Raider,
coach Callahan seems to be losing this team - mentally and emotionally.
There are the recruiting pitches that many of these kids had
received.
Promises of NFL glory, of readying themselves for "The
League" by practicing with the NFL mentality, the polishing
of their Public Relation skills (actually the first thing that
they are taught upon their arrival) and of playing in an NFL
style offense. Sadly these
things are what seem to be at the root of what ails the Nebraska
football program.
The culture has changed in Lincoln.
Bill Callahan has succeeded in transforming Nebraska Football
away from a multiple power running offense. But the question
begs, is that a good thing? That is left to individual opinion.
The results of changing the things that made Nebraska successful
over the past few decades have been record-setting – they
just aren't the type of records that the hard working folks
of the great state of Nebraska were quite expecting.
So while there are many reasons as to why this has gotten so
bad so quickly I think that the above noted things are at least
at the core of the problem. Lincoln is a different place these
days - that much probably goes without saying. |
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| Jacob
Mann Jones |
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This
is a hard question to answer. I think if you look back on 2005
and 2006 the signs were there. Despite nice records and almost
knocking off Texas, Callahan's biggest win was over a very mediocre
Michigan team that had basically given up on the season. And
then there were all those losses that shouldn't have happened.
Kansas 2005, Oklahoma State 2006, Southern Miss 2004, etc...
The signs were there, but they were masked by a decent record,
a trip to the Big XII Championship Game and solid defensive
performances against two teams with very mediocre offenses in
Oklahoma and Auburn.
Looking at what always concerned me, the lack of running game
and defense, and you see that these are the two biggest problems
now. Zone run blocking is the trend in football, but to me the
best way to run block is to get lower than the other guy and
fire out hard. When you watch our offensive line, they pretty
much stand straight up on the snap of the ball and play patty-cake
with the defenders. And offensively, Callahan is of the NFL
mindset and for some reason refuses to go to his playmakers
as often as he should. There is no reason for Maurice Purify
to not have close to 1000 yards and 15 touchdowns this season.
As far as the defense goes, Cosgrove was never particularly
great, but this year is beyond comprehension to me. I wish I
could say what is happening.
These problems aside, this team should still have been 9-3 at
worst, this season. There is talent there. However, the team's
confidence was shaken after the USC game and they never regained
it. It became a quicksand effect, like one player said last
week. And the coaches have done nothing to help get them out
of it. I believe this is, at least in part, due to the team
not really believing in the systems they were being taught. |
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| Jeremy
Ryan |
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In
my opinion I believe the perverbial snowball started "forming"
when John Blake resigned in December of 2006. Reports I have
heard indicated Blake had serious differences with Defensive
Coordinator Kevin Cosgrove and then in turn with Head Coach
Bill Callahan who of course took Cozgrove's side. Blake reportedly
told someone he considered staying at Nebraska to be "career
suicide".
That snowball I believe started "rolling" after the
USC loss this year (2007). Numerous sources indicated that Callahan
had a verbal confrontation with Cozgrove and that most players
were aware of it. Not only was there a confrontation but Callahan
became heavily involved with the defense the following week
during practice. The relationship between the two friends became
strained, it carried over to practice and game preparation,
found it's way into the players' heads and now the snowball
is too big to be dealt with.
That loss of such a close, spiritual leader as John Blake was
a bigger void than many may ever know. Combined with the strife
between other coaches on the staff, probably a doubt about the
game plans and play calls combined with poor play that I have
to blame on their mental states kept getting worse and worse.
I don't believe the players quit on Nebraska but I do believe
they have quit on certain coaches and in turn I believe certain
coaches have quit all together. I believe Callahan and Cosgrove
saw the writing on the wall when Pedersen was fired and they
were reportedly asked to resign with buyouts on the table. At
that point they continued to talk a good game if you will but
they never cared about the outcome of the games and that has
became more and more evident as time has passed by. Why one
or both of them didn't quit or agree to the buyout offers is
beyond me. They will easily go down as the two worst coaches
to ever have been at the University of Nebraska. |
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| Bryan
Smith |
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It
started with lowered expectations. Using a “culture change”
as a convenient excuse, Bill Callahan tried to force square
pegs into round holes in 2004, allowing NU to slide to a 5-6
record and breaking the consecutive bowl game and non-losing
season streaks in the process. These new depths magnified any
signs of progress out of any and all proportion. The constant
bemoaning of the “talent gap” went on and on, and
yet to this day, there are still several starters and major
contributors on the squad who were originally recruited by Frank
Solich, despite all the 5- and 4-star recruits Callahan and
crew have brought in during four full recruiting seasons.
These lowered expectations allowed an 8-4 campaign in 2005 seem
like a renaissance, despite gut-wrenching blowout losses at
Kansas and Missouri, and a razor-thin victory over a very mediocre
Michigan team in the Alamo Bowl marking the season’s highpoint.
Again, Solich recruits were the backbone of the squad.
Bear in mind that the Big 12 North Divisional Champions were
getting their backsides handed to them in the Conference Championship
game each of these years, and the North was getting more anemic
with each passing year, with 2006 marking the overall low point.
After winning the mini-championship of this sallow Division,
(despite embarrassing losses to Southern California and Oklahoma
State), the Huskers laid an egg against 10th-ranked Auburn in
the 2007 Cotton Bowl, with the coaching staff displaying a startling
inability to make coherent and necessary adjustments at halftime,
and blowing a game they should have won going away. Three very
special players, Adam Carricker, Jay Moore, and Stewart Bradley
– all Solich refugees, had used their exceptional talents
and leadership to mask a great deal of the coaches’ inadequacies,
but their graduations marked an even greater loss. These three,
along with Zac Taylor and several less prominent players were
TEAM players, playing FOR Nebraska, instead of merely AT Nebraska
on the way to the NFL.
The perception of the University of Nebraska as a stepping stone
to the pros was actively promoted and nurtured by the coaching
staff, and it brought in players with obvious skills, but without
the team chemistry and esprit de corps that had ALWAYS been
a hallmark of Husker football. These guys were for the most
part great individual players, but were not brought into an
environment that required or promoted cohesion as a TEAM.
It is a recipe for disaster that has played itself out at Notre
Dame, at Texas, and is beginning to rear its ugly head again
at Southern Cal. We should have known better, but chose to ignore
history’s simple equation: Great individual players do
not always equal great teams. At Notre Dame and Texas, one top
five recruiting class after another came and went, but no National
titles came until a freakishly great player named Vince Young
got to Texas, (and was obviously allowed to skate academically
for three years). At Southern Cal, they’ve won a couple
of National Championships, but the individuality of their players
is starting to detract from the team concepts that make true
college football Dynasties, which the 21st century USC program
has never been, despite the media’s breathless attempts
to crown them as one.
At Nebraska, Bill Callahan brought an NFL mentality to the game.
He recruited too many players whose only motivation for coming
to Lincoln was to get to the pros. He embraced “systems”
over team chemistry – also a holdover from the NFL. In
the NFL, only the systems remain constant, as free agency, retirement
and injuries cause players to come and go at a moment’s
notice. When they are lost, the organization, (a term Callahan
has used on more than one occasion used to describe the Huskers),
simply mines the waiver wire or draft board to obtain players
who fit that system. In the college game, it is the wise and
successful coach that surveys the talent onhand, and configures
his offense and defense to fit those players’ particular
skills and talents. Callahan has never, NEVER done this to any
particular degree.
Lastly, there has been a stunning and embarrassing lack of player
development by this staff. A 4- or 5-star high school player
who arrives at NU is at the peak of his skills, because he won’t
be improved by the coaching he receives while at NU under BC
& company. While those innate abilities and high school
skills allowed them to dominate in high school, they’ll
quickly be overtaken by the advancing skills of opponent players
who are being actively developed by their coaches. Last Saturday
was a perfect example of this, as NU, whose roster is peppered
with these 4- and 5-star recruits, was thoroughly dominated
and humiliated by a Kansas team who had exactly ZERO such recruits
on their roster.
The fall from grace for the University of Nebraska football
team only seems precipitous, but it’s actually been brewing
from day one of the Callahan Error. |
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| Mark
Solomon |
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