We can get mad at DeBoer but Ballou is why the program is falling.

Players must be committed to s&c for it to work. For those who aren’t internally driven for s&c, coaches must “support” the program.

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There's really no reason to defend Ballou. Early in the season, people tried to say "Yes, the team is soft, but look at how healthy the team stays." That take didn't really hold up to scrutiny if you looked at injuries from prior years under Ballou, but it really looks comical this year.

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Im a defender of Ballou, or at least his methods. I think they are effective...BUT

*Trigger warning long geeked out post about S&C incoming:

Football is an interesting sport. When programming for football, its a constant battle between idealism vs practicality...specificity vs general conditioning

You can tailor your S&C to be very specific to the game you are playing, constantly picking out individual physical requirements for different parts of the game and trying to max out those specific requirements in a piecemeal kind of way. This integrates the training/conditioning/practice everything into one and and tries to account for all of it. Seems like the optimal thing to do. I mean you are a highly paid strength coach with all the gadgets and toys you could possibly want. Of course you are gonna try and do this....

...the problem

It doenst work. I used to be in this field. Ive seen all the presentations from strength coaches staffs talking about their advanced programs...and my thought always was...."well why does your team suck"?

You might could do this if you had ONE player that you constantly monitored and had the free reign to always change things up on the fly. The same issue always plagues these highly specified programs:
a football player doesnt live his life in a vaccuum

Practice requirements are always changing, what he does outside of football is always changing, is he sleeping well, is he eating right, is he partying occasionally, does he get sick, does he get injured etc

PLUS there are far far too many physical variables to account for. You just simply cant. You are assuming each player adapts for physical stimulus the same way. It just isnt like that at all.

When you are in this strength coach field, you desperately want to believe you can program perfectly to give yourself an advantage. Its very akin to a pitcher who wants to study charts and throw the perfect pitch to ever single batter...which just results in him walking them and creating more problems. All that when he has a 98 mph heater that he could exclusively throw with great command and batters couldnt touch.

Why do strength coaches do this every time....because they want to separate themselves from other strength coaches and justify their jobs and salaries

As I have left the strength field many years and have reflected on it...I think there is a superior approach to training football: minimalism

Teach the fundamental lifts, squats, deads, sprints(not bench, which is a useless and stupid lift for anything other than powerlifting) and we get them bigger, stronger and faster in as short of workouts as you can get away with. You constantly build and reinforce the foundation...not the statue. The player then will go and do football specific activities...IN PRACTICE. The player takes the strength/size gains and the body then can specifically adapt, itself.

The reason Cochran was so valuable wasnt because he was a brilliant strength coach...it was because he had access to the players EVERY DAY when the coaches couldnt and he could hammer into their minds the collective mission and mentality of the program and he was GREAT at that.

You guys would have had Boyd Epley fired multiple times over through Nebraska’s seemingly always 9-3 seasons.

The defense has matched physicality fairly well on the balance. That's why I think the offensive problems may have an S&C component but it is probably down wind from the on-field staff's direction.