2024 OHIO STATE RECAP: To The Middle
Nebraska's defense excels by getting simple as it bounces back from disaster
Which outlier do you want to believe in?
The past two games have presented two indecipherable performances by 2024 Nebraska, neither of which would seem to represent anything close to the team we saw entering that stretch: The first, a 49-point loss to an Indiana team that NU seemed reasonably close to on paper, a defeat that saw its elite defense give up yardage at will; the second, a physical battle against a top-five team that went down to the wire, one where Nebraska had chances to win and wasn’t reliant on obvious flukes to be in the game.
Or should we believe in either? I’m not sure I do.
The Indiana loss had terrible vibes, but after diving under the hood, I mostly saw uncharacteristic bad mistakes against a good IU team that was on one and out to prove a point. But against Ohio State, I also don’t think I see a group that has turned a corner and is suddenly ready to play with the big boys, either.
The defense was phenomenal against an elite offense, but more big-play busts and mental errors helped OSU put Nebraska in a hole, and finicky elements like short-yardage defense were working in NU’s favor. On offense, many of the same issues that have plagued this group continued to surface — a lack of consistency in operating the passing game, a lack of ability to get anyone out of the box to run the ball — were still there, with this performance finishing as Nebraska’s second worst this season on offense by success rate. Big, timely plays were doing a lot of the lifting for NU’s offensive attack.
I guess my determination is that the “real” Nebraska is probably still somewhere in the middle of what we’ve seen in this late October stretch, a good, improved team that can do some things well but still has major weaknesses that can be exploited. Not as bad as it showed against Indiana but still a ways from repeatable big-time football. I think that should represent progress to most.
One thing I do know for certain: This week’s game against UCLA is monumental. The Bruins, aside from maybe Purdue or Northwestern, are the worst team in the Big Ten. Taking care of business and getting a win puts Nebraska at 6-3 entering a bye, giving Matt Rhule a week to tout tangible improvement from Year One to his team and fans, a week of confidence building and proof of concept. A loss brings a week of doubt and angst, both about whether NU can win one of its remaining three games to reach a bowl and if this team has really moved forward at all. About as must-win as a non-contender can encounter.
This week’s sections are:
Straight-Up Defense And Some Changes
Trap
Busts Diagnosis
A New Gameplan Vs. Raiola
Motion Rates and 10 Personnel
End-Of-Game Play-Calling
Heavy Press And Then No Press
Rant Of The Week: Under-Center Run-Pass Ratios
Unsung Play Of The Week
Turnover Margin Tracker
Straight-Up Defense And Some Changes
After a horrible defensive performance against Indiana, in which the Blackshirts gave their worst performance under Tony White in almost every category I chart, the unit was in need of a major bounce back. That seemed unlikely before the game as NU went on the road to face the No. 7 team nationally in SP+ offensive efficiency.
But the unit did recover, holding the top-10 Buckeyes attack to just 14 points through its first nine drives and 21 points total. Some of the underlying stats weren’t quite as dominant — OSU still averaged about 6.8 yards per play in non-garbage time and got an explosive on 11.4% of its snaps, both the second-worst rates of the year behind the Indiana game — but the Huskers defense did win the balance of overall plays, with a 56.8% success rate for the game, and then also stood up well in situational football, stopping OSU on 9 of 11 third and fourth down attempts and stopping 4 of Ohio State’s 6 third or fourth down attempts of three yards or under. So a bit of Nebraska keeping points off the board was probably situational luck, but play-to-play the Blackshirts went up against an elite unit and not only held their own but slightly out-performed it.
After getting diced up by runs and RPOs by the Hoosiers, how did coordinator Tony White turn it around?
By getting more basic and vanilla. This was easily the most standard game of defense White has called this season. After a movement-heavy and eventually blitz-heavy game against IU, Nebraska against Ohio State lined up in traditional four-player fronts with zone coverage and brought a standard rush on the vast majority of its plays. It cut way down on or almost entirely eliminated all of the window-dressing or unique looks we’ve come to know from the 3-3-5:
NU played just two snaps of three-player fronts, a season-low of 4.5%. The season average entering had been to use these three-player fronts on 28.4%, and the previous season low had been 18.4%, with most games over 30%. The rate of four-player fronts was up to 82.9% against OSU, a season-high and over 30 percentage points higher than the season average of 52.5%. Nebraska was, in essence, lining up in a standard 4-2-5 shell defense for about 80% of the game.
NU rushed four on the vast majority of its snaps, 75.0%. NU’s typical rush pattern on the season had been much more varied, at 54.5% four-player rush, 24.1% five-player rush, and 5.9% six-player rush. The five-player rush figure fell to about 13.6% against OSU, used almost half as often, as White just tried to win with four.
NU brought just seven blitzes or pressures on its 44 non-garbage time plays, a 15.9% rate that was a season low by nearly 10 percentage points. NU had entered the game with a blitz rate of 42.0%, so this was it being cut by nearly two-thirds. The previous season low for blitzes had been 24.1% against UTEP when Nebraska’s defense was being intentionally generic to not give anything away against a bad opening team; the season-low for blitzes outside of that was 32% against Rutgers.
After playing a season-high rate of man coverage against Indiana (on 52.3% of snaps), White went back to the heavy usage of zone coverage he’s displayed all year, running zone on about 84.1% of snaps. The types of zones were a bit different, however, as NU based out of Cover 3, running it on 56.8% of snaps. NU’s main coverage entering the game, Cover 2, was used on just 22.7% of snaps, an 11-percentage-point decrease from the season average.
So, NU was essentially aligned in four-player fronts, not blitzing, playing Cover 3 zone. It’s hard to be more generic than that … and it won the balance of the plays against the No. 7 offense in the country. Pretty impressive stuff for how well Nebraska’s players executed in their one-on-one matchups, then.
The two area where it did keep up the window-dressing occurred in both the pre-snap movement in the front and the post-snap movement in the secondary. NU did some type of front shift on 40.9% of its plays and rotate coverage on about 52.3% of it plays, both rates up a few percentage points from the season averages. But beyond that, this was really just basic 4-2-5 football. Nebraska’s players just executed better for a lot of the day.
White also made a couple personnel and schematic tweaks.
The biggest was to swap out the positions of Maques Buford Jr. and Malcolm Hartzog Jr. Buford had been NU’s starter at one of the outside corner spots, and Hartzog had been at the “safety” spot that essentially just functions as Nebraska’s nickel. But against OSU, Buford moved inside to nickel and Hartzog moved outside to outside corner for all of the snaps. I’m not sure what prompted this; I’d guess that Buford’s physicality was wanted closer to the ball. He’s been beating up wideouts all year, but it may be NU would rather have that physicality in the box at this point than have it out wide. Will be interesting to see if that was a one-game tweak or a continued move.
How NU got into its coverages was also adjusted. Typically, NU has played its main coverage, that Tampa 2/Cover 2 look, out of two-high or three-high safety shells in the ways you’d expect. The two deep-dropping safeties would both be aligned deep to start the play, like this:
Against Ohio State, though, with Buford in the slot, Nebraska showed several reps of aligning in single-high but then dropping Buford from the line deep to become one of those deep-half safeties:
It may seem like a small tweak of alignment, but this created a new element of disguise for Nebraska’s defense, as the aligning in single-high but dropping to Tampa 2 presented uncertainty from this alignment structure. Previously, these single-high looks had only ended up being Cover 1 or Cover 3, but with the threat of Buford now dropping, two-high coverages like Tampa were now on the menu of possible coverages an offense could encounter. That makes it a lot trickier to call plays, and made it more effective when Nebraska did just run a single-high coverage out of the look:
The dropping Buford back concept did get burned on Ohio State’s first touchdown, when Buford tries to drop from the line to deep but gets fooled on a Mills concept from OSU:
His responsibility is to be over the top of this, but he makes a mental mistake while on the run. The more rotation you do, the higher the chances you’ll get burned like this.
Trap
Pretty evident in NU’s offensive gameplan was that it didn’t feel it could block OSU’s front in pass protection or on standard runs. We saw a lot of screens and heavy protection/chips in the passing game, and in the running game we saw use of more misdirection and one specific concept Nebraska has not really run much this year: Trap.
Trap is a common run-concept design used against aggressive, talented fronts, where you intentionally allow a defensive linemen to get penetration into the backfield before sealing them with a crossing lineman or tight end, then running into the space the lineman vacated. It looks like this:
No. 91 for OSU, Tyleik Williams, is the player Nebraska is worried about and is trying to “trap” block here. Williams is probably a top-15 NFL pick this spring and the best player on Ohio State’s defense. Few Nebraska linemen could consistently one-on-one block Williams, an explosive athlete at 315 pounds. Few people in the country could. The goal of this play, then, is for the offense is to let him get penetration, then use his leverage against him to push him out of the play:
At the snap, Justin Evans, aligned over Williams, ignores Williams and works to the weak side to seal the nose (orange). Evans approaching from this angle also give him good leverage on his block. Center Ben Scott, instead of worrying about the nose at all, works to the second level to a linebacker (blue). Another benefit to this play is it can help you work to second-level players more quickly. To the strength of the formation, tackle Gunnar Gottula then also seals the strongside end, who’s aligned wide, making Gottula’s job easy (purple).
Williams (green arrow) then has free run to the backfield. But tight end Thomas Fidone (yellow) is there to seal him to the inside of the formation after a couple of steps upfield, creating a situation where Evans and Gottula are walling off a lane, and Fidone is using Williams’ own upfield leverage to push him out of the play.
Some people call this variation of Trap with the tight end seal “Wham,” but they’re essentially the same plays, with the Y delivering the seal block instead of another lineman.
Nebraska had only run Trap on four plays entering this game, but used it four times against OSU for great effect. Three of the four plays were successful, and two of the runs were explosives. The four Trap plays averaged 8.8 yards per play. The “Nebraska got the running game going in the second half” talking point was largely thanks to Trap hitting:
Nice move by the staff to have this in and repped for the game.
Busts Diagnosis
The two long touchdown passes in the first half and the 37-yard completion that opened Ohio State scoring drive in the second half were the Buckeyes’ only real offense on the day. Excluding those three plays, OSU gained just 161 yards on 41 snaps, or about 3.9 yards per play. On its eight drives that didn’t feature one of those plays, it got in scoring position just one time, which resulted in a missed field goal.
What happened on each?
The 40-yard score on the slow rotation was discussed in the previous section, but on the other two busts Nebraska fell victim good play designs by Ohio State run by good players.
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