Hello, and welcome to the Black 41 Flash Reverse.
This newsletter, launched in 2021, analyzes the scheme, tendencies, and underlying data of Nebraska football. The primary focus is on examining what schematic and play-calling trends can tell us about the NU team on the field, what hidden edges or deficiencies may be revealed through non-traditional statistics, and what interesting or counterintuitive storylines may be playing out that aren’t evident at first glance. My perspective is process driven, examining the quality of the actions or decisions that led up to the outcome — not just the outcome itself. I primarily evaluate NU by gathering data through charting out dozens of individual elements of Nebraska’s offense and defense for each game — blitz rate, type of pass concept used, coverage rotations, etc. — and tabulating them to tell us more about NU’s performance and game plan than what we can get from watching live and what that may tell us about larger trends within the season.
These interests have led my writing and research to a lot of different places and formats over the last several years. The majority of the posts are weekly game recaps, but I’ve also done longer-form offseason pieces on the history and ideas behind the 3-3-5 defense, the success of true freshman five-star quarterback starters, what scheme changes a newly hired offensive coordinator might bring; a variety of positional and team previews; and deep dives into concepts Nebraska frequently runs.
This, and more, is the type of work you can expect to receive if you join Black 41 Flash Reverse by selecting the “subscribe” button at the bottom of the page.
What Exactly You’ll Get
During the season, here’s what you can expect to receive if you sign up to receive the newsletter:
A weekly game recap: A detailed breakdown for each game of Nebraska’s season using my charting, getting into any interesting schematic developments, adjustments, or tendencies and how Nebraska performed under the hood. Click here for an example.
Mid-season and post-season tendency evaluations: These are numbers-heavy analysis pieces on Nebraska’s relevant tendencies and their performance, with large charts comparing and contrasting the numbers to previous points in the season and to earlier seasons. These will be released at the approximate halfway point of the season and at the end of the regular season or shortly after. Through these, you should be able to see, for example, how often NU was running counter during the first half of the year and how good they were at it, and compare that to the same data for 2023. Click here for an example.
Whatever else I notice/want to write about: Is NU giving the defense a tell on its running back alignment when it runs outside zone? Has the D switched to more two-high coverages the last several weeks? Things like that. No timetable, just if something merits mentioning, I’ll write about it.
In the offseason, I try to explore larger questions or longer-form research projects without the week-to-week immediacy of the games. The research and charting behind these pieces can, at times, be pretty substantial and make the release schedule more sporadic than other publications, but the pieces will be longer and hopefully more rewarding/revealing. By taking my time, I try to give you something worth yours.
Subscribing and Cost
By subscribing, you’ll have every post from the newsletter delivered straight to your e-mail inbox and to the Substack app if you have it on your smartphone. Having the newsletter delivered to your inbox is always free.
Before the 2023 season, I instituted some pay tiers to fund the newsletter’s continued operation. Here’s what each tier will get you:
Free membership: Sends all posts to your inbox at no cost, with full access to a limited number of the newsletter’s posts.
$5 monthly membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post and the full archive for one month, plus the ability to comment questions on posts with a guaranteed answer, charged recurring each month (an overall cost of $60 each year).
$50 yearly membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post and the full archive for a year, plus the ability to comment questions on posts with a guaranteed answer, charged recurring each year.
Founding membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post and the full archive for a year, plus the ability to comment questions on posts with a guaranteed answer, for however much you’d like to pay above $50.
I’m deeply thankful to everyone who does pledge money or support to the newsletter. In an ideal world, I’d be happy to do this for free. But I do contribute significant time to the research and writing and some personal monetary expense (and generally also believe people should be compensated for good work), so this helps make up for that. And the more people who subscribe, the more runway I have to devote to this project. Generally, I’ve operated that every fourth post is free, and the other 75% of content will be behind a paywall. I’ve set the subscriptions at the lowest they’re allowed to be set. If you’re interested in becoming a full subscriber and not in a monetary spot to contribute, send me an e-mail at the site address and we can potentially work something out.
If all of this sounds like your thing, click the “Subscribe Now” button below and enter your e-mail address to become a free or paying subscriber. And if you know of anyone else or any other communities who might be interested in reading the newsletter, please share it with the button below or gift it to someone else. The site relies almost totally on fans spreading it to others or word of mouth to get new traffic, so you’re encouraged to share if you know someone who you think will like it.
Thank you, again, to anyone who does sign up or shares my work. Hearing from and creating a Husker community is a big part of why I began this project in the first place. And thank you, as always, for reading.
