Friday Flakes: Nebraska Football’s Talent Gap is a Result of More Than a Decade of Neglect

This isn’t going to be surprising to anybody who follows Nebraska football. Especially, if you watched that game last Saturday against Ohio State. The gap between the talent levels of a team like Ohio State (likely playoff team) and Nebraska (definitely not even a possibility) cannot be exaggerated.

Unfortunately, this has been a long time coming for the Nebraska football program. Just a quick look at the average number of NFL draft picks under each coach since Frank Solich.

• Bill Callahan - 3.75 over four years
• Bo Pelini - 3.57 over seven years (7 in 2011, and 4 in 2012)
• Mike Riley - 2.0 over three years
• Scott Frost - None in 2019

You know what that looks like? A slippery slope and Nebraska has tumbled down to the bottom. We hope.

The talent has gotten worse with each administration. To be fair, if Bill Callahan had kept his job then it sure looks like the numbers could have been a lot different.

So now we arrived to Ohio State last Saturday. That was what I like to term a “snow-ball” game in which things just went so bad for so many reasons that there is nothing you can do to stop the momentum.

Those early calls and non-calls by the officials were brutal. The three interceptions by Adrian Martinez were killers.

During that third drive if Wan’Dale Robinson catches that pass he likely walks into the end-zone and the score is 14-7. Instead it literally falls into the lap of an Ohio State player laying on his back. Which results in a 21-0 game. That is insurmountable. It was a killer.

However, even if Wan’Dale scores that touchdown, I think it is fair to say that we still lose. And probably by 14-20 points. It is because of the difference in the talent level between the two programs at this point. I believe Scott Frost is actually doing a good job trying to supplement that talent level through his first two recruiting classes, but we need to realize that he isn’t a magician.

What do you want him to do? Just for illustration’s sake, over the past four years Ohio State has averaged 8.75 NFL draft picks per year. Nebraska has had less than eight NFL draft picks over the past four years COMBINED!.

Average of 1.50 per year. What do you want him to do with that?

“Play better.”

Ya, I get it. Many of you know that I fought the Kool-Aid all off-season. Some of you have even said that my writing is too negative at times. However, even with my negative view I did have higher expectations for some of the players than what I saw last Saturday.

Luckily, it is just one game and contending in the west division is right in front of us. Starting with Northwestern.

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Sports! Sports! Sports!

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