How recruiting identity informs Trev Alberts’ coaching pick

His team may be in the Big Ten West driver’s seat, but Purdue coach Jeff Brohm was still being asked Tuesday how Nebraska nearly ran his squad off the road.

Brohm noted the Huskers have the transfer quarterback and receivers to make hay through the air.

“I think they kind of knew, ‘Hey, let’s try and chuck this ball over their head,’” Brohm said.

The Huskers have 15 pass plays of 30-yards-or-more this season — eighth nationally. Eight of Casey Thompson’s 11 touchdown passes have come from 20 yards or longer. Ditto for receiver Trey Palmer’s five touchdowns.

NU faces tougher tests — Illinois, Iowa and Michigan are currently the nation’s Nos. 1, 2, 4 teams in pass defense efficiency — but it’s not lost on Husker fans that you can change a team in one offseason through the portal. Nebraska had little choice, given the exodus of players from the 2018, 2019 and 2020 classes.

It’s a dynamic that should inform how NU Athletic Director Trev Alberts picks and preps his eventual hire to avoid recruiting mistakes made by Nebraska’s two previous head coaches.

In conversations with folks in and around Husker football — including those no longer there — the roots of coach Scott Frost’s quick demise lie in recruiting decisions made in the first 12-to-15 months of his original staff’s tenure.

“Frost and 10” inherited from Mike Riley a roster low on speed and skill, so they set about infusing the team with those two traits as quickly as possible while retaining — and tolerating the poor habits of — the best players Riley left behind.

Win five or six in year one, more than that in year two, and flip the culture as they went along. That was the thinking. The fruits: Lots of four-star prospects slightly between positions. Lots of junior college guys. Lots of struggles. Lots of departures.

Which is why Frost couldn’t bemoan the portal. He needed it. Had NU taken Iowa’s portal-non-grata approach, it may have a single win — over North Dakota — in 2022. The early missteps in recruiting, which I and others applauded as aggression, underline a tricky part of the Husker coaching search.

Talent acquisition — high school, juco and portal — is crucial to the college football enterprise to a mythological degree. Because recruiting comes with detailed rankings and is the calling card of assistants — who in turn are many of the media’s best sources — head coaching jobs can be too easily viewed through the prism of recruiting pros and cons, which led to a moment inside Purdue’s press box with Big Ten media source.

“Nebraska has to find someone who can recruit,” he said. “Because there’s not much talent in that state.”

For one, that fact is quietly changing; 10 in-state 2023 prospects have Power Five offers in this cycle.

For two, Frost and Riley’s failures — more similar than you’d think — reveal the recruiting balance a coach has to find at Nebraska. Speed, skill, size, athleticism? Sure. You bet. But those tangibles have to belong to kids who want to play — and stay — at NU.

Alberts wants a program that excels in development and promotes, above all else, a single intangible: Toughness.

“Football’s still a gladiator sport,” Alberts said on his radio show Tuesday night. “It is a game that’s won, by and large, on the line of scrimmage. Now you can hide some of those deficiencies, but I think you have to make a commitment.”

Agreed. But that means recruiting kids who have the rarest of traits: Patience. Because it’s not often that an 18-year-old shows up fully versed in the gladiatorial toughness.

It also means NU selling the rebuild without making it seem like one or two players alone are responsible for the resurrection, and thus must play on a timeline commensurate with their vitality.

Frost had definite second thoughts about that kind of arrangement in late 2018, when Wan’Dale Robinson waffled between Kentucky and Nebraska. Robinson picked NU, beginning a two-year conversation about how, and where, Robinson would get the ball. To be clear: He’s one heck of a player, now with the NFL’s Giants. But NU had a muddled plan for him.

The coaches who might make for intriguing external candidates — Lance Leipold, Matt Campbell, Chris Klieman, Dave Aranda, even names like Chris Petersen or Gary Patterson — have found some balance, along the way in recruiting a blend of toughness and raw talent. Each — other than Klieman — enjoyed a better recruiting base at their Power Five stops.

Riley (California) and Frost (Florida) both turned to respective recruiting hotbeds with little success. Seven of Riley’s nine “Calibraska” recruits bounced without making much impact — eight of 10 if one includes Tyjon Lindsey, who played a year in Las Vegas — while 11 of Frost’s 15 prep recruits from Florida are gone. The four remaining: Braxton Clark; Tamon Lynum; Kamonte Grimes; and Victor Jones.

Frost fared better in Georgia. Nebraska’s success in Louisiana likely hinges on whether interim head coach Mickey Joseph gets the permanent job or remains on staff.

The core of NU’s recruiting classes likely have to be built inside the 500-mile radius. Nebraska’s senior director of player personnel, Vince Guinta, knew as much when he returned this spring to NU.

“Players who are closer to home tend to stay with the programs they choose,” Guinta said, “and so that’s something I think, long-term, that’s always in the back of my head.”

Seven of NU’s 13 2023 commits reside within 500 of campus. If Lincoln East’s Malachi Coleman and Gretna’s Mason Goldman pick the Huskers, it’ll be nine of 15. Any new coach — even Joseph — should be cautious to sign much more than 20 in the class, regardless of scholarship availability. Save it for 2024 and focus on adding the right transfers.

Complicating matters: The transfer portal opens Dec 5. A flood of players will enter that day, with hundreds more that week. Nebraska should have a decent NIL infrastructure to attract top players. Will NU have its coaching staff — the head man, some assistants, and recruiting support — in place by then? Will that braintrust have a list of current Husker players it doesn’t want to lose? Other programs have eyes, too, you know.

Tennessee, three hours from Atlanta, three from Nashville, four from Charlotte, four from Birmingham — has four- and five-star prospects on their 500-mile speed dial. It can — and did — climb from a crater quicker.

Nebraska has to be discerning, not desperate — and be that with organization so savvy it looks like aggression.

Alberts joked on his show about recently walking on a balance beam.

I hope it prepared him for the tightrope to come.