Hope Springs Eternal
Some assorted takeaways from an open practice attended by 66,000 people
The Offense Looked … Kind Of Interesting?
The quotes early in the offseason from Rhule and offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield were all about fullbacks and huddles, which was … very concerning!
We got a large dose of that during the spring game (to the point it seemed a bit performative), but the structure of the offense as a whole was a lot more modern and spread out than the preseason rumblings had given anyone reason to anticipate.
We got a healthy dose of spread shotgun QB run game, with Scott Frost-era staples like QB Bash (a run-read play with the concept inverted so the quarterback is the primary ball carrier)1 and the Orbit-motion triple option looks we saw heavily in 2021.
We also saw Frost’s primary RPO calls get used with the QB gap run/swing and zone/tight end arrow RPOs. Both involve reading outside linebackers, choosing the run concept if the linebacker widens with the horizontal route or throwing the route if the linebacker collapses into the box to stop the run. The swing passes aren’t going away:
I get into explaining the Bash, triple option, and swing and arrow RPOs in-depth in this post from before the 2021 season if you’re wanting a deeper dive.
One new wrinkle we saw was a heavy incorporation of glance routes behind NU’s run concepts:
Adding glance routes behind your run game is an easy way to get a numbers advantage for your offensive line and to make second- and third-level defenders always wrong. A “glance” is just a shortened post route (typically five steps) that attempts to gain leverage on outside linebackers in one-safety looks or third-level defenders in two-safety looks. The quarterback reads that outside linebacker or safety after the snap: If the read defender stays flat footed or drops backwards to cover the glance, the quarterback hands it off to the back on the run concept with the offensive line having one fewer defender in the box to block; if the read defender crashes down on the run, the quarterback pulls the ball and throws the glance with easy access for a virtually free 10 yards — or more if the receiver can break a one-on-one tackle. This concept has become a staple of many offenses in recent years; Husker fans are probably most familiar with their use by P.J. Fleck at Minnesota. Rhule also had it as a key part of his offense while at Baylor.
In the glance rep below, NU’s starting offense is running a basic counter play with the guard-and wing tight end pulling across the formation2 (called GF Counter). There are two safeties deep, so the read defender for quarterback Jeff Sims is the playside safety, Florida transfer Corey Collier, circled in orange. Marcus Washington in the slot is running the glance:
This is a bit of a cloudy read for Sims; Collier doesn’t hard commit to the run to give him totally open access to the inside-breaking glance, but Collier does hesitate for a second and take one step forward, allowing Sims’ to fit a tight ball in, which was dropped. The read on the first GF Counter/Glance video has a clearer read to learn from.
But the spread concepts also seemed tied to a desire to get under center more than Nebraska did under Frost, both to execute run concepts that are easier from under center — specifically outside zone and some gap scheme runs — and to set the defense up for big plays on max-protection play-action deep shots off those concepts:
But still, it was heartening to see the under-center/I-Formation stuff seemed to be more of an add-on or packaged part of the offense rather than the main thrust. We all love ball control, but primarily playing that way in 2023 is taking away easy answers from your players in an era of football that’s all about scoring points. Teams like Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia, and Michigan have gone away from those more traditional schemes to start throwing spread RPOs for a reason.
It’s clear Rhule and Satterfield want to use heavier personnels to run the ball and control clock — which I am supportive of, and think NU could be good at — but there are plenty of smart and modern ways to do that, which they seem to be embracing. From my eye, this looked a lot more like a power-spread, QB-run team that occasionally wants to get in those old-school looks for some specific things, rather than a team that wants to 3-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust it all the time. Something more akin to post-Josh Gattis Michigan or Todd Monken Georgia than I-formation iso every play.
The 3-3-5 Isn’t All About Aggressiveness
A lot of the talk about the 3-3-5 has been about its aggressiveness, blitzing and chaos, but an undiscussed part of new coordinator Tony White’s scheme is going to be the use of “Drop 8” coverages, which show up pretty frequently in Syracuse’s tape and we saw often in the spring game:
Drop 8 is exactly what its name says: Eight of your 11 defenders dropping into coverage, with only three rushing. The “standard rush” is four, so a Drop 8 scheme is essentially just getting another defender into pass coverage, making the passing zones and windows tighter for quarterbacks.
White employed these coverages a lot at Syracuse on longer downs or known passing situations late in the half or games. While these looks do sacrifice pass rush and give quarterbacks more time to process, they also make the reads tougher and require throws into tighter windos. It’s a pretty understandable bet: Even with the increased time, playing well enough to beat these coverages on 3rd-and-26 is a tough ask for most college quarterbacks. The Cincinnati Bengals famously used a surprise Drop 8 coverage-curveball to break Patrick Mahomes’ brain for the entire second half of the 2022 AFC Championship game; I’d bet Tanner Morgan or Spencer Petras are probably not going to cook them.
Drop 8 also plays well off of what the 3-3-5 prioritizes on standard downs: confusion. Dropping eight into coverage is a lot more effective if you can give the appearance you might be bringing a blitz and the offense actually believes it:
On both of the looks above, NU mugs linebackers or safety into the B gaps, giving the appearance of a five- or six-man pressure. Considering how often the 3-3-5 brings goofy stunts, the quarterback has pretty good reason to believe one is actually coming. A pressure necessitates the quarterback getting the ball out fast, so a good QB is looking for their hot reads right away. But there isn’t an actual blitz on, and now the quarterback is looking for that hot right into the teeth of an eight-man coverage.
In the rep at the top, you can see Heinrich Haarberg look first to the quick slant on his left, the correct read if he thought he was getting pressure, but one of the mugging linebackers has just dropped right into the passing lane. He double clutches and the rush gets to him as he throws.3 On the second rep, Haarberg anticipates the blitz and releases a throw down the field into what would normally be a one-on-one matchup under a blitz in Cover 1 or Cover 0, but it's actually a bracketed Drop 8 Cover 2, and he throws it right into double coverage.
Don’t Worry About The Offensive Line (Yet)
Rhule in the winter/spring had been surprisingly effusive with his praise for an offensive line that’s been among the worst-graded pass-blocking units in the Power 5 over the last three seasons. The linemen with the top team then proceeded to give up several ugly pressures, a sack, and 12 tackles for loss, with at least a few of those by true freshman. WE’RE SO BACK.
But part of that can be attributed to how football programs operate when teaching new schemes: It’s easier to install a full defense than it is to install a full offense. Defensive playbooks are smaller, with just a handful of fronts, coverages, and blitzes that you truly have to sit in a classroom and teach your players. After that, practices are really just about formation checks and giving players reps at full speed. You can have your full repertoire of of blitzes and adjustments in within a couple of weeks. You really aren’t limited in any way by what you can run in practice.
But offense takes longer — sometimes a lot longer, especially if you’re changing from a full shotgun-based power spread attack to one that’s going to be under center and using a fullback a decent amount. I’d imagine NU only has a handful of run concepts and a handful of pass concepts actually installed and practiced for the spring game. And they almost assuredly don’t have their full pass protection blitz checks or hot throws ready. Plus, you’re not scouting an opponent’s pressure package before a de facto scrimmage, which will happen when the real games start.
You often hear about defenses “being ahead” of offenses during spring practice or fall camp; this is what they mean.4
Install is less of a problem when you have experienced players who have done things before, but with both sides of the ball learning new schemes, it’s not surprising that the offensive line struggled under Saturday’s conditions. The offensive line was more-or-less playing with a hand tied behind its back against a defense that could run whatever it wanted. Not ideal!
There were also just several reps that got credited as “bad o-line play” that were on other people. Below, the defense is very clearly bringing a pressure with more rushers that blockers. The quarterback doesn’t recognize it or gets the ball out fast and the rush gets home, which gets credited by casual fans as a bad offensive line rep when it’s 100% on the quarterback:
The one-on-one blocking matchups might me meaningful to evaluate, but a player missing an assignment or getting fooled isn’t something to really worry about right now. The o-line could still be bad — history would tell us it probably will be — but I don’t think the spring game was any meaningful evidence one way or another.
Janiran Bonner HELLO
Bonner was a late signee last offseason as a 6’3, 200-pound four-star receiver out of Atlanta, one of the coups for Mickey Joseph as he became NU’s lead recruiter. Bonner redshirted last year without appearing in a game and was quietly encouraged to move to tight end by the new staff.
No one had heard much about him since until he emerged last Saturday as a roving blocking specialist blasting the absolute hell out of people with the first-team offense:
Bonner lined up in a variety of roles in the spring game: As an H/move wing tight end cutting across the formation on kickout blocks (like above), in-line as a Y matching up against defensive linemen, split out into the slot, and even as a traditional fullback out of the I-formation leading on iso runs:
I’m not a fullback expert by any means, and his pad level blocking at 6’3 seemed like an issue to correct, but one of the biggest things you want in a lead blocker is just a willingness to put their body into someone with violence. Bonner at least showed that! He threw his 200-pound body around and stuck his nose into the faces of linebackers and defensive linemen all game:
Bonner, who played running back briefly in high school, also got three carries on dives and traps out of the I-formation look and showed some juice, finishing with 13 yards. His long run of 7 yards came on an opening fullback Belly G play that was a tribute to former Husker fullback Frank Solich.5
He also did some good work split out in the slot in the position he came here to play. He finished with one catch, where he had to go to the ground to pick up a poor, late throw.
I don’t know if Bonner is going to be a good or useful player — spring games are littered with Huskers who popped on an April Saturday that never amounted to anything in the fall — and wide receiver to quasi-fullback is a massive learning curve, but I love the physicality he demonstrated and the potential versatility he could bring. Satterfield talked about wanting a “positionless” offense in the offseason; this seems like an extension of that in the best way. A defensive coordinator trying to gauge NU’s personnel in the huddle is not going to know if he should be responding with base or nickel personnel depending on if Bonner is going to line up as an H, a Y, a slot receiver, or as a lead blocker in the I. That’s gonna give NU a lot of versatility and ability to catch defenses in disadvantageous personnels, beyond the obvious usefulness of just having a guy who can all run, block, and get open downfield competently.
One-Gapping Is Fun!
Maybe the biggest schematic change NU faces this offseason is transitioning from its two-high shell, conservative, read-and-react defense to one known for its in-your-face havoc-creation. I talked in my piece breaking down the 3-3-5 about how it’s a “more aggressive” scheme, but “more aggressive” is overused and vague. Here’s what that actually looks like:
Look at how everyone in the front seven flies to penetrate into the offensive backfield at the snap.6 No defensive linemen are holding up blockers and shuffling along the line as they wait to collapse on the ball carrier; no linebackers or safeties are standing flat-footed waiting to react to which hole to fill. It’s just six guys going all gas, no brakes into their holes, hoping to blow past someone and hit the ball.
Look at how this compares to the old defense on a base down:
NU’s old structure asked it’s defensive linemen to try to cover a gap-and-a-half or two gaps, which meant they had to not only physically win every play but also mentally win by making the right reads and decisions. The linebackers were more free, but they still were read-and-react players. In the clip above, everyone’s just hanging out, waiting for something to happen so they can respond. There are always advantages behind every defensive philosophy, and the, “Keep a lid on things and wait for the offense to make a mistake” strategy NU has been rolling out for the past five years is great if you have the elite personnel it takes to run it effectively (Nebraska rarely did). But for its advantages, it’s undeniably a passive structure that is just kind of … boring to watch. Watching six dudes jackknife into the backfield and rock offensive linemen is much more fun:
NU can do this now because the 3-3-5 is a purely one-gap defense. Everyone has a gap, and their job is to shoot through it until they hit the ball. Nobody’s waiting, nobody’s holding anyone up, nobody’s waiting to see where the ball goes. It’s snap and go.
There are some downsides to playing that way: Everyone loves aggressiveness until it blows up spectacularly. And I fully expect to see a lot of plays where some NU defender didn’t get in the in the right hole in time and, oops, the running back is now 60 yards downfield because there was no safety net. But you’ll hopefully be trading those busts for some more plays like this, where a mostly well-blocked run concept is ruined in the backfield for a loss because one defender shot into the backfield before they could be touched:
The 3-3-5 is about making your defense successful if one guy wins; the previous style was about still needing the offense to be wrong, even if all 11 guys won. In my own personal aesthetic taste, if a defense is going to go down, I’d always rather it be because the defense’s players didn’t make a play, rather than because an offense didn’t make a mistake. And havoc plays are just … way more sick to watch.
Jeff Sims Has Talent! What Else?
Sims’ performance in the spring game took on added importance when last year’s 10-game starter Casey Thompson entered the transfer portal last week. Thompson played well last year — he finished second nationally in PFF’s passing grade7 — and was expected to remain the starter when the offseason began. But increasingly after Sims was added as a transfer from Georgia Tech in December, the QB race between the two had appeared to be evening. With Thompson limited to light throwing and film work during spring practice as he recovered from shoulder surgery, from quotes, the staff had clearly gravitated toward Sims. Rather than participate in a quarterback competition from behind with a staff that didn’t sign him, Thompson, a 24-year-old sixth-year senior, chose to pursue a definitive chance with one of the many teams with worse quarterback play than he provides. I can’t say I blame him!
But it does leave Nebraska in a weird spot at the position. Sims is the only player on the roster with real experience, and it isn’t good experience — he’s a career 57.5% passer who finished 119th out of 159 qualified quarterbacks last year in average depth of target8 — and the depth appears to be Haarberg, a physical specimen and great athlete who looks deeply unpolished as a passer — and Chubba Purdy, who completed 46% of his passes and finished with a QBR of 27.2 in two starts as a backup last season. So a lot is riding on Sims being good!
Sims' counting stats during the game were good: 9 of 13 for 139 yards and a touchdown run where he trucked a defender9, with most of those reps coming against the first-team defense and playing with a rotating cast of offensive linemen and receivers. He displayed the arm talent and zip that made him a high four-star recruit back in 2019 on several throws during the game:
For a person who is 6’4, he has a remarkably close-to-his body windup on his release; it looks odd with his long arms and as if he were throwing a javelin or something:
But whatever he is doing with the motion seems to be working. His passes were all very tight spirals, even on deeper downfield throws, and came out with zip in quick game. He also showed he was still able to deliver the ball with good, repeatable accuracy and placement several times:
From a processing standpoint, it’s hard to make a judgement from the spring game. Receivers and linemen who won’t be seeing the field on Saturdays are cycling in and out with the top unit, so there’s none of the continuity/trust/mindmeld stuff present for a quarterback to make quick decisions and let tight-window passes rip. And a big chunk of the passing concepts we saw were off heavy play-action or RPOs and not true dropback, “I’m gonna make three reads and deliver the ball to the right spot” plays. In the few we saw, though, I did notice he had a tendency to lock onto his first read. Watch his eyes on all the reps below. It never deviates from where it initially goes right after the snap:
I’m not sure if this is an issue per say: These are all passes he ends up getting to the receiver, so maybe his first read was just open, and/or maybe it’s a sign he’s doing good work pre-snap in identifying where to go with the ball and not having to do the hard stuff post-snap. I also don’t know how much of their true three-step dropback game the new staff has installed yet; we didn’t see much of it.
But some of the reps were a little concerning. This was a 4th and 2. Nebraska is running a stick concept to attack the hook/flat area against what looks pre-snap like a man-coverage blitz on, with the outside receiver Washington running the stick route and Bonner on the slide to the flat:
Washington pushes the defender flying up to the line of scrimmage to cover Bonner in, freeing up what should be an easy throw to the flat for a conversion 9 times out of 10.
But Sims doesn’t even seem to considers the flat and stays locked onto Washington the whole time. He ends up making a good throw to get Washington the ball (it’s dropped), but from a process standpoint, this is him passing up an easy completion and conversion to take a route that requires a harder throw and a harder catch. Playing QB in the Big Ten is hard enough without making it tougher on yourself.
This was another play you’ve already seen that I took issue with:
We actually see him progress through multiple reads here — his vision is initially to the trips side and a quick out route by Thomas Fidone before coming back to the slant-post combination to the boundary. But the issue here is still what he doesn’t see: The six-man cross-dog pressure.
The initial setup didn’t look like a blitz, but there were some signs pre-snap Sims should have clocked to know heat was coming. First, the deep safety ran with the RB as the RB motioned out of the backfield to create an empty formation — meaning the defense is in man coverage, and the safety’s covering him and not one of the two linebackers still in the box, which should be a RED ALERT those two linebackers are blitzing. Sims also should have had the knowledge the defense had brought heat most of the time when the offense had been in empty.
In empty, with the back flexed out and unable to help in pass protection against a pressure, you have only five blockers to account for whomever the defense is bringing. In this case it was bringing six. The ball has to be out of the quarterback’s hands immediately in this situation; instead, Sims comes off the Fidone route — too quickly and before Fidone’s even cut off his stem — to try to get to the backside slant, which he gets skittish on and doesn’t throw. He still gets six yards out of the play because he breaks four tackles from blitzing defenders — LOL — but from a process standpoint, this isn’t what you want to see.
Keep in mind these are two concerning plays I noted in a small sample of the true dropback game we saw; this is less of a, “Here’s something he does badly,” criticism and more of a, “We haven’t seen enough yet to determine if he does this well.” And based on what we saw from the offensive structure overall, the QBs in this offense are ideally not being asked to run a ton of three-step game where they have to make three reads and fit in a tight-window throw. If things are functioning well, the passing concepts are ideally going to be more downfield play-action shots that generate more separation and easier throws and reads. Like this:
Sims’ situation at Georgia Tech was very bad; he was a freshman starter for a program transitioning away from the flexbone offense it had run for over a decade into a modern attack (Husker fans should sympathize with that one). So there’s reason to believe his numbers could improve with a better supporting cast and environment around him. But he’s still been one of the least-efficient quarterbacks in the Power 5 over the last five years, and now the season’s on his shoulders. Should be interesting!
It was good to get some football action after dealing with just coaching change news and recruiting speculation for five months! Now we begin the long summer wait for fall camp.
I’ve got a few longer-form pieces planned for the summer, digging into some data/statistics/tendencies on how the offense and defense NU will be running this year compare to what the Huskers have done in the past, and I want to take a look at the impact of some transfers, both departing and incoming. But those have the potential to take some time to research and write.
Until then, I’d love to chop it up with others on their spring game thoughts in the comments below!
On the Bash play, quarterback Jeff Sims is reading the edge to the wide side of the field, but the play is blown up because of across-the-board backfield penetration and a great play by true freshman Princewill Umanmielen, who takes away the give read and then also chases down the quarterback. That’s big dawg stuff.
OK just ignore offensive guard Ethan Piper getting blasted into the sun by the blitzing linebacker.
Admittedly not a great sign that a three-man rush is getting to the quarterback under any circumstances!
It’s also not uncommon for offensive coordinators to get annoyed at defensive coordinators for running their full blitz packages in Week 2 or fall camp of something when the offense is still just trying to install outside zone.
Tweets don’t embed on Substack anymore so you’re gonna have to follow the link manually: https://twitter.com/BigTenNetwork/status/1649840709636173824?s=20. Sorry. Get mad at Elon Musk, not me.
This is a big pressure into a screen, so it’s kind of cheating to use as an example.
I have issues with PFF metrics but they generally indicate if a player is doing what they’re designed to do on the play.
Meaning he was throwing short passes a lot and not completing many of them, a definitively not-good combination.