2024 COLORADO RECAP: Ready For Primetime

Nebraska (mostly) translates early season hype into tangible success for a national audience

Ty Robinson gets a pressure. Photo courtesy Nebraska Athletics.

Let’s start by saying: Colorado is not a good football team. They weren’t really a good team last year, either.

For whatever phenomenon you believe has pushed the 2023-24 Colorado Buffaloes football program into the broader sports consciousness as much as it has been in the past two seasons — be it a broken, clicks-based internet model, or hate watching, or the weirder culture wars stuff — it’s pretty much indisputable this hasn’t been a competent product on the field. The Buffs finished 4-8 last year, with most of the advanced stats saying that was a fortunate result. From what we’ve seen Saturday, there doesn’t seem to have been much, if any, improvement, and the program’s future runway/vibes aren’t looking particularly promising, either.

So, on one hand, Nebraska beating a mediocre team/sideshow is not that notable.

On the other, for a program with so many false starts¹ in recent memory, delivering in a big, hyped spot and looking good is also … pretty notable?

Basically every promising or outsider-watched moment for Nebraska in this recent period has gone poorly for the program. After a 6-0 start in 2016 got the Huskers ranked in the top 15, NU would lose four of the next six, eventually firing its coach a year later. In 2019, a premature preseason ranking and visit from College Gameday ended in embarrassment. A bevy of attempts at upsets or signature wins — or even just competent behavior in close games — over the last five seasons have all slipped through these players’ fingers.

So, for Nebraska to be in a spot with expectations and eyes on it and come out and play well? Not nothing! Even if there were some warts shown in the win — penalties, a stop-and-start offense, not having a functional kicker — a four-touchdown lead for most of the second half is still a four-touchdown lead for most of the second half.

The broader college football public — and most of the top NU’s top recruiting targets — saw a defense that made highlight after highlight, generating havoc plays on 24.5% of its snaps and almost totally keeping an NFL quarterback in Shedeur Sanders and a crew of good receivers in check. The Nebraska offense wasn’t quite as aesthetically pleasing, but it was efficient in the first half, hit some big plays of its own, and kept the turnover sheet clean.

For that to happen in a big spot: progress.

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PROGRAMMING NOTES

Still got this one out later than I wanted to; the charting just takes a long time. I’ll get faster as the season goes along and hopefully have these out faster, too.

Of note on the charting, I counted all of the reps after Sanders left the game as garbage time, as both teams began putting in backups. So all of the stats and charting reflected here exclude both Colorado’s and Nebraska’s final drives of the game.

This week’s sections are:

• Tony White’s Bag Of Tricks

• Are We Worried About The Second Half?

• A New Coverage Philosophy, From 2009

• Left Side Of The Line

• Safety Roles And Movement

• Increased Screen Usage

• Unsung Play Of The Week

• Turnover Margin Tracker

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Tony White’s Bag Of Tricks

After a Week 1 game in which he only brought seven total blitzes and never more than four rushers on about as vanilla a gameplan as you’ll ever see, defensive coordinator Tony White came ready with some specialty looks for Colorado. 

In 2023, he mostly attacked the Colorado spread by bringing Cover 0 blitzes meant to get the ball out of Sanders’ hands fast. That worked for chunks of that game, but it also resulted in some busts as the strain of downfield coverage against the receivers eventually broke for big plays. Saturday, he relied more on a four-player rush, which he dressed up.

His primary curveball against CU was a repeated pressure package that involved overload fronts and tailored personnel:

This package came out for the first time on the third play of the game, on Colorado’s initial third down of the game. Nebraska aligns with three players to the field side of the center: Ty Robinson (green arrow), Jimari Butler (orange arrow), and James Williams (blue arrow). Linebacker John Bullock stands up over the guard on the other side of the center (purple arrow), and Princewill Umanmielen stands up outside that tackle (red arrow):

The goal of this package was to manipulate CU’s line into one-on-one pass-rush matchups by determining which side the center will slide to in pass protection. 

By aligning the three players to the defense’s right side of the center, NU is forcing the center to have to block to that side of the formation; without the center adding-on to that side, CU would have two blockers to stop three rushers.

At the snap, the center does slide to that side to take Robinson, with the playside guard taking Butler, and the tackle taking Williams. All of these players now have a one-on-one matchup against a blocker, and it comes down to who wins.

But the mainpulation piece here is over that opposite weakside guard: Bullock isn’t rushing. He gives two steps up field to make that guard commit to a pass set against him, but then Bullock drops into a short pass coverage zone responsible for crossing routes or the back.

This alignment by White essentially caused CU to waste a blocker while getting his four rushers one-on-ones, all without having to use any extra coverage defenders.

If Bullock hadn’t been aligned there, that guard would have also slid over to the three-rusher side, to help the center on Robinson. But by having Bullock align over the guard, give the appearance of a rush, and give two actual rush steps, the guard locks in to pass protecting against Bullock, preventing him from providing that help at the snap. By the time Bullock backs out into coverage, Robinson has already shot the opposite A gap over that center and is bull rushing over him for the game’s first sack. The backside guard is out of position to slow him and can’t really do anything to help the center.

This is an example of White’s pressures giving the illusion of more rushers than are actually coming, which creates advantageous pass-rush matchups through confusion and generates one-on-ones against blockers, while also still only rushing four and not exposing your secondary. It was especially effective against a disorganized line like CU’s.

This alignment was also notable through the personnel: NU subbed out nose tackle Nash Hutmacher to bring on a group of faster defensive linemen who excel at individual pass rush. Williams and Umanmielen are not starters or every-down players but are excellent pass rushers — Williams is at a 40% pass-rush win rate so far in 2024, and Umanmielen is at 30.8% — and White gets them in the game here for a specialty role in a long-yardage package.

A variation off that look comes on the following drive, on Colorado’s third-and-11:

NU comes out in essentially the same alignment, with Robinson, Butler, and Williams all aligned to the field side of the center. But this time, to the boundary side, Bullock has been subbed out and replaced with another pass rusher in Cam Lenhardt, who has his hand in the dirt (purple arrow):

This time, there aren’t any fake rushers — everyone just comes at the snap. Colorado is in empty, meaning no back is in to protect, and NU gets five more one-on-one rushes across the board on another third down. After seeing that B gap player drop on the previous time NU ran this package, the threat of a dropper is in the offensive line’s minds, another way to sow confusion and slow their reaction time. White also adds another wrinkle to this second rep by having Robinson and Butler run a stunt: Knowing the line is all one-on-one, White has Butler (orange arrow) crash inside to try to occupy two blockers and have Robinson (green arrow) loop around to generate a free rush. Sanders gets the ball out fast and the pressure is ineffective.

We see the final variation on CU’s fourth drive, another third-and-10:

The field side of the line to the center is the same, with Robinson, Butler, and Williams all outside the center. But on this version, that backside over-the-guard rusher is gone, with Bullock (purple arrow), aligned over the formation to play coverage.

Though the rush plan on this variation initially looks like another attempt at an overload, Robinson at the snap crosses the center’s face to rush on the other side of the formation, creating a more standard/even four-player rush, just another look to throw at the Buffs’ line:

NU would run this overload package two more times in the first half, both on long third downs, with the two later reps being duplicates of the first variation that had Bullock standing up in the B gap. On the five total reps NU ran the package, it had a successful play four times. 

The other notable thing about these snaps are that they all came in what is called “dime” personnel. Nebraska’s base 3-3-5 scheme is what’s called a “nickel” personnel, meaning five defensive backs are on the field. “Dime” just means there are six defensive backs on the field. 

For all of these plays, NU took one of its linebackers off the field and brought in corner Ceyair Wright (blue circle) to play on the outside, while taking Marques Buford Jr., the typical outside corner, and moving him into the slot (orange circle), giving the team six DBs for the likely passing situation and eliminating a potential CU matchup advantage with a wideout on the linebacker:

NU used dime personnel on eight total snaps Saturday, six of which were successful plays. White didn’t play a single snap of dime last year per my charting, so this is new. But he would appear to believe he has more corners he can trust now, and this is a package that could be useful all season, even when not used in this particular pressure package. 

The crazy alignments got toned down a bit in the second half with NU staked to a big lead, with only one snap of a pressure package in the 20 charted snaps for the defense after halftime. While he played more conventional structures, one thing White did try to do in the second half was to get as many pure pass rushers on the field as possible:

Instead of having Robinson and Hutmacher on the field at the same time, he had those two rotate at one of the interior tackle spots (green arrow), and moved Butler (orange arrow) from his normal edge rush alignment into the other tackle spot. This let White bring the pass-rush specialists Williams (blue arrow) and Umanmielen (red arrow) to play on the edge. With Colorado throwing the ball at a high rate in the second half and not really even attempting to run, the game flow allowed him to bring on two more players who could get after the quarterback on their own, without it being a liability against the run. Balanced offense is important! 

Williams finished with six pressures in the game in 28 total snaps, and Umanmielen had four in 33. Both performed very well in those roles, even against a bad line.

Another part of the gameplan was a heavy utilization of press coverage. NU pressed at least one receiver on 79.25% of its snaps, compared to just 41.4% against UTEP and 34% in 2023 per my charting. With the Buffs’ receivers being big down-the-field speed threats, White likely wanted to slow them down off the line to prevent them from getting running starts at secondary players down the field. He also probably wanted to throw a wrench in the timing of the passing game and allow more time for pressure to get home. The CU skill group is largely smaller speed-merchant types, so getting physical with them was probably meant as a bit of a psychological play, too. A bit of a risky play, as any of those press reps failing could have led to a big bust, but by the end of the game you could also see the Colorado receivers had been frustrated.