2024 UCLA RECAP: Running Out Of Time

A Nebraska comeback falls short and now no one feels good about a bowl again!

Photo courtesy Nebraska Athletics.

Hey, everyone! A bit of a different format today. I mentioned at the end of the last post that I was going to have a very busy stretch at my day job this week and not have my normal schedule to work on the charting and writing, and I ended up having even less time than I expected. Disappointing, and I apologize for not having the full post, but life happens. I went ahead and made this the free one for the month so that no one who’s paying feels shortchanged. We’ll be back to normal for the USC game.

I was able to stay up and get at least all of the charting done, but I just wrote off the offense and defense instead of the usual broken-up sections. Another pretty disappointing result against UCLA, but things were also not as dispiriting under the surface and there were some interesting schematic things I wanted to get into below.

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This week’s sections are:

• Offense

• Defense

• Unsung Play Of The Week

• Turnover Margin Tracker

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Offense

The offense’s performance Saturday was about as disparate as you can get between halves of a football game. 

The first half was pretty comfortably the worst the unit has performed this season. The offense had just a 20% success rate across those first five drives and would have been shut out on the scoreboard if not for a UCLA personal foul on a third-down stop followed by the unit generating its lone explosive play in the half, a 40-yard diving catch that was underthrown into double coverage. 

The second half, though, showed much better efficiency and flow, as Nebraska seemed to sort out at halftime some of the junk-ball things UCLA was bringing. The offense’s performance in the second half was probably the most efficient we’ve seen since Big Ten play began: It got off 52 plays after halftime, with a success rate of 50%, and generated five explosives. Five of its six drives after the break crossed the UCLA 40 yard line, with three of the drives getting inside the 10. And that second half success rate includes all of the failed plays near the goalline that NU ran, so the performance outside the redzone was closer to 60%. The offense’s best success rates for the year were a 52.5% against UTEP and a 58.9% against Northern Iowa, so Nebraska’s second-half offense was about as good from an effeciency perspective as it’s been this season. Cold comfort when that nets you just 20 points in a loss, but the underlying stuff in the second half was not necessarily as bad as if felt in the moment.

I talked in the last few newsletters that the defensive gameplan we’ve seen emerge against Nebraska since the Indiana game was early-down blitzes and then heavy, deep zone coverage — specifically Tampa 2 — on third downs, in a bid to confuse Nebraska’s true freshman quarterback, Dylan Raiola, with sort of min/max approach that 180-degree flip-flops what he was seeing on each play. Raiola had handled it poorly against Indiana but seemed to be more willing to take the quick-hitting routes and blitz-beaters that he needed to to beat that defensive attack against Ohio State. I expected UCLA to come with the same strategy, but their approach was a bit of a different tact. The Bruins did bring a lot of pressure and play a lot of Tampa 2, but they traded the early down blitzes for just standard defense on early downs and pressures on second and third downs — and the pressures were a bit different. Whereas Indiana and Ohio State just brought five and six rushers, UCLA rarely sent over four rushers but brought them from non-traditional spots, either through pre-snap disguise or concepts called “sim” or “creeper” pressures.

Sim pressures and a creeper pressures are much the same thing, with only four players rushing but one of the rushers being a player from the back-seven. The only difference is that a sim pressure shows a pressure or blitz look pre-snap, and a creeper pressure comes out of a base defense without showing any sort of pressure/blitz before the snap. They’re increasing in usage across college and NFL, as they allow you to still generate one-on-one pass-rush reps — through confusing/tricking the offensive line or quarterback — while only bringing four players to allow you to still keep devoting seven players to pass coverage. Here’s an example: 

On this rep, UCLA is only bringing four rushers — three of the down lineman and the boundary cornerback — with the field-side defensive end dropping into pass coverage. So this looks like a blitz to the QB, and has the possibility of generating confusion on the line, but the defense is also still able to keep its pass coverage whole.

UCLA would also drop from the line on the reps it sent five or six rushers. These aren’t technically called sims or creepers, but they serve largely the same purpose:

Of the 27 total pressures I charted UCLA bringing in the game, 15 featured at least one player who looked like a pass-rusher pre-snap dropping from the line into coverage.

When they weren’t dropping from the line or bringing second-level players, there were also lots of reps where UCLA just moved around before the snap in an attempt to generate confusion:

All of this completely fried Raiola’s brain. For a quarterback to beat this, you have to have a very strong handle on your pass protection rules (to be confident you’ve got any rush possibility accounted for and you’re not about to crushed from the blind side) and be able to ID where the non-traditional rushers are coming from and throw fast to replace them before the droppers can reach the routes. Nebraska came out early trying to run quick-game concepts, which should provide good answers against the chaos looks from UCLA, but Raiola looked completely unsettled or unwilling to pull the trigger on anything. Of his 10 gradeable dropbacks in the first half, I had him going to the right spot with the ball and on time twice.

This is the fourth offensive snap of the game, a pretty simple swing screen to Rahmir Johnson to the play-side with a double slants look to the backside. The tackles here are using cut-block techniques on this play instead of sets because the ball is supposed to be out of the quarterback’s hands immediately. Instead of throwing the ball fast to either side, Raiola tries to do his scramble-around Patrick Mahomes thing and takes what should have been an unforced sack:  

Instead of throwing to either side on time, he freezes and is forced into a play with no other options. Only three of the offensive linemen are really even blocking under this protection scheme, and only two players are running real routes, both of which are slants shorter than 5 yards of depth. There’s no one to do scramble-drill with here, and you’ve got 3-on-4 in protection. If you’re not going to throw this play as designed, the ball has to be put into the second row.

This is another of the bad early reps, with UCLA running a creeper pressure with the middle linebacker coming into the A gap and the two edge rushers dropping to the hashes:

Nebraska’s line picks up the pressure well, giving Raiola a pocket to step up into. NU has on a Y Cross concept, with Thomas Fidone coming from the boundary-side slot position deep across the field as the primary target. This is a slow-developing play, but Raiola has more than enough time here to stand in and wait for the cross to materialize, but he gets freaked out by the creeper pressure and bails out of the pocket to his left, ruining his blockers’ leverage and giving two previously blocked rushers free runs at him. The primary-read crosser by Fidone breaks open for a huge completion right as Raiola panic-bails from the pocket, but Raiola is now being chased around in the backfield and the play is dead. The first three drives went much like this.

Despite all the confusion up front, UCLA on the back-end was running the same coverage on almost every play: Tampa 2. It used Tampa on 27 of Nebraska’s 34 dropbacks, with most of the other coverages deployed when Nebraska was in the redzone. 

Nebraska’s staff pretty quickly realized it was getting the goofy pressures up front with Tampa 2 behind it and adjusted to do two things: going to more max-protect plays and attacking the second level with high-lows to the sidelines and hashes.

NU went heavily into seven- and eight-player protections, often with the tight end and back staying in to chip protect before releasing on checkdowns. This functioned to eliminate the threat of the free rushers: There were now as many blockers as UCLA could bring potential rushers on most of NU’s passing plays, even if the Bruins were only bringing four on the vast majority of snaps. It essentially took the protection worries off Raiola’s plate. Nebraska would use a seven- or eight-player protection on over 35% of its total dropbacks for the game, a season high by over 10 percentage points. Its previous highest use of heavy protection like this was on over a quarter of dropbacks against Rutgers.

But while devoting seven players to protection settled Raiola down in the pocket late in the first half and into the second, doing so created problems of its own: With two of Nebraska’s five eligible receivers now having to essentially block and hit flat routes, there were now only three receivers actually running routes on most plays. And with UCLA using the sims and creepers to still get seven players back in coverage, this led to a lot of ugly reps like this where there were just three players out on routes vs. seven coverage defenders:

That made the passing game exclusively boom-or-bust on if one of these three receivers could win or find space. But considering how the first few drives went, it was also probably a better solution than just letting Raiola run around in a panic on every dropback.

NU also turned to more high-lows to combat the Tampa 2, especially the use of Flood/Sail concepts and things that hit in the seams downfield:

Both of the above plays are trying to create “vertical stretches” on a coverage, with three potential receiving options working at three different levels down the field against two coverage defenders. The first play is a concept called Flood/Sail that has vertical routes deep down the field (orange arrows), a medium-breaking out or corner route to the sidelines (blue arrow), and then a flat route underneath (green arrow):

It’s a good concept to run against Cover 2 looks, as the defense to the sideline only has a flat defender and a deep-half defender to cover these three routes at three different levels — someone should be open. If the flat defender takes the short route from the back and the safety takes away the vertical, the corner route will be uncovered. If the flat defender drops to the corner route, the flat route should be there. Raiola gets the latter on this play but tries to fit a ball into Fidone.

Nebraska was also trying pretty hard to get the ball to the hashes downfield, both with deep-crossing route concepts like the second clip above, on concepts like Dagger on deep in-breaking routes, and just straight downfield with vertical routes down the seam, especially by Fidone. One of these when horribly wrong when Raiola decided to ignore Fidone for unclear reasons¹ but the seam was there on this play and was there pretty much all day:

The run game had a decent day from an efficiency perspective, but Nebraska also again struggled to punish heavy boxes in the passing game, which led to more heavy boxes for the running game to have to deal with. UCLA would play with a heavy box — meaning at least one additional defender lined up inside the tackle box within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage than the offense has blockers — on 40% of its plays, and it would use a light box — meaning playing one or more players down in the box — on just 12 of its 72 snaps in the game, and most of those came on the last drive two-minute-drill. This, to my eye, is the biggest issue with the offense right now, as teams aren’t lining up pre-snap like they have even remote respect for Nebraska’s ability to consistently hit passes against them down the field. It’s just hard to run the ball when defenses aren’t afraid of you downfield like this:

One thing final thing I wanted to talk about that I think has maybe been an under-discussed part of the offense’s recent struggles is the bye weeks that opponents are getting ahead of playing Nebraska. Indiana, Ohio State, and UCLA all had byes ahead of playing NU. I don’t think that’s the main reason things have been so bad for the offense, but it has seemed like the extra time to prepare has been giving teams some pretty big formational tells and clues to what NU is running. All three recent opponents in general have just seemed to have been all over what Nebraska is running. And while OSU just sort of ran what OSU always runs because they don’t need to get cute to beat people, both Indiana and UCLA both seemed to have a lot of junk-ball defensive alignments or pressures or modes of playing that I don’t see them using every week ready for Nebraska. The sims and creepers here are an example; I admittedly haven’t watched much UCLA, but I didn’t see them doing things like this vs. Minnesota on a standard week, for example.

A bye week of its own might give NU a better chance to disguise some of this stuff and blunt the prep advantage other teams are getting right now. USC will also have a bye before playing Nebraska, but Wisconsin and Iowa won’t.

DEFENSE

The narrative of the game would tell you the defense also had a tale-of-two-performances type of game Saturday — UCLA got inside the NU 10 on each of its first three drives before Nebraska gave up just one score from there on out, all on one long passing TD — but some of the underlying stats and the tape had a more favorable view of how the Blackshirts’ played early in the game. 

UCLA’s offense was able to go on an initial 75-yard, 13-play drive while having just a 46% success rate on the possession, with just one explosive play. Its second drive then went 85 yards and 11 plays on a 54% success rate. The Bruins converted five of six third-down opportunities over this initial two-drive stretch. NU had entered giving up just a 35% conversion rate on third and fourth down, which was a top-30 figure nationally. UCLA managing to keep both of those drives alive was pretty unlikely for how Nebraska defended them, but they also were ready with a good plan on third downs. 

How did they do it? The strong opening salvo by UCLA was largely the Bruins exploiting a decision by NU defensive coordinator Tony White to open the game by relying on man coverage. Nebraska used man on nine of its first 24 plays, including five of the six third downs it saw on the first two drives. 

UCLA came out very dialed-in to when Nebraska was going to be in man coverage — another potential bye-week scouting thing —  and had a bunch of plays ready to exploit it. Of these nine man coverage plays NU ran in the first two drives, UCLA’s offense was successful on seven of them and averaged 9.5 yards per play. On NU’s zone plays in that same stretch, UCLA averaged just 4.1 yards per play and had a 33% success rate. The Bruins’ success early was really just on these man coverage plays White went to. 

UCLA in particular seemed to really be targeting NU backup corner Jeremiah Charles any time Nebraska went to man. Charles has only played in spot duty this year but was forced into the lineup Saturday against UCLA when Malcolm Hartzog Jr. was a scratch with injury. 

UCLA went at Charles in man coverage early with a quick slant on the game’s first third down:

with a Shallow Cross concept on the next play:

and a deep corner on the game’s second third down:

all of which netted a conversion and/or big play. Not good plays, but it’s also hard for me to get freaked out at the No. 4 corner for not performing well in his first real action. White was also blitzing frequently early in this stretch, with eight pressures or blitzes on the first two drives.

It should also be noted UCLA QB Ethan Garber was dealing early, hitting a lot of hard throws into tight windows under pressure and maneuvering out of several sacks. Below is a big throw on the second drive; watching from the end zone angle you can watch his head nod and feet reset as he gets through all five reads and delivers a ball in-between two well-positioned NU coverage defenders: 

You can play good D and sometimes a guy can still do that. I thought Garbers cooled off a bit as the game went on, but he played really well for them all day. UCLA could really not block NU’s front at any point and Garbers never really got rattled, getting the ball out quick and accurate even when pressured. UCLA finished with a 50% success rate on true passing plays, the second best mark by any offense against Nebraska this season, trailing only Indiana. Tough break for Nebraska in a key game, but quick, spread passing is the trump card in football for a reason.

After the man- and blitz-heavy first two drives, though, White pretty much stopped doing both, going back to NU’s normal heavy use of zone coverage and standard rush. Over the defense’s final nine drives, Nebraska would play just seven snaps of man and six blitzes, with at least a couple of those reps coming in short yardage as a situational use. 

And after it went to that all zone and four-player rush following the second drive, UCLA wasn’t able to do much on a consistent basis. The Bruins would get another field goal after a 67-yard run by Garbers on a scramble in which two NU defenders knocked each other out of a sack in the backfield and a 48-yard touchdown pass on a blown coverage/bad play by Ceyair Wright to open the third quarter, but overall on those final six drives the Bruins would have just a 37% success rate. Factoring out the long run and long touchdown pass, UCLA’s other plays from the second drive on would average just 3.8 yards. Obviously those two plays count and I don’t want to write them off, but they were largely two isolated incidents in an otherwise pretty standard/good defensive performance for NU on every other snap after that opening Bruin salvo.

While this is a little counterintuitive considering NU gave up 139 rushing yards to a UCLA team that entered with one of the poorer rushing offenses in the country, Nebraska had one of its better days of the season defending the run and run-pass option plays. Nebraska finished with a success rate of 68.8% against true run plays — its third-best mark of the year, behind only UTEP (80.0%) and Purdue (71.4%) — and a 62.5% success rate against RPOs — also its third-best performance of the season, behind only UTEP (also 80.0%) and Colorado (63.6%). The 139 rushing yards was mostly noise: Without the long scramble — which came on a passing play but gets credited with the rushing yardage — UCLA had just 29 other carries for 72 yards (2.48 per carry). The Bruins hit a couple nice runs on toss actions and a jet sweep, but any inside-hitting concept their guards and center were not competing with Nebraska’s line. Pretty much any time they tried to run into Nash Hutmacher or Ty Robinson it looked like this:

There’s been a pretty heartening improvement in how Nebraska defends the RPOs in particular. NU really struggled at defending them in its first two losses, having a 34.8% success rate on RPOs against Illinois and a 33.3% success rate against Indiana. But that’s was a much better 57.1% success rate against Ohio State and the 62.5% on Saturday.

Lincoln Riley is one of the heaviest RPO playcallers in the country, so they’ll have another big test to pass on that front against USC in the next game.  

Unsung Play Of The Week

Nebraska lost fullback Barret Liebentritt to injury and used defensive tackle Elijah Jeudy in his place when in the I-formation Saturday. It delivered one gem of a rep:

Nebraska is running Power O here, with Jeudy at fullback lead blocking to the edge. He blasts the UCLA corner who tries to fill, then sort of bear hugs him, then drives him 20 yards backward behind the play. 

It’s sort of an awkward block attempt, and probably not fair to make fun of the corner as a defensive tackle-sized player is probably going to win that blocking matchup most times. But the driving him backwards off the screen did make me chuckle in an otherwise pretty aesthetically miserable game to watch from both teams.  

Turnover Margin Tracker

After Game 1: +1 (T-20th nationally)
After Game 2: +3 (T-17th nationally)
After Game 3: +3 (T-17th nationally)
After Game 4: +4 (T-17th nationally)
After Game 5: +5 (T-14th nationally)
After Game 6: +6 (T-13th nationally)
After Game 7: +2 (T-46th nationally)
After Game 8: +2 (T-46th nationally)
After Game 9: 0 (T-69th nationally)

What was once a decided strength is back to dead even. NU was +6 in the turnover battle in its 5-1 start but has lost all that progress over this three-game losing streak, which is not a coincidence. This recent stretch of performance has more resembled last year’s team or several others in recent years that was loose with the ball and let turnovers sink them rather than using them as a tool of their own to win games, which NU was doing early in the year. If we can all agree that Indiana and UCLA were the two most disappointing performances from this team, the Huskers are -6 alone in those two games, and +6 in the other seven. There were plenty of other issues in both those losses, but losing the turnover margin that decisively is also part of why they feel so different than the other seven games. Turnovers can turn a down or bad performance into the snowball effect.

I will say there was a bit of flukiness in Saturday’s results. UCLA entered at 118th nationally in turnover margin at -7 and didn’t commit any turnover-worthy plays per Pro Football Focus’ charting, with a decent amount of pressure generated by Nebraska. PFF had NU committing just one turnover-worthy play — Raiola’s interception; it doesn’t count Heinrich Haarberg’s game-ending pick as turnover worthy because it hit the receiver in the hands — which resulted in Nebraska finishing with two turnovers, one of which went for a score the other way. Sometimes those are the breaks. Ultimately credit to them for playing a completely clean game, but I think if we played that in some alternate universes UCLA doesn’t get out of there up +2 based on their history and how the game was played on the field.

1. That is happening a lot. Fidone should have like 500 receiving yards this year based on how often he’s getting open, and Raiola just doesn’t even look at him on most plays, even if he’s the primary read. It’s to the point I’m wondering if they have personal beef or something?(Joking.)