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Scape-Goating Position Update: Latest Candidate Norvell Is the Guy

By Nestor

UPDATE:Norvell is the guy. Per Husker Extra Jay Norvell is leaving Nebraska to become the OC at UCLA. We will have more on this later. I remember watching Nebraska's game against Southern Cal. They looked like just another predictable Dorrell offense with no imagination. It looked like just another offense that was playing it safe and playing not to lose. Anyways hopefully this will work. However, Norvell should know if he doesn't help Dorrell bring home a Pac-10 championship in 2007 he will be looking for a new gig this time next year. GO BRUINS. -N

So per Dohn (HT to Bruin10) apparently KD brought in another candidate to interview for the scape-goating position in Westwood. Dorrell talked to Nebraska Head Coach Bill Callahan's offensive coordinators for the vacant OC position. Like Dorrell Bill Callahan has tried to implement a WCO in Lincoln. Callahan I am sure many of you know was a mediocre NFL coach who was fired for not living up to Raiders's commitment to excellence (I tried to write that with a straight face).

Anyhow thought I peak over at our SBN colleague at Corn Nation to see if they had any reaction to this news. He had some interesting notes on Norvell:

Norvell arrived at Nebraska along with Bill Callahan, who insisted in bringing him in from the Oakland Raiders. Norvell has served as offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach during his tenure at Nebraska. Callahan was originally hired by athletic director Steve Pederson because of his NFL experience, as Pederson wanted to bring in a pro-style offense in order to help in recruiting better athletes.

In his first two years the Nebraska offense struggled, but in 2006 Nebraska exploded with one of the best offenses in the nation, finishing the season 17th in scoring, 24th in rushing, 23rd in passing, and 14th overall. Given that in 2005, we were at the bottom in rushing and struggling to win games, 2006 was an incredible improvement.
Now that sounds good. He then also speculated why Norvell is trying to get out of Lincoln. Here is an obvious one:
He doesn't like living in Nebraska, neither does his family. (Hey, let's face it, not everyone likes the place.)
That's understandable. But then he also speculated another reason why Norvell may be looking to leave Lincoln:
He doesn't get to do much of the play-calling and he wants to be completely in charge of the offense. We don't hear much publicly about Norvell calling the plays. In fact, I can't think of an instance in which Norvell has stated much about play calling.
Well I am not sure how much control Norvell will really get under Karl Dorrell? The only coach who ever had some kind of control in play calling was Tom Cable (who we are not all that enamored about either). But Norvell could be an interesting fit since he is already well versed on WCO. So his philosophy may sync well Dorell' WCO offense.

However, I hope he knows if UCLA gets off to a bad start, Dorrell is not going to waste any time in making a sacrificial lamb out of him just like he did out of Axman, Svoboda and others.

Frankly I wonder why any credible offensive coordinator would come out and work under Karl Dorrell, whose track record is not very good when it comes to taking responsibility and protecting his assistant coaches. In fact under Karl Dorrell (DeWayne Walker is the exception so far), UCLA football program has become a grave yard for coordinators, who either get fired or jump the program to make lateral moves in their career.

It is clear though (now that we have the name of a fourth candidate has surfaced for this scape-goating gig)  even though Dorrell mentioned that he was going to take responsibility for his offense he is looking to bring in another coordinator, who he can conveniently scape-goat if the offense doesn't click again next season.

Anyway we will see how this all turns out.

GO BRUINS.

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