2024 WISCONSIN RECAP: Breaking Open

Nebraska's offense explodes for an unbelievable performance to end the bowl streak, as the defense struggles with big-play busts

Emmett Johnson forced 11 missed tackles against Wisconsin per Pro Football Focus and gained 78 yards after initial contact on his runs. Photo courtesy Nebraska Athletics.

Hello, everyone! No long preamble today, as I’m trying to get this out as fast as possible so people have time to read and digest on Thanksgiving before Friday’s game against Iowa.

But a bowl game is cool! Celebrating just going to a bowl feels a little weird and prideless, but after eight years without, I think it’s fair. There were a couple of Nebraska teams within that streak that probably deserved to go bowling, but this is the one that actually did it. You can’t take that for granted!

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This week’s sections are:

• What Drove The Offensive Improvements?

• Mesh Rail Is Already Cooking

• The One Play Killing The Blackshirts

• Holgorsen Changes, Data Point II

• New Coverage Plan And Rotation Failures

• Specialty Formations

• Faster Has Been Better

• Turnover Margin Tracker

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What Drove The Offensive Improvements?

It’s difficult to even contextualize how much better Nebraska’s offense was in putting up 44 points against Wisconsin on Saturday than it had been at any other point this year. Its 54.9% success rate was the second best of the season (behind only Northern Iowa), and it set a season high in total explosive plays (12), with its explosive play percentage only behind the UNI and Purdue games, when it ran less than 50 offensive plays. Its one havoc play allowed — the fumble off the shovel pass in the first quarter — was also a season best. Its success rates on individual downs — first down, second down and third/fourth down — were all each among one of the three best performances on the season. The only place it wasn’t stellar was in its average length of third down, but that’s largely a function of it facing only nine total third downs in the game.

And all this occurred against a Wisconsin defense that was ranked in the top 20 per SP+ in defensive efficiency. The other three performances that beat any of the individual elements of this game came against UTEP, Northern Iowa, and Purdue — an FCS team and two of the worst defenses in the FBS. Even if you don’t think Wisconsin’s D is top 20 good, Nebraska hit for all those cylinders at the same time against what should at least be considered a pretty good Power 4 defense. That makes it the best performance of the year, by a lot.

When there’s a huge shift in performance like that, I think it’s natural to believe something radically changed with the whole unit. But tape review doesn’t show much different from a schematic perspective. New coordinator Dana Holgorsen turned some dials up and some dials down, but NU was still largely running the same plays as it has all season. Aside from a handful of new concepts, what we saw Saturday 100% came from the same playbook Nebraska has run all season.

But one thing has been majorly different on the unit since Holgorsen took over: The quarterback has just played unbelievably better in the past two games.

I have no idea what they did to get Dylan Raiola to process as well as he did on Saturday. I think they might have given him The Substance. Raiola’s season average for “decision making” on his dropback passing — what I grade as going to a correct or acceptable place with the ball on time — through the first 10 games was at 60.1%. In the general time frame of Nebraska’s offensive struggles, he had been very poor: From the Rutgers through UCLA stretch, his rates had been at 47.6%, 43.5%, 65.4%, and 46.7%.

But things have improved a lot since Holgorsen took over. Raiola’s decision making rate jumped to 71.9% against Southern Cal; that didn’t result in an offensive explosion against the Trojans, but things felt a little smoother. And his rate went up even further up to a 75.9% against Wisconsin, which did result in a bevy of points as Nebraska turned short completions into explosives. No other game from Raiola against an FBS opponent had been near either of those two rates.¹ If Holgorsen can be credited with one drastic improvement in the offense, it’s this: He’s almost doubled the amount of dropbacks in which Raiola goes to the correct spot with the ball from when he took over. In two games.

In a sense, most of the yards Nebraska gained against Wisconsin were all there to be had in the past five games; NU just wasn’t taking them because of poor quarterback play and some other execution gaffes. The gameplan against Nebraska’s offense since Rutgers has been to stack the box while keeping safeties deep, ignoring the wider flats and seams, and alternating between big blitzes and heavy zone coverage to trick a true freshman passer. Raiola hadn’t been processing well enough to consistently get the ball out on quick passes to punish those structures and blitzes, so defenses kept doing it. Until Saturday. What we saw against Wisconsin was essentially NU drop-kicking this bespoke attack plan from opponents to the moon. A, “Go ahead and keep trying to play us this way and see what happens,” moment that backfired on Wisconsin spectacularly.

On Raiola’s 29 gradeable dropbacks, he went to the correct spot with the ball 22 times. I only saw a few truly bad moments, and on both he went to the correct spot with the ball on the same concept later in the game.

On this play in the second quarter, NU is running that Snag-Double Slants look I mentioned last week that Holgorsen was using a lot. Nebraska ran it five more times Saturday. Raiola gets zone coverage, but instead of going to the zone-beating flat-hook-corner side, he tries to throw one of the quick slants that’s designed to be an answer against man:

Against the clear zone coverage, he should go to the three-receiver side of the play and try to evaluate the triangle read, and he misses a wide open hook route from Luke Lindenmeyer.

But a handful of plays later, NU runs the same concept from the same formation, gets zone again, and he goes to the exact right spot with the ball:

That’s improvement within the game. Coaching on the sideline. Progress isn’t linear, and he could have a bad game against a very good Iowa secondary. But in the two starts he’s made under Holgorsen, it’s been a huge improvement in him just getting the ball out fast to where the defense isn’t within the design of the play.

Against Wisconsin, this improved consistency from the passing game just sort of opened everything else up. With NU hitting on these passes in space, Wisconsin was forced to widen to respect more of the field. This, in turn, helped the running game, as it kept UW from stacking the box. Nebraska for the second straight game had its heavy box rate significantly down from the season average, and the running game responded with its best day of the year: Nebraska had an absolutely scorching 62.5% success rate on true rushing plays — around 15 percentage points higher than the season average entering of 47.6%. It also had a season-best 53% success rate on RPOs.

While I think the improved QB play was attributable for the majority of the offensive explosion, there was also just some undeniably improved individual execution across the board from the unit. Emmett Johnson forced nine missed tackles on running plays and two more on receptions per Pro Football Focus. PFF also had him gaining 78 yards on rushes after first contact. The perimeter blocking was just way better, too. This is one of those tight end slide RPOs that has been blown up all season:

Pretty much every element of this play’s execution is just better here than it was all season: The tight end gives a better shove fake at the line, the quarterback waits to throw the ball until the RPO route has better separation, the outside receivers are blocking 10 yards down the field, and the receiver breaks tackles after the catch.

That’s just everyone on this play doing a better job. This isn’t really improved play-calling or sequencing or designs; this is better execution.

I don’t know what specifically that’s attributable to since Holgorsen arrived. Maybe their practices are more focused on executing a smaller menu. Maybe the players didn’t believe in Marcus Satterfield’s ability or plan as much but do respect Holgorsen’s pedigree more. Maybe Holgorsen is (respectfully) a bit more of a hard ass who’s not afraid to get on guys whom he didn’t recruit.

I don’t know. But whatever it is, I don’t think it’s been predominantly schematic. And they should do it again.

Mesh Rail Is Already Cooking

Mesh is a passing concept created by the Air Raid I’ve previously said I expected Nebraska to start running a lot of under Holgorsen. Mesh at its most simple features a pair of underneath drag routes crossing each other vs. man coverage or settling into holes vs. zone coverage. Here is a pretty basic explainer of the general concept from The Weekly Spiral.

But in Holgorsen’s two games as OC, Nebraska has specifically been running a variation of Mesh called “Mesh Rail,” which adds a “rail” route to the concept from the running back as a quick alert in case of man coverage. A rail route is similar to a wheel route but a little flatter and more vertical up the field:

The concept went mainstream under Steve Sarkisian during his tenure at OC at Alabama, and he’s also taken it with him to Texas. Mesh Rail is now huge across the sport, but Sark has gotten a lot of the credit for perfecting it while with the Crimson Tide. Here are a couple short coaching clinics explaining the concept more in-depth, one going over Sarkisian while he was at Alabama and another by Sark’s quarterback coach at Texas:

Nebraska had run any Mesh concept just four times under Satterfield, but it ran Mesh Rail alone three times against USC and then ran it six more times Saturday against Wisconsin. Those six plays against Wisconsin went for an average of 10.5 yards and a success rate of 66%. It killed the Badgers consistently throughout the game. Nebraska’s has turned this play into a weapon with just three weeks of practice/coaching from Holgorsen.

The first read on Mesh Rail is the rail route from the running back. That’s where the quarterback is looking first. The rail route will only be open against man coverage, as the corner to the running back’s side dropping into zone takes away the access on the throw:

But if that outside corner is playing man coverage and runs inside with the sit route, the quarterback has access to throw the rail route, and the man defender covering the back on that rail route has to run through traffic, setting multiple chances for “picks” by the offensive players:

In this example, Wisconsin is in man coverage, so the outside corner (orange) follows the sit route (green) inside. That not only takes that corner away from covering the rail, but also creates a pick on the safety responsible for covering the back in man coverage (purple circle), who can’t get through the traffic in time to cover the rail, resulting in an untouched completion and explosive play.

If the rail is taken away, the quarterback’s second read is to the crosser on the mesh concept coming from the side away from the back:

In this rep, Wisconsin drops into a mix of man and zone coverage, with one linebacker in man coverage getting through the traffic and taking away the rail route:

The rail’s now eliminated, so on to the second read. Raiola’s eyes then go to the mesh action underneath, with the crosser from the back’s side (purple) creating enough traffic to take his man coverage defender out of the play and also keep the defender covering the crosser coming from the backside (green circle) from being able to cover the primary mesh route (blue):

Raiola gets to this and throws it late; if he had thrown it right after the two receivers crossed, there would have been more space to run:

The final read on the main Mesh Rail progression is the sit route behind the mesh action:

If the defense is in zone coverage and cuts off the path of the rail and the crossing routes (purple), the middle sit route (yellow) will come open between the two underneath zone defenders:

Beyond that, the progression gets to whatever fourth route is attached to the play, but the rail-mesh-sit it the main progression. The other underneath crosser starting from the back’s side isn’t really a route, more meant to set the pick for the other mesh route, but can also be thrown to in a scramble drill.

Nebraska also brought out some variations of Mesh Rail out beyond just the standard setup:

On the play above, NU runs the basic rail route from back (yellow) and mesh concept (blue) but also pairs it with a second rail route (green, on a pre-snap widen motion) and then brings a third shallow crossing route from the other outside receiver on a sort of delayed slant route (purple):

The defense is in zone coverage, and the two middle depth linebackers see the initial two underneath mesh routes coming and lock onto those, but then that third underneath route enters their zone and there’s no one to cover it:

Beautiful stuff. It’s so much more enjoyable to watch the Holgorsen schemed-up stuff than the earlier iteration of the offense.

The One Play Killing The Blackshirts

Run-pass option plays have been a huge issue for Nebraska’s defense all year and were again Saturday. NU actually had a decent success rate of 52.9% overall against RPOs, but Wisconsin hit for four of its eight explosive plays in the game off RPOs looks and gained 9.4 yards per play on them . UW’s true running and passing plays went for an average of 7.0 yards per play — not good, but a rate that also falls to a pretty good 5.5 YPP when you exclude the late 58-yard touchdown the Badgers hit.

And one specific type of RPO especially is killing NU: Plays with slant or glance routes as the passing element. Wisconsin’s nine glance or slant RPOs went for an average of 12.0 yards per play and delivered three of the four RPO explosives UW got. Wisconsin’s RPOs that weren’t of the glance or slant variety went for just 6.3 yards per play and had a 42.8% success rate for the offense. It’s really just these slant and glance looks that are causing the majority of the problems.