Hello, everyone; welcome to the Black 41 Flash Reverse. I’m Jordan Fox, a lifelong Nebraska fan and former sports journalist.
I launched this newsletter in 2021 to provide some thoughts I had and research I was collecting into Nebraska football, with the goal of hopefully providing some more detailed insight into what was actually happening on the field — mainly through tracking and evaluating NU’s schematic changes and tendencies and diving into some non-traditional statistics.
Some examples of what that’s looked like:
A breakdown of five plays Nebraska might run before the 2021 opener;
An evaluation of new offensive coordinator Mark Whipple’s scheme after his hiring;
A look at the strength and weaknesses of transfers Ochaun Mathis, Trey Palmer, and Anthony Grant;
A breakdown of potential head coaching candidates after the firing of Scott Frost;
Game-by-game deep dives into Nebraska’s schematic tendencies and success rates for the 2022 season;
A long-form examination of the history and strategy behind the 3-3-5 defense; and
A stats-based analysis of Marcus Satterfield’s real offense.
Subscribing and Cost
By subscribing with the buttons at the top or bottom of the page, you’ll have every post from the newsletter delivered straight to your e-mail inbox and to the Substack app on your smartphone. Having the newsletter delivered to your inbox is always free.
Before the 2023 season, I instituted some pay tiers for fund the newsletter’s continued operation. They look like this:
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 on the newsletter and in the archive, charged monthly at an overall cost of $60 per year.
$50 yearly membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post on the newsletter and in the archive, charged yearly at an overall cost of $50 per year.
Founding membership: Sends all posts to your inbox and gives you full access to every post on the newsletter and in the archive, for however much you’d like to donate.
I’ve set the subscriptions at the lowest they’re allowed to be set. I understand some people who may be interested in this stuff can’t afford a subscription, so a decent percentage of the content will be open to everyone. I’ve largely added a paid element because I spend a large amount of time and effort on this during the season and believe I’m producing quality work, which I’ve always felt you should be paid for. I appreciate all my subscribers and the love they’ve shown this project over the past two years, and I’m deeply thankful to everyone who does pledge money or support.
What You’ll Get
During the 2023 season, here’s what you can expect to receive if you subscribe:
Separate offensive and defensive game recaps: A detailed, narrative-style, drive-by-drive breakdown for games of Nebraska’s season, getting into any interesting scheme things or adjustments I saw and incorporating some numbers/trends.
Game previews: Look-aheads for games this year, getting into an opponent’s relevant advanced stats, key players, etc., but hopefully with a more in-depth stat and scheme perspective than you’d get on mainstream sites. These will be released in batches sporadically throughout the season: one for non-conference opponents the first week of September and then two batches of the rest of the Big Ten (the later in the season the previews get posted, the more relevant data they’ll have.)
Tendency posts: These are analysis of Nebraska’s relevant tendencies, with large charts comparing and contrasting the numbers to previous points in the season. These will be released intermittently in batches throughout the season. I was loosely thinking a tendency post after the end of non-conference play, one after midway through Big Ten play, and one after the season’s end. Those felt like good benchmarks, but TBD on that. Through these, you should be able to see, for example, how often NU was running counter during the first third of the season and how good they were at it, compared to the same for the last third. For a near-example, read this (I previously used to do all game recaps in this style).
Whatever else I notice/want to write about: Does NU have 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.
Subscribing is appreciated as, on top of making sure you get all the content from this newsletter, it allows me to get to keep doing this and gets my work shared more widely with others on the Substack site. And if you know of anyone else or any other communities who might be interested in reading this, please share it with the button below. I don’t have a Twitter presence for this anymore, so I rely on fans spreading it to others or on message boards to get new traffic (please OK posting it with any moderators first if you’re posting it on a message board or online community).
If all this sounds like something you’re interested in, sign up by clicking “Subscribe Now” at the top or bottom of the page to join the community! GBR!
