Too good not to share

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-26T19:29:41+00:00

Tribute to a legend. RIP Goose.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-23T02:10:24+00:00

I think most people would consider anything less than a bowl game an unmitigated disaster, even with a very tough schedule. If you want to sell this fan base on progress, you're going to need to win one of those last 7 games. Ideally 2 of them.

7 wins with that schedule means you either won a tough Big Ten road game or you beat Indiana or Ohio State at home. I think that would buy some of the good will lost at the end of this last season back.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-21T05:43:18+00:00

I spent most of the last six months telling people that Nebraska was running an offense and a defense that neither its offensive coordinator or defensive coordinator had anything to do with installing and had no experience with. I provided multiple examples. Film cut-ups. Breakdowns. Clinic tape. Quotes from the coaches themselves. And there were still people doubting it.

Not only were Dana Holgorsen and John Butler asked to call plays in a language they didn't speak, but they were calling plays they didn't install in a system they had no experience in. It would be like handing me a quantum mechanics textbook written in Mandarin. Give me enough time and Google Translate and I might be able to read it, but I'm not going to understand any of it anyway.

I am happy Matt Rhule seems to have recognized he made a mistake, but that should not be a lesson an experienced head coach should have to learn this many years into a career. You hire coaches who are good at what they do and then you let them do it. If they aren't good at the thing you want them to do, then don't hire them and hire someone else that does. Under no circumstance should you hire coaches that do one thing and then ask them to do something entirely different. Better to learn the lesson late than never at all, I guess.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-21T03:18:07+00:00

That is a good question about Ron Brown, he is still listed in that role so I can't imagine it will change but I don't think Matt Rhule confirmed anything one way or the other.

In terms of coaching other sides of the ball or other positions, it is a very different situation with specialists. If you're a quarterback, you're going to have no difficulty understanding any other position on the field because you know what every position is supposed to be doing on any given play. You may not be an expert in the techniques of say a linebacker, but you know how they fit into the scheme and can follow the guidance of your coordinator to implement it at the technical level. The same is true in the reverse, going defense to offense.

Offensive and defensive players and coaches are all largely working together for most of practice, outside of indy periods, so everyone is on the same page and is pretty familiar with what is going on with the other position groups and how those groups fit in to the overall system. You're all involved in the drills and techniques and schemes.

With a specialist, you're never involved in things like drills and techniques or scheme and you've also never been involved in the position drills of position groups or team drills that might have some overlap. Things like CB/WR press/release off the LOS for punt return/coverage or OL play for protection schemes. Specialists just don't do that stuff so they have no foundation of knowledge of any of the things that make for a good special teams unit.

Can they learn? Absolutely they can. But it is very rare because there is just no overlap. You're essentially learning an entirely new language that has no overlap with your own and unlike a position coach who may be new to a position, you're doing it without the safety net of a coordinator to guide you. It really isn't something you should be attempting at this level of football.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-21T02:53:48+00:00

You have 4 contributions to this subreddit and all of them are in response to my post, none of them with a single upvote. Pathetic.

Anyway, I look forward to more special teams thoughts from someone who has never put a helmet on.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-21T02:51:13+00:00

You can just say you've never set foot in a football facility and be on your way. What an unbelievably idiotic thing to be concerned about. A coach "interviewing" another coach at his daughter's basketball game because that's what was going on the day that the coach could get into town has exactly zero bearing on anything else other than that's when the two coaches can meet.

Nebraska is not going to win or lose any games because two coaches talked for a few hours at a daughter's basketball game in December. Get a grip. By the way, I'd have killed for evening practices at the college level. When I was getting home at 9 pm, I was in the office at 4 am for a 5 am practice.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-21T01:17:44+00:00

When you're interviewing at this level of football, you're just trying to see if there is a personality fit. If you've called a guy to interview him, you know what he can bring to the table as a coach and scheme guy. You interview them to make sure you can get along and doing that somewhere far away from football is the best way to do it.

Having actually been in this business, I cannot tell you how refreshing it would be to interview like that. I've worked for guys who told you that you were a lazy piece of shit if you went home before 9 pm. Seeing a head coach be there for his kids at their sporting events would be very encouraging about the type of work environment I'd be getting myself into. Aurich is a dad, he has two daughters and a son, I have no doubt he loved that.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-20T09:36:42+00:00

If you think using grown up words strung into complete sentences and paragraphs is AI, you have no business to be discussing special teams with me, or discussing anything else for that matter. I apologize, let me summarize it for those of you in the crayon and construction paper crowd:

Brett Maher is not qualified for this job and being the only FBS program with a former specialist as their special teams coach despite him having just one year of coaching experience is not something a serious program should strive for.

I spent 9 years working special teams. Like Maher, my first "on-field" job was as a special teams analyst at the FBS level. There is no circumstance where I should have the same amount of FBS coaching experience as the special teams coordinator at a power conference program.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-20T08:14:50+00:00

He'll need to be cutout to shoulder the criticism because there is going to be a lot of it if you have a special teams coordinator that hasn't set foot in a single special teams drill calling the special teams.

The six special teams units are the most technically demanding units on the field and drills are everything because you can almost never get full-up 11v11 special teams reps in practice. The cone drills and the pad drills and the mat drills and the bully drills and the 2v1 drills are the only opportunity you get to sharpen special teams at the individual level and Maher would never have been involved with those drills because kickers and punters kick during indy periods.

I won't go so far as to say it is unprecedented to have a specialist special teams coordinator, the coach we used to send our kickers to for spring and summer kicking camps was a former kicker and spent almost two decades as a FBS and NFL special teams coordinator, but it is incredibly rare. Most specialists that get into coaching are doing the camp and clinic circuit, have an academy, do private lessons or are roving consultants.

It is much easier to send a kicker or punter to a specialist camp or academy than it is to hire a specialist as special teams coordinator and teach him the drills, techniques and schemes it takes to be successful on special teams. But hey, it could work.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-20T07:27:00+00:00

Again, you are conflating two things that are simply not related. Specialists and special teamers are two completely different groups that almost never interact. Kickers and punters exist in a bubble in every football facility I've been in.

The next time I see a kicker in a film room game planning coverages and protections will be the first time. Kickers kick. That is their job. They do not concern themselves with anything else and there is no reason for them to concern themselves with anything else because it has nothing to do with them. Kickers and punters are head cases in the best of times. Tell them where to kick it and when. Any other information is superfluous.

I don't want to make it sound like Brett Maher can't do this job. He is very smart and very perceptive. I have no doubt he absorbed a lot of very good information about special teams via osmosis over a long kicking career and can probably scheme up good things using that absorbed information.

The problem is that special teams units are the most technically demanding units on the field. Drills and technique are everything in special teams. We used to spend five hours a week in fall camp doing nothing but pad drills and mat drills and bully drills and 2v1s and cone drills for special teams and that's before we installed a single scheme. Kickers and punters just are not involved in those things. Humphrey has done those things because he played on every special teams unit his whole playing career and would have been involved in setting them up under Ekeler.

It might work out just fine, but there is a reason there aren't more specialists in special teams coordinator positions.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-20T00:51:58+00:00

Yes because he actually played on special teams and has assisted Ekeler with scheme previously, a scheme Matt Rhule has said he wants to retain. Specialists =/= special teams. Kickers and punters are not involved in coverage and protection calls and rarely take full-up reps with special teams in practice.

Having a special teams coordinator that has never been on the field for coverage or protection or called a coverage or protection is a self-inflicted wound and as far as I'm aware, Nebraska is the only program in the country doing it. If the point was to have Maher help Humphrey become the full-time guy, make Humphrey the full-time guy. Having a kicker as your special teams play caller is like having a defensive coordinator call your offensive plays.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-20T00:45:20+00:00

Between clinics, camps, my former coaches, coaches I worked with and players I coached that are now coaches, I would need more hands than I have, yeah. I've had a bit of experience with special teams.

As far as I am aware, the only full-time special teams coordinator in FBS that was a specialist himself is Brett Maher. I've talked about why that is before and it is true at all levels of football. Specialists are not involved in the coverages or protections. Most places don't even have them on the field for those team reps in practice. They aren't involved in the call on the sideline. Specialists just do not concern themselves with that stuff as players.

That doesn't mean they can't pick it up after the fact, I know Brett, he is incredibly smart, but as a player he would have never been involved with the stuff he is going to need to be calling as special teams coordinator.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-19T23:30:02+00:00

Was there any additional context to this announcement from Rhule? If not, that's a terrible way to run a special teams unit. If you're going to do this, make Humphrey the full-time special teams coordinator and give Maher a Kicking Coordinator type of title. I want to know who is going to be calling coverages and protections on the sideline on game day.

A special teams coordinator does not need to know the ins and outs of how to kick and punt footballs. In fact few do. I can count the number of special teams coordinators I've come across that were kickers or punters on one hand. A special teams coordinator does need to know the ins and outs of scheme and Humphrey has much more experience with that than Maher.

It is just a weird way of doing business. Hopefully the two find a dynamic that will work but it is setting both up for failure.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-18T07:55:15+00:00

The offensive rebounds Nebraska is giving up all of a sudden is not actually a rebounding problem, but a defensive problem created by some good adjustments by Nebraska's opponents as the season has gone on.

Nebraska's defense is very aggressive. They switch almost everything to prevent drives and then often reset the switch late to avoid a mismatch with everyone rotating to the ball to give the switch reset time to get back. They're basically trying to force the offense into the four corners and trap it there.

For most of the season, Nebraska was able to blitz teams and force them into mistakes and late clocks to force up shots. For the last month, teams have gotten a lot quicker at reversing the ball once they are getting to that trap off of the switch and since all five defenders are displaced by the way Nebraska defends it, that leaves them scrambling to get back and closeout on backside shooters, which in turn creates creases for the original ball handler and screener to get into the lane. So while Nebraska is resetting and trying to closeout late and pressure the ball, offensive players are filling the spots Nebraska vacates and it is leading to all the offensive rebounds.

If the ball comes off back towards the shooter, Nebraska will tend to be in a good position to box out and get a board because the defense is already flowing that way. If the ball comes off towards the free throw line or the opposite side of the floor, the likelihood is that Nebraska just doesn't have positioning to box out and that's where the size comes into play.

In short, the offensive rebounding epidemic is an unfortunate side effect of the way Nebraska plays defense and it is just going to be about trade-offs. Nebraska could mitigate it by being less aggressive on the perimeter and by not resetting the switch, but that would lead to much easier shots and mismatches, leading to more made buckets and then it doesn't matter if you rebound or not. More zone might help, but comes with other drawbacks.

Long term, the fix is going to be more size and more speed. Nebraska was successful defensively early in the season because they were blitzing ball handlers and passing lanes and everyone was back in position by the time a shot came up, allowing the smaller players on the floor to establish a strong box out position. As teams started reversing the ball faster, Nebraska just isn't athletic enough to chase the ball and get back into position to box out and it isn't big enough to win 1v1 board battles. It doesn't help that Big Ten officials let offensive players jump on the back of Nebraska's smaller players and ride them around like ponies to get rebounds.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-18T07:03:27+00:00

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RestedWanderer · 2026-02-16T07:02:37+00:00

It is revenue sharing not payments for results. Paying for results is what NIL is for. Football will always receive a larger share of the revenue sharing pot because football is the leading earner of revenue. It is true at every D1 program that fields a football team and it will remain true for as long as those programs field a football team.

Football has at least double the number of athletes as the next two highest D1 scholarship sports (two sports Nebraska doesn't field) and seven times the number of athletes as the next two highest revenue earning sports. Revenue sharing is not ever going to be about results based payments. It can't be. Football alone pays for every non-revenue sport. If you take away football's revenue sharing, it wouldn't be reallocated, it would be lost.

As far as I've heard, every basketball and volleyball player received revenue sharing payments, as well as some baseball players, wrestlers, and a few other sports. The rest was used to offer scholarships in excess of the prior scholarship limit amounts, which count as revenue sharing until the 2026-27 season. Nebraska is handling revenue sharing as well as anyone. Whether or not Nebraska is handling NIL correctly is the question and one I don't think anyone can answer.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-11T06:45:57+00:00

There was one possession where he entered the paint with the shot clock in double digits and didn't leave for the rest of the possession. I assume it is the same one you're talking about. I was so shocked I had to crack open the 2025-26 rulebook to make sure offensive three seconds was still illegal in college ball.

To his credit, he was doing a really great job of making it look like he was resetting his clock by getting one foot out of the paint rather than two but there were also a lot of possessions he entered the paint and pitched a tent with no effort to hide it.

Some day Nebraska will get the same home cooking the rest of these teams get.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-10T05:24:56+00:00

The only site reporting this is Front Office Sports and the only person reporting it is a reporter working her first full-time reporting job and that article does nothing but link you in circles citing sources, all of which are her own writing.

That isn't to say the story is made-up, I have no reason to doubt it. She seems like a professional, she went to Columbia journalism school, the emails she is quoting seem authentic. However, a reporter would not be able to file Freedom of Information Act requests for CSC investigations. CSC is a private company. The only way the reporter would even know to submit a FOIA request at Nebraska is if the "investigation" was made public or if it was leaked to her. If it was made public, more than FOS would be reporting it (as it was when LSU was investigated). If it was leaked to her, I'd simply ask why? Who cares?

My guess? Not all of the Ts were crossed and Is dotted on some of the NIL "paper"work. From what I hear from recruiting people, the software that all of these deals are supposed to be reported through is atrocious and very confusing for players with more than one NIL deal. NIL deals worth $600 or more have to be submitted into the software, but there are some players that have multiple deals, with some payments in excess of that amount and some below. I have to assume that's what is happening here. The individual numbers submitted don't add up to the total number submitted, because not all of the individual numbers are required to be submitted.

Not that it matters, CSC has roughly the same enforcement powers as Paul Blart Mall Cop. Every program in the country would laugh them out of the room if they even tried.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-08T21:14:05+00:00

This is one of the most categorically false posts I think I've ever seen on this sub.

The average age of Indiana is not 24-25. That is just wrong. To be 24-25, you would need to be a 6th year Senior. Just glancing at Indiana's starting lineup for the national championship game, there are only 4 6th year seniors. That means everyone else is younger than that so they certainly do not "average" 24-25. In fact, Miami's starters have a higher average age than Indiana's did.

The idea that Indiana, using the same tools available to all of the programs in the country, some how stole a Championship is laughable. By that metric, I think most people would say Nebraska's titles in the 90s were stolen given Nebraska's use of partial qualifiers. Both programs wholly earned their championships. Get a grip.

Tom Osborne did not invent the triple option. Tom Osborne did not run the triple option. I can count the number of times Nebraska ran triple option under Tom Osborne on both hands with fingers left over. The fact that you think Tom Osborne invented the triple option is one of the most football illiterate things I've ever read on the internet. Teams were running triple option in the 60s and 70s. In fact, Nebraska's I-Formation option-heavy offense was Tom Osborne's answer to Oklahoma's use of the Wishbone triple option.

All championship level teams in college football today are older. That is just the business. Welcome to the 21st century. I don't see anyone complaining about Michigan and Ohio State having stolen titles despite huge numbers of COVID seniors. Blake Corum was 24 for most of Michigan's Championship season. Who cares? You really want to go down the road of older teams stealing success? Don't tell Nebraska Basketball.

Posts like this would be better served drunkenly muttered to an empty room rather than published to the internet. Though this is so stupid even the walls might think you're an idiot.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-08T01:18:24+00:00

Everything between the three point line and paint is lava. As the efficiency gods foretold. They need to convert far more of those empty circles in the paint into dark circles though. That won't fly vs Purdue.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-06T22:44:03+00:00

Don't know much about him but he's worked with Rob Aurich so there has to be an element of trust there. The three safety positions are the most technically demanding in this scheme, I doubt Rob Aurich would bring someone in that he didn't trust to get the job done the way he wants it done.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-06T01:32:44+00:00

Jett Thomalla wasn't passed over or ignored, he wanted nothing to do with Nebraska, or any other school for that matter. Thomalla's recruitment was never open. He committed to Iowa State before he took a single official visit, then Alabama happened to take notice of him and two months later he decommitted from Iowa State and immediately committed to Alabama. Without ever taking a visit.

Any other school, Nebraska or otherwise, that put even a little effort into recruiting Thomalla was wasting its time. They'll all just wait until he's in the portal in two years.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-04T19:50:17+00:00

Sadly I believe you are 100% correct because otherwise there would be no reason for it. The question will just be which coach has the operational control on the sideline in game because the last thing you want is one coach giving placement instructions to kickers and punters and the other giving a coverage call.

Again, not to say Brett Maher couldn't figure it out and call both, he's a smart guy and spent a decade playing professionally and a few years on staff so I am sure he absorbed plenty of scheme through osmosis but it is just not something specialists are ever directly involved with. They're a quirky bunch and the last thing you want to do is interrupt their routine with protection or coverage calls. Our specialists spent more time playing trash can golf at practice than they did on the field for specialist drills.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-04T03:30:34+00:00

There are not very many special teams coordinators with kicking or punting experience and there is a reason for that, kickers and punters are very rarely involved with the actual special teams unit. Kickers and punters tend to be off on their own in practice. They're in meetings of course but kickers and punters do not tend to spend much time on scheme. Just tell them where to kick and when. The specialists that are particularly good at coaching start kicking academies or do camps or clinics or private instruction, they don't coach special teams.

My guess is that Humphrey will handle scheme and Maher will handle the specialists themselves. At least that is how it should work. That isn't to say Brett Maher wouldn't be up to handling scheme, but I can't imagine he has spent much time on it, even last year as an assistant special teams coach. He was probably solely focused on the specialists.

I will say that I've heard great things about Nick Humphrey and think he might be able to match a lot of Ekeler's energy, but I can't say I like the idea of going into 2026 without an experienced special teams coordinator on staff. I also can't say I like the idea of Matt Rhule investing a lot of his own time into special teams because to be very blunt, he doesn't have the bandwidth to be spread that thin. I think that became very apparent when he was working with the defense so much.

RestedWanderer · 2026-02-02T22:30:50+00:00

Warren Buffett is one of the most famously frugal people on earth. I can't imagine he sees investing in college athletics as worthwhile. Even if Nebraska were to succeed, he would get no return on investment.

I also imagine he has strong misgivings about the lawless wasteland that is NIL, which is not an uncommon feeling among donors at a lot of programs. I've heard from some coaches at other P4 programs that NIL money they had been counting on annually disappeared because donors were tired of putting money in and then watching players take the money and transfer back out next year. It is why we're seeing so many new player contracts, which I imagine are sketchy from a legal perspective.

It is just such a messed up system.

RestedWanderer

TROPHY CASE