Three & Out: Strong finish, 2023 OL recruiting and adding Vince Guinta

This is HuskerOnline.com's feature in which recruiting analysts Mike Matya and Bryan Munson give their weekly takes on topical issues concerning Nebraska football, baseball and recruiting.

Today in our next installment of "Three and Out" we hit on Nebraska's strong finish, 2023 OL recruiting and adding Vince Guinta back to the recruiting staff.

I have had a chance to catch up on the month of January. signing day, and to really think about Nebraska recruiting. After counting 213 offers for 2023 as of this weekend, I went back and looked at the class and how things finished up for the Huskers.

Arguably, Nebraska caught three of their top recruits after the first of the year with junior college running back Anthony Grant and high school targets running back Ajay Allen, Jr. and Janiran Bonner.

New coaches. New energy.

There was a classic confrontation brewing between the unstoppable force of the Nebraska coaching staff recruiting and an immovable object which was-- despite the changes in Scott Frost's coaching staff- the uncertainty that hung over his future and the direction of the program.

The unstoppable force is winning. There wasn't a single concerned comment about Frost's record at Nebraska, the unknown and pending changes with the Nebraska offense, and if the head coach and his staff had one year to turn it around or more. Not one concern.

If the Nebraska staff is thinking about anything other than success then I haven't seen it. The moves that Nebraska made with the coaching changes definitely indicated a need to get more active and aggressive on the recruiting trail.

The momentum, for the moment, is with the Nebraska staff as they move onto the 2023 class. The commitment by Dwight Bootle was a little unexpected so soon. What gets lost in the commitment is that any negativity hanging over the Nebraska staff or program didn't impact the younger brother of a former Husker.

There is some real positivity around social media too and I am not talking about the way too early, Rose Bowl prediction for Nebraska either (obviously that columnist has never been on the RSS). What I am referring to are some of the newest Husker families like Bonner, Crawford and more noticeably the wife of one of the newest Nebraska coaches, Priscilla Joseph, who has been all about the Big Red on Twitter.

Bottomline -- the positive vibes so far have been contagious and Nebraska should be trying to capitalize in the 2023 and beyond recruiting classes. I expect the vibes to continue through spring and into the summer and if Nebraska needs the wave of positivity to continue it will have to include winning in the fall. There is no way around it.

- Bryan Munson

Nebraska only signed one high school offensive lineman in their 2022 class, so loading up at these positions in this cycle will be of the utmost importance for the Husker staff.

NU started laying the groundwork to restock the offensive trenches in February's two Junior Days. They were able to host several OL recruits on unofficial visits who will be high school seniors next season.

And many others have told HuskerOnline.com that they plan to visit Lincoln during the next Junior Day gathering of March 5 or sometime this spring.

Below is an early look at how the Huskers' Offensive Line Board is starting to shape up for the next cycle.

Gunnar Gottula may be the top in-state offensive line recruit for the Class of 2023, so getting an early commitment from him got things off to a promising start. He is the son of Lincoln Southeast head football coach Ryan Gottula, and you can never have enough coaches' sons on your roster.

All of the above February Husker Junior Day attendees had Nebraska offers before their visits, or they received them during their visits to Lincoln.

All except Scottsbluff, Neb., product Brock Knutson, and he has current scholarship tenders from Iowa State, Kansas and North Dakota State. So, it may only be a matter of time before the 6-foot-7 Knutson earns a Nebraska offer, too.

Creighton Prep's Sam Sledge, the son of former Husker offensive lineman Bob Sledge, was offered by the NU coaches while he was in Lincoln for his Junior Day experience.

Border state prospect Joe Otting made the trek north from Kansas to attend the Junior Day at Nebraska, as likewise did four-star Amir Herring from Michigan and DJ Chester from Georgia. All of them have numerous Power Five offers already.

Nebraska's next Junior Day will be on March 5, and they will have ample opportunities to host unofficial visitors for spring practices, which will culminate with the April 9 Red-White spring game.

Several other offensive line recruits told us they plan to get to Lincoln sometime this spring. A couple of them are Rivals100 500-mile radius players.

East St. Louis, Ill., OL Miles McVay [No. 51] and Missouri OL Logan Reichert [No. 84] said they are hearing from the Husker coaches and are planning trips to NU when their schedules allow in the spring.

Kansas prospect Calvin Clements plays at the same school that Turner Corcoran came from.

"As soon as the dead period ends, hopefully in March, I will get up there," Clements said. "I've been talking with Coach Busch and it's been really good. He's a friendly dude and he's pretty easy to talk to. It's been good and he's been pretty informative about Nebraska so far."

And then there is Ethan Thomason, from Fort Collins, Colo., who told me:

"My interest level is high. Nebraska is the closest BIG 10 school to home for me. Plus, the OL position has always been a loved position group in Husker nation which is exciting to me."

This is just scratching the surface and is only a preliminary breakdown of the Cornhuskers' early possibilities for their offensive line board. More recruits will inevitably be added to this list, and others will fall away and commit to other colleges.

These positions are of the highest priority for Nebraska in the class of 2023, so they bear close watching to see how things develop here for NU this cycle.

- Mike Matya

I think that I have made it clear in my earlier section that Frost and Nebraska addressed some big needs when it came to recruiting with the coaching hires. There are some bonafide recruiters on this staff now that open up some important recruiting areas in the country.

And while getting new tires down to the ground through those coaches was necessary, there was still a need to overhaul the engine that is putting power to the wheels. A motor that has a way of pushing the effort to recruit to the limits.

Enter Vince Guinta.

You have to remember that I am not around the staff during the season or the spring since I live in Dallas. However, I have had a couple of opportunities to meet with Guinta and he has come off as professional and driven.

There were two stories that I thought were safe to share here that have stayed with me going back to Guinta's first tour at Nebraska under Bill Callahan.

The first was from a sidebar conversation with a Nebraska coach who I had a chance to meet in Dallas at a North Texas Nebraskans function. I wanted to understand their process more and what was making the staff successful on the road.

His answer was simple and one word: Vince.

The Nebraska coach told me that Vince held regular meetings to review recruiting. Guinta would also check in with all of the coaches to make sure that they were getting their hand-written letters done and to him so the letters could be put in the mail.

Guinta made the coaches accountable for their guys or their areas when it came to recruiting. There were some long days getting all of the work in, but remember that some of the better recruiting classes came while Callahan was the head coach and Guinta was working behind the scenes.

The last story came from a former player at Nebraska in the summer of 2007. One of the true freshmen who was in Lincoln that summer was former three-star athlete and NFL first-round draft pick Prince Amukamara.

Amukamara was rated as an athlete by Rivals for a very good reason: he was a heckuva offensive weapon in high school. Over the last two years of high school, Prince had 3,389 rushing yards on 285 carries (11.89 YPC) and 38 touchdowns playing running back. As a receiver, he added another 664 yards from 33 receptions and eight touchdowns.

He was also a very effective defender which opened up his position possibilities even more in college. Over the same time period, he had 125 tackles with 95 of them coming from his senior season, three interceptions and three fumble recoveries.

Nebraska saw Amukamara playing defense despite his obvious offensive potential. There was a big reason why. Nebraska really wanted to focus on generating turnovers through recruiting and they felt like Amukamara could do just that for them at cornerback.

The former player was at a workout that summer talking to me about some of the younger players when he brought up a play that Amukamara made earlier that day. Amukamara made an interception, made a couple of moves to get some guys to miss on the tackle and housed it.

Even the team was pumped up after that one and this player went up to talk to Guinta, who I was told was big in the evaluation and identification of Amukamara as a cornerback prospect, about the play that summer day. He talked about the moves after he had the ball in his hands and taking it back for a score.

He said that Guinta asked him a question after the story. He asked, "But what happened before he scored?".

That's when the player replied that Prince had to intercept the past first. Guinta only responded, "There ya go."

Nebraska is getting a great talent evaluator; someone that will give the staff the tools that they need to be successful as well as keep them accountable. Frost bringing back Guinta to Nebraska is every bit as big as any of the other coaching hires if you ask me.

- Bryan Munson