2025 BOWL RECAP: Changes Coming

Nebraska tries to install its new defense for the bowl game and gets obliterated; an ineffective passing game shows why it has to evolve beyond screens, sprintouts and quick game

Photo courtesy Nebraska Athletics

There’s a lot going on with Husker football at the moment that people would rather read about than a blowout loss in a bowl from 10 days ago. I’ll get to that later in the offseason, but, for now, there was enough interesting schematic elements to the game to warrant an in-depth post before we move on. More will come from me on the coaching changes and the transfer portal in the offseason.

This week’s sections are:

• The New Defense Was Installed During The Bowl Practices

• This Can’t Be What The Offensive Plan Is

• Counter Is Here

• Bad Defense In Long Yardage

• Shifting and Pre-Snap Disguise

• Condensed Sets Disappear

The New Defense Was Installed During The Bowl Practices

Nebraska’s run-defense issues this season were predominantly personnel based to me — mostly from having freshmen and sophomores along the front seven and lacking any interior linemen who could not get obliterated against a double team — so I wasn’t particularly hopeful that Phil Snow talking in press conferences about how John Butler didn’t do fundamentals or whatever was going to make Nebraska now hold up against one of the best rushing offenses in the country.

But NU got pulverized and embarrassed on the ground in the Las Vegas Bowl, mostly on simple QB gap-scheme read plays, for 225 rushing yards. And it allowed another 310 through the air. Even by my low expectations for how that was going to go: pretty bad.

Utah’s offense would have rolled in that game either way, but part of the reason the defensive performance was uglier than expected was because the staff canned the 3-3-5 scheme used for all of the regular season to begin installing Rob Aurich’s 4-2-5 defense.

NU did not run a single snap of the three- or five-player fronts we’ve seen all year in the bowl game; 53 of Nebraska’s 61 snaps before garbage time came out of a four-player front, or an “even” front. The other eight reps were either pressure packages on third and longs or goalline reps with a short-yardage front. Nebraska had used odd fronts on about 30% of its plays in the regular season, so to play four-down every non-specialty snap of the game was a huge statistical outlier.

The type of four-player front NU utilized was also different. Nebraska spent all but a handful of its even-front snaps during the bowl in an Over front — with a nose tackle aligned in a 1 technique (shaded just off the center opposite the formation strength), another tackle aligned in a 3 technique (shaded just off the guard to the formation’s strength) and both ends aligned just outside the tackles:

Graphic courtesy vIQtory Sports.

NU used Over fronts during the season, but it also had as many reps in various other alignments with four players up front, including odd fronts with an overhang player and fronts with both DTs aligned over the guards. It did not play Over fronts to the degree we saw in a bowl game.

Overall, Nebraska spent 60.4% of its snaps in a 4-2 shell, and 13.2% more snaps in a 4-3 shell. Those rates were at 36.5% and 12.5% during the regular season.