re: Sporting News Top 20 CFB Teams of All-Time

Alabama 2020 LOLOLOL

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Those dudes on the '95 Nebraska team mostly played their role.

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Irving Fryar played for Osborne and he was the #1 pick in the draft as a WR. Johnny Mitchell was a first round TE. They weren’t just system players.

Plenty of Osborne’s skill guys had successful NFL careers. Roger Craig was just elected to the HOF.

No one wanted anyone from 1995 Nebraska’s receiving corps because they just weren’t very good.

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There was no stopping that '95 Nebraska team

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In the last regular season game of the year, 1995 Nebraska faced the only defensive front player (or player, period) who would go in the first round that year: Cedric Jones of Oklahoma.

In that game, Nebraska scored 23 offensive points. They did not score an offensive TD until the 4th quarter.

Stats for.,,

Frazier: 12/25, 128 yards, 1/1 passing, and 10 carries for 35 yards and 0 TD’s rushing.

Phillips: 15 carries for 73 yards and 0 TD’s

Green: 13 carries for 44 yards and 0 TD’s

Those are pedestrian numbers.

Just one elite defensive front player on a 5-5-1 team playing in Lincoln with the Heisman Trophy on the line for Frazier helped make a noticeable difference in Nebraska’s usual offensive output.

Now put three first rounders and a fourth rounder on the DL backed by thumpers like Tre Lamar and Isaiah Simmons (Butkus in 2019). Put A.J. Terrell (2019 first rounder) on any Nebraska WR they want to shut down.

Saying “Nebraska is great because Nebraska is great” doesn’t handle three All-American defensive linemen in the Real World.

Plus, Brent Venables cut his teeth at K-State and OU in Nebraska’s I formation era. He knew the Huskers inside-out. Plus, Clemson played Paul Johnson’s GT teams every year and the option game was nothing foreign to them.

Not only was 2018 Clemson an all-time great team, but (stylistically) they were very well suited to taking away what 1995 Nebraska did well.

They absolutely would slow them down enough for Lawrence, Etienne (who averaged more ypc than Phillips or Green, by the way), and Higgins, Ross, and Renfrow to outscore them.

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The closest they came to losing was a 14 point win over Washington State

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A 3-8 team.

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They beat Steve Spurrier's #2 ranked Florida 62-24 in the game that was for all the marbles. The closest that Florida team came to losing before Nebraska was two 11 point wins, vs. Auburn and FL State.

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1995 Florida was a great team, but they were poor defensively and soft everywhere.

Nebraska had success blitzing them because UF was running 10 and 00 personnel formations from under center. Speedy LB’s like Farley and Williams put pressure on Wuerffel. FSU did the same thing to UF the next year in the regular season before Spurrier finally went to the shotgun in the Sugar Bowl rematch. That helped a lot.

The blitzing of Nebraska would have been a lot more difficult against a Clemson offense that worked exclusively out of the shotgun, and Nebraska’s undersized LB’s (none of whom were NFL caliber) would have had a tough time with Etienne.

On defense, UF’s D was shite. Nothing higher than a third rounder for three years and no familiarity with the Nebraska scheme. They didn’t even have Stoops. UF also had a history of trouble against bigger backs like Jerome Bettis and Stephen Davis in 1993-1995.

2018 Clemson was night and day different from 1995 Florida.

I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with someone who said 1995 was Osborne’s best team, but I would definitely argue that they had an easier road for the season.

If you know anything about Big 8 football in the ‘70s-‘90s, Nebraska not having to fool with wishbone era OU was a huge break in the schedule. Even McCartney was gone from Colorado by then. The Big 8 was as smooth a road as it could be. Nothing but adding on to 25 game winning streaks against teams from Kansas.

OOC, they played no one who won more than six games. Lowly Pacific even folded the program the next year. In previous seasons, they played a lot of home-and-home against teams like Bryant’s Bama and Paterno’s PSU. Not in 1995.

In the bowl, Florida was a great team, but it was a lot easier to move the ball against them compared to all the Butkus Award winners and future NFL Hall of Famers that they had been facing and gave them problems.

I think the many of Osborne’s teams would have finished 11-0 in the regular season with the 1995’s schedule (who were they going to lose to, Kansas?) and the better ones likely would have worn down UF physically similar to 1995.

But when we’re talking 2018 Clemson, we’re talking about a team that is not just an all-time great but matches up very well against the Nebraska style due to having one of the best defensive lines in CFB history complimented by a balanced offense full of playmakers.