DEFENSIVE RECAP: 2023 Colorado
Can't get mad at the Blackshirts for this one
Glossary of Terms1
Link to Game Breakdown Sheet2
DRIVE 1
12 Plays, 3.75 Yards Per Play Allowed
75% Success Rate
1 Havoc Play, 0 Explosive Plays Allowed
Pretty rare for a defense to win 75% of the snaps on a possession and see the drive still go 12 plays, but that’s the Veer and Shoot offense for you. Nebraska coordinator Tony White made his overarching strategy to limit the high-flying Colorado attack known pretty early, bringing a blitz on the first snap, dropping eight players into coverage on the next, and then bringing heat again on third down. White spent most of the game doing this, alternating A-B between reps where Buffs quarterback Shadeur Sanders was facing off man coverage and extra rushers (or the appearance of extra rushers) and reps where Sanders saw all his passing lanes shrink as eight defenders dropped into zones and NU brought only three rushers.
Sanders converted the initial third-and-long but faced Drop 8 on the next two snaps, pulling one down for a short scramble and hitting a 14-yard pass in the gap on the other, sandwiched between a 15-yard personal foul penalty to set up the game’s second third-and-long. Here White busted out a designer pressure just for CU’s offense:
NU comes out in a three-man front but “mugs” its Mike and Will linebackers into the B gaps on either side and puts its Jack linebacker directly behind the nose tackle. With five players across the line head-up on the offensive linemen, the line is prevented from sliding, letting NU know it’s going to get one-on-one blocking. Additionally, most spread/Air Raid teams use something known as check pass protection, where the running back will “check” for blitzers before releasing on their pass route: If more than four defenders rush the passer, the back will stay in to help the five-man line protect; if four or fewer defenders rush, the offensive line has a numbers advantage and the back can release to be a receiver. It looks pre-snap as if the NU players will be coming on a six-man blitz, which would keep dangerous pass-catching CU running back Dylan Edwards in to protect, at least initially. In the secondary, NU is showing pretty obvious Cover 1, with the defenders lined up over each receiver (blue arrows) and one deep safety (the deep green arrow)
The look of pressure has the intended effect, forcing Edwards to step up in pass pro and keeping him from releasing on a route. But neither of the B-gap linebackers are blitzing, with both dropping into short hook zones over the middle of the field (green arrows). If Edwards had released on a route, one of them would have been responsible for Edwards in man coverage. But with him pass-protecting, White has essentially tricked CU into wasting one of its five eligible receivers: Now only four players are out on routes, and NU gets to drop an extra hook defender into the short area of the field to provide extra coverage, a 2-for-1 boost. Additionally, the Jack LB who was over the center and looked like he would drop DID come on a pressure through the A gap, making the Colorado o-line have to adjust: It thought it would be getting B or C gap pressure, but instead the blitz came up the middle.
CU converts here on Sanders making a great second-platform throw to the outside against the loose man coverage, but, overall, Nebraska ran this stunt four times on Saturday and had a successful play on three of them.
White goes back to Drop 8 on the next first down (5 of this drive’s 12 plays were some version of eight NU players in coverage) but the Buffs have an RPO on, resulting in a run of 5 yards. NU calls the same double B simulated pressure from two plays earlier on second down, forcing an incompletion. NU drops eight into coverage on third down and again Sanders struggles to find a hole against it, essentially throwing the ball away. But an offsides call on Colorado’s fourth down attempt moves the chains to keep this improbable drive moving.
NU gets a big help on the next first down with a 14-yard loss on an intentional grounding penalty:
NU is in one of its rare four-man fronts for this game, but the sack occurs when linebacker Will linebacker Nick Henrich shifts down to the line before the snap, making it a five-man front. CU is trying to take a deep shot off play-action, but with the tight splits by the offensive linemen in the Veer and Shoot offense (look at how close the linemen are together at the snap), it’s a tough ask to tell the right tackle he should handle the blitzing Henrich out of a wide alignment. You can especially see the tackle struggling to cover the distance out to Henrich on the endzone view above. Another smart, designer move for White in the gameplan.
On second-and-long, NU drops into a coverage called “two-man” with man coverage underneath and two deep zone safeties over the top. Two-Man is great in passing situations as the man coverage gives you tight coverage on the underneath receivers, with the concept also preventing big plays with the two deep safeties. But it’s terrible against quarterbacks who can hurt you with their legs — all the underneath second-level defenders have their eyes on their receivers, not the quarterback, and the only people watching for a scramble are the safeties, who are 12 yards down the field and backpedaling at the snap. Sanders recognizes the coverage and runs for 12 yards to set up another third down. That would be the only snap of Two-Man that White would deploy Saturday.
After another CU penalty, the Huskers get another chance to get off the field with a third-and-14 on the edge of field goal range. White again deploys a pressure look, bringing out a package with all three of NU’s linebackers mugged to the line of scrimmage, creating a six-man front. Colorado is in an empty alignment, with Edwards split out of the formation as a receiver, meaning the Buffs’ only pass protectors are five offensive linemen against the six Huskers who look as if they’re blitzing. Sanders is on red-alert to get rid of this ball quickly.
In the secondary, NU lines up with its five secondary players directly across from Colorado’s five receivers (blue arrows): a look called Cover 0. Cover 0 is a high-risk, high-reward call you typically only see associated with big blitzes or near the goalline: It lets you bring up to six players to rush the passer or against the run, potentially generating more tackles of loss or sacks, but it also leaves your secondary player truly one-on-one with receivers, as there’s no safety help. No one is deep to help; if one of your DBs gets beat on a route or misses a tackle, you’ve probably just given up a touchdown.
Not everyone comes on the blitz, however, as the Huskers’ boundary defensive end takes two steps upfield, then backpedals into short coverage underneath to cloud any passing lanes (orange arrow). By taking the two steps forward, he made the CU offensive line consider him a rusher, ensuring no offensive linemen could slide to the other side of the formation, where the actual blitz was happening.
Sanders’ can’t make the decision quickly enough and whips one over the middle to no one, ending the drive.
DRIVE 2
3 Plays, 1.6 Yards Per Play Allowed
33.3% Success Rate
1 Havoc Play, 0 Explosive Plays Allowed
White, in absolute madman mode, opens the second drive in the six-man front/Cover 0 blitz look again, but this time brings everyone.
Sanders throws the ball out to a hitch virtually as soon as the ball hits his hands to get five yards. I can’t stress how rare running Cover 0 in non-goalline or very short yardage is — Nebraska last year ran Cover 0 on just 21 of its 692 defensive snaps I charted, and I can’t remember a single instance that wasn’t on the goalline. For White to have busted it out twice on 13 snaps in this game so far is incredibly aggressive. The Huskers would finish with six snaps of Cover 0 in the game, but, as we’ll get to, the gamble doesn’t always pay off.
NU goes back to Drop 8 on second-and-5, and CU hands the ball off for a short gain on an RPO. Running the ball against a three-man front with the eight players behind it gaining depth to fill passing lanes should be an automatic 5 yards unless you are a horrid rushing team, which CU is.
That sets up a third-and-2 in which White would reveal his other designer pressure package for this game.
Nebraska comes out in a five-man Bear front with its Will and Jack linebackers down on the edges of the defensive line, something it deployed in a lot against Minnesota in short yardage Week 1. The secondary is again showing Cover 1 (man underneath with one safety deep) and runs Cover 1.
It has a lot of the same benefits of the earlier five-across pressure package, keeping the line from sliding and keeping Edwards into protect.3 Also like the earlier package, not all the blitzers are coming, with the Will and Jack taking the two steps forward to make the offensive linemen respect them as threats before dropping from edges into short pass zones. White featured this a lot — Colorado ate TCU up with short, quick passes to the middle of the field and hashes in Week 1, so dropping to those spots (and making it unpredictable to Sanders whom was dropping) made many of Colorado’s reads on their quick-game passing plays cloudy. Also like the other pressure, the LB over the A gap who looked like a coverage defender comes on the blitz up the middle, switching where Colorado thought the blitz would be coming from pre-snap (the outside) to where it actually came from (the inside). CU has a double screen on and flips the ball out to Edwards, with no blocker on the dropping Jack, creating an easy tackle for loss and ending the drive.
DRIVE 3
6 Plays, -1.66 Yards Per Play Allowed
83% Success Rate
3 Havoc Plays, 0 Explosive Plays Allowed
If you loved the “12-play drive on a 25% success rate” earlier you’ll love “six-play drive while gaining negative yardage per snap.”
White has Sanders’ head swimming at this point. NU drops eight into coverage on first down, forcing a checkdown that loses 3 yards. Colorado gets some of it back on second down against a blitz, but White again lines up in a Cover 0 look, this time with seven players across the line of scrimmage.
This was another feature of the gameplan: By putting all of his bodies at the line and having some drop to the second level instead of being initially lined up there, White was able to disguise who would be the coverage defenders and where they’d be. This time he brings just four of the seven aligned and has one cover the releasing back in man and two drop in zone. Sanders panics on the blitz look that really isn’t a blitz and scrambles immediately and puts a throw off-target.
A personal foul keeps the CU drive alive,4 but White befuddles Sanders again, bringing another sim pressure on first down, a straight blitz on second down, and Drop 8 on third down. Sanders is an exceptionally smart quarterback with a special ability to diagnose coverages when clean, but he’s been playing at the FCS level and still hasn’t proven he can consistently deliver the ball to the right spots against Power 5-level pressure. He’s failing the test to this point in the game.
DRIVE 4
3 Plays, 0.33 Yards Per Play Allowed
100% Success Rate
0 Havoc Plays, 0 Explosive Plays Allowed
More of the same: Drop 8 on first down, pressure in long yardage on second and third down. CU came out in “Pony” personnel (two running backs on the field) on the first couple of snaps in an attempt to run the ball better but got stuffed for no gain on a first-down carry. NU ran Drop 8 coverage on 20 snaps Saturday, 13 of which were successful plays for the defense. The answer to that by CU would have been running the ball into the light box, but they had no ability to do that, so Nebraska kept using it on them.
DRIVE 5
3 Plays, 2.0 Yards Per Play
66% Success Rate
0 Havoc Plays, 0 Explosive Plays Allowed
The defense has been phenomenal so far but is being left out on the field by the offense for too long and here got stuck in a short field after a turnover. Didn’t matter; Blackshirts still held up. Nebraska brought blitzes on first and third down, the first of which the Buffs burned for a completion but the second of which blew up a screen after Travis Hunter decided he wanted no part of blocking an NU linebacker. But the shutout is broken because the drive started on the 19 yard line.
As I’ve been trying to illustrate, Nebraska skyrocketed its blitz rate and alternated that with heavy coverage. It ran a blitz or pressure on 36 of its 66 snaps in non-garbage time Saturday, a 55% rate; it blitzed or ran a pressure on about 37% snaps against Minnesota in Week 1. And with the increased volume it still managed to keep them successful: The Blackshirts had a 56% success rate on blitzes in Week 1 but were even higher at more usages with a 58% success rate against CU.
DRIVE 6
1 Play, 30 Yards Allowed
0% Success Rate
0 Havoc Plays, 1 Explosive Play Allowed
The Buffs get their first explosive play of the day with only a few minutes left in the half, on a short field after a turnover. If the good elements of Drop 8 have helped Nebraska so far in this game, the bad one is about to burn them. Only rushing three doesn’t generate much pressure, something the Buffs take advantage of with a long-developing play-action shot to the end zone.
NU is in Cover 3 here, meaning three deep defenders are responsible for deep zones. The Buffs start in a doubles alignment but run a motion to trips, which changes the NU secondary player’s responsibilities right before the snap. Colorado runs two post routes crossing back to the wide side of the field. NU’s deep defender responsible for the far third of the field (the corner at the top of the sceen) follows the outside post, getting sucked toward the middle of the field, and doesn’t see the deep crossing route sneaking behind him into his zone for the easy score. A pretty solid situational call by the CU offense and perfect execution.
DRIVE 7
5 Plays, 10 Yards Per Play Allowed
40% Success Rate
0 Havoc Plays, 1 Explosive Play Allowed
Nebraska’s offense has left the defense out to dry for the last five minutes of the half, with the vibes for the game in danger of spiraling, so the Blackshirts are just trying to survive this last stretch without surrendering any points and sprint to the locker room. White calls off the blitzes this drive, and instead focuses on deep zone coverages (four snaps of zone coverage this drive with one of man coverage; it had been 61% man to 39% zone before this drive). Sanders is much more comfortable in this situation, where he can pick apart static zone holes from predictable defenders with little pressure, and does to get the ball in field goal range.5 The defense is playing well but now has given up 13 points in the final five minutes, largely the fault of the offense.
DRIVE 8
7 Plays, 6.14 Yards Per Play Allowed
71.4% Success Rate
3 Havoc Plays, 1 Explosive Play Allowed
NU is still dominating CU’s offense on a down-to-down basis but is being burned by allowing chunk gains on long-yardage. White calls the Bear-front pressure from the second drive and gets a sack on Sanders (who miraculously holds onto the ball after the hit), but gives up a 42-yard completion on the ensuing third-and-15 when the pass rush has Sanders dead to rights but lets him throw up a prayer ball that Hunter catches on a push-off. Nebraska’s D faced 10 downs Saturday in which Colorado had 13 or more yards to go and gave up an average of 11.0 yards on those plays, allowing a lot of those second and third and longs to be outright converted or become more manageable for the next down. Part of that is how they were playing, with man-coverage playing far off from receivers and aggressive blitzing, but keeping teams that got themselves in trouble in that trouble is the next step for the defense to take.
The Blackshirts bowed up after the long completion, though, stuffing a third-and-1 out of the Cover 0 six-down look and getting a fourth-down stop when LB Luke Reimer blew up Edwards as the lead blocker on a jet sweep. Reimer has been excellent through two games — six pressures (two that have become sacks) on just 21 total pass rushes and only one catch allowed — and you can tell the new penetrating defense really suits his speed and instincts.
DRIVE 9
10 Plays, 8.0 Yards Per Play Allowed
60% Success Rate
1 Havoc Play, 1 Explosive Play Allowed
The Blackshirts are still holding up, but Colorado is starting to figure some of White’s tricks out and burn them for big plays. The D has been left on the field a lot so far by NU’s offense, which can’t hold onto the ball for long without making crippling mistakes and giving the ball back to the Buffs’ hyper-speed attack. To steal an analogy from another sport, a starting pitcher’s stuff is less effective the third time through the order, and White and NU’s defense are running into that.
Colorado picks up a quick first down on a short gain from an RPO give-run and then when Sanders completes a short pass against Drop 8. On the ensuing first down, White runs the Bear-front pressure with the dropping edges again, with the dropping linebacker batting down a pass. NU ran this same Bear sim stunt Friday six times: It resulted in a successful play the first three times it was used, then just once in its final three in the second half as the Buffs caught on.
An incompletion later, NU had CU in another third-and-long, and White turned to the Cover 0 blitz concept again. The “bust” side of the boom-or-bust Cover 0 gets put on display, as the Buffs counter the off, one-on-one man coverage with a double move that corner Tommi Hill bites on.
In a more conservative coverage, there’d be a safety over the top to help out with a mistake like that by Hill; instead, once he’s cooked, there’s nothing in the way for him to score. The one saving grace is that Sanders doesn’t make a good throw, leading his receiver to the sideline and out of bounds instead of up the field for what should have been an easy touchdown. But a good call by the Buffs against a backup corner and as they’re starting to figure out what White is doing.
Pretty much after this, the chunk gains start piling up and the defense startes. CU gets a 7-yard gain against Drop 8 zone and an 8-yard gain against a blitz on consecutive plays to get inside the 12. The Huskers’ D stiffens on the first two downs, making the stat profile for this drive look better than the actual results, but on third down Sanders hits a man beater in the end zone against the Bear-front stunt, figuring out that every time NU had lined up like that it had been man coverage. White came up with some very strong answers to CU, but you can only run them so many times before things get figured out.
DRIVE 10
7 Plays, 7.85 Yards Per Play Allowed
57% Success Rate
2 Havoc Plays, 2 Explosive Plays Allowed
It was a valiant fight by the Blackshirts, but the floodgates are open now after a three-and-out by the Nebraska offense. CU hits a 34-yard run and then a 19-yard pass against consecutive Drop 8 snaps to get inside the 10. Once near the goalline, Colorado brings multiple tight ends onto the field for the first time all game to try to convert, but corner Quinton Newsome makes a great play on a ball for Hunter in the redzone and the Huskers stuff a run. The Buffs try to convert a pass on third-and-goal from the 1, but Sanders takes a sack when White brings a big blitz, forcing a field goal — some pretty shockingly poor situational awareness from a player who had been so smart in so many other instances Saturday. CU is an aggressive team, and I imagine it would have gone for the fourth-and-1 had Sanders just thrown the ball away, but the sack saves Nebraska four points as the Buffs now settle for a field goal.
DRIVE 11
9 Plays, 9.4 Yards Per Play
22% Success Rate
0 Havoc Plays, 2 Explosive Plays Allowed
While the score was technically still manageable, a fumble by the Husker offense on the previous snap has eliminated any vibe NU can win this game, and the defense breaks fully. White turns the blitzing back up, on 3 of the first 4 plays this drive, and adding some press coverage (NU had run no snaps of press until the drive before), but the Buffs rip of gains of 12, 12, 17, 7, 14, and 13 to get inside the 10, then score on a reverse. Game over and we’re headed for garbage time.
Overall, it was an excellent game for the unit, belied by the point total allowed. The Nebraska offense failed to play complementary football and sustain drives that would have kept the D off the and able to limit its exposure to Colorado’s offense, and eventually you run out of juice on your fastball. I don’t blame the Blackshirts for this one at all.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’ll be going out of town unexpectedly Monday, and Tuesday of next week, so I won’t have time to get game breakdowns out for the Northern Illinois game. I apologize for the skip, but I’ll make it up with something later in the week, and this should be the only game this year I’m forced to miss. Hopefully the Huskies game is unproblematic and doesn’t merit much discussion?
Yards Per Play measures how many non-penalty yards NU allowed on a possession divided by its non-penalty snaps. Success Rate measures how often NU prevented a gain of 50% or more of the yards its opponent needed to convert on a first down, 70% or more of the yards it needed on second down, or 100% or more of the yards it needed on third or fourth down. An Explosive Play is any designed run that gains more than 12 yards and any designed pass that gains more than 16 yards. A Havoc Play Allowed is any tackle for loss, sack, fumble, interception, pass break-up or batted ball.
CU has an screen on here, so Edwards releases on a route as part of the play design and isn’t check-releasing on the play.
I generally despise complaining about penalties because I’ve always believed bad calls end up coming out for and against you in the wash, but, my God, that was the weakest flag of all-time?
Although the CU running back nearly blows their chance at points when he fights for extra yardage with 5 seconds left in the half instead of going out of bounds.