INFLECTION POINTS: Dane Key

Nebraska’s receiving production and talent has lagged well behind college football’s contenders. Can one transfer fix it?

Jun 05, 2025

PROGRAMMING NOTE: This is the second in an offseason series of in-depth film reviews for individual players who have the potential to make or break Nebraska’s 2025 season. With several 2024 Nebraska role players and outside transfers projected to step into key starting jobs for the 2025 Huskers, these posts are meant to examine what these largely unknown players already excel at and what they’ll need to improve on to become dependable contributors in bigger roles. These “scouting reports” will examine players from a talent, technicality, skill set, and role perspective, with honest evaluations. New entries will appear sporadically throughout the offseason.

PREVIOUS ENTRIES: Elijah Jeudy

While Nebraska has suffered from an overall dearth of talent in recent years, one of the most glaring positions where Nebraska has trailed behind college football’s contenders is at wide receiver.

The late 2010s and early 2020s could be considered the Wide Receiver Revolution in college football: Many of even the sport’s most conservative-minded coaches in this period came to fully embrace speed-in-space football and determine that receiving weapons were among a team’s most valuable commodities — probably not as important as your quarterback, but also not far behind and key to creating that quarterback’s success. The litany of previously run-heavy coaches who traded plodding zone-and-boot life for spread formations and Mesh Wheel is pretty astounding: Mid-Alabama dynasty, Nick Saban gave up Derrick Henry football to bring in Jerry Jeudy and Devonta Smith and weaponized them with Lane Kiffin and Steve Sarkisian. Urban Meyer realized his quasi-single wing offense was not cutting it in the season’s big games and brought in Ryan Day, who turned Ohio State into Wide Receiver U. Hot-seat Ed Orgeron switched from a Pro-I system to a pass-heavy spread to maximize Justin Jefferson and Ja’Marr Chase and created one of the best college offenses ever. There are a couple notable conservative holdouts among coaches still — and there are obviously many ways you can win football games — but, for the most part, the story of recent college football has been the sport’s blue bloods embracing that it’s just a lot easier to move the ball when you get it to phenomenal athletes and playmakers in space rather than running into eight-man boxes.

That brings us to Nebraska and now.

Last year’s 12 College Football Playoff teams had a combined nine players go for over 900 receiving yards last season, another six players on those teams go for over 700 receiving yards, and an additional 13 players on those teams going for over 500 receiving yards. So, about on average, each team had one 900- or 700-yard player and another 500-yard player. Notre Dame, Tennessee, and SMU didn’t have anyone exceed 700 receiving yards, but those teams did each have multiple players over 500 yards (or within 2 yards of it). So, on the whole, teams that made the playoff had one elite receiving threat and at least one other good second-tier threat, or multiple good second-tier threats.

In the last five seasons, Nebraska has had just one player go over 900 receiving yards (Trey Palmer, 1,043 yards in 2022); one other player go over 700 yards (Samori Toure, 898 yards in 2021) and two other players go over 500 yards (Austin Allen, 602 yards in 2021, and Jahmal Banks, 587 yards in 2024).

There are some caveats here: Box score receiving yards are a very imperfect measure, these are arbitrary cut-offs of the receiving totals,1 and quarterback play has a major effect on your receiving yardage production. But this does illustrate a larger point: The sport’s best — the teams that contend for titles — have multiple productive receiving threats, and Nebraska hasn’t been able to even field one every year. At a position that has become among the most important on the field in this era of college football, Nebraska has undeniably fallen behind the teams it says it wants to be like. 2

NU’s actions this offseason have also told us that they know the receivers have been a big problem. One of Dana Holgorsen’s first comments to the media about his evaluation of the offense he was taking over mid-season was to politely say the receivers weren’t very good, and Holgorsen’s only staff move after getting the job full-time was to fire wideouts coach Garret McGuire to bring in Daikiel Shorts, who had worked for him at Houston. NU was also linked to several top receiving targets in the portal, eventually bringing in three players capable of contending for starting jobs: Dane Key and Hardley Gilmore of Kentucky (Gilmore has since been kicked off the team) and Nyziah Hunter from Cal. Key and Hunter were both top-100 overall transfer snags by most services, and they went for 715 and 578 receiving yards last season, respectively.

Key is the real headliner, though, in the effort to overhaul the wideout room. A top 250, four-star recruit out of high school from Lexington, Key chose hometown Kentucky a season after Wan’Dale Robinson’s monster year for the Wildcats showed a receiver could be successful there. Key was immediately productive as a true freshman and has slightly steadily improved his output since: 519 yards in ‘22, 636 in 2023, and the 715 last season. His yards per route run (probably the most holistic stat we have for overall receiver production, showing how much you produce relative to the opportunities you’re given) has improved steadily in his first three seasons and was at 2.47 last year, tied for 28th among the 206 power-conference wide receivers, right next to players like Emeka Egbuka of Ohio State, Ryan Williams of Alabama, and Jaylin Noel of Iowa State.

Those numbers came with some shaky quarterback play and passing infrastructures in Lexington. Likely looking for a better offense to showcase his skills for his final season, Key hit the portal, where he was On3’s No. 32 overall transfer and seventh-best available wide receiver. He was favored to commit to Georgia before a late switch to Nebraska. Of the six ahead of him, three were less-productive players in 2024 but who had multiple years of eligibility left, making him one of the top four options NU could have snagged for a one-year mercenary to fix its room.

But can he carry his strong production over? Let’s look at the tape and numbers. I predominantly focused on his games against Mississippi and Georgia, where he went against Day 2 NFL draft pick Trey Amos of Ole Miss for the entire game and against a bevy of high-end Georgia defensive backs. Key wears the jersey #6 in all of the video clips below.

STRENGTHS:

Separation With Snap-Off

The overall best trait on Key’s tape is his ability to change directions when already running at full speed. Key has a silky, gliding running style in a straight line, but, despite his length, shows real high-end ability to cut his routes off and change direction faster than defensive backs can react, which gains him separation.

That cut-off ability to separate predominantly manifests itself on routes with downfield, vertical stems with sharp cuts, such as curls, deep in- and out-breakers, and downfield comeback routes. Any route where he is pressing upfield at full speed and making a DB backpedal or even turn and run that he can then snap off in a different direction is where he excels and how he generates most of his production. Kentucky’s very poor quarterback wasn’t able to get him the ball often on-time when he snapped the routes off, but he consistently was winning these routes against even the best competition he played:

CURLS:

DEEP DIGS:

DEEP OUTS:

COMEBACKS:

SLANTS:

Despite those long, smooth strides, Key is really able to chop his feet quickly for a guy his size and flash back to the ball before DBs can turn their own momentum around to track him. He also shows a savvy to tempo the speed of his route stems. Meaning he’ll sometimes intentionally come off the ball at less than his top speed to lull the defensive backs into a certain tempo, before then catching them off guard by cutting hard at top speed on his breaks.

His ability to win on these routes against the best SEC competition is immediately translatable to Nebraska within its scheme because this production is happening solely off of Key’s own ability and skill. This type of production is coming because he’s winning the routes against high-end competition and is scheme agnostic — meaning its not happening in a designed or manufactured way with the offensive coordinator providing him artificial help.

NU should be able to drop Key into the lineup and deploy him on these curls, breaking routes and comebacks and get the same production because Key’s already shown he can win these against the best of the best.

Smooth Cutter On The Move On Deep Crossers

His change-of-direction movement ability also manifests on medium- and deep-depth crossing routes over the middle where he’s moving horizontally across the field and not coming to a sharp break. On these routes, where he’s already on the move and isn’t making a hard cut but rather subtly shifting directions on his path to work more horizontally, he’s also able to generate separation by simply being smooth and not losing much speed when he does make the slight cut. He also showed that savvy to tempo his running speed — with a slower stem before accelerating to full speed to catch the DB off guard — on these routes.

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Faster defensive backs could recover on him after the cuts, but on the initial shift he was frequently able to create some separation.

Here’s a Yankee concept vs. Georgia where Key, the receiver to the top of the screen, is taking a deep over route on a shot play off play-action:

Georgia is in Cover 4 here, making the corner lock onto him in de-facto man coverage after a vertical stem, but without any other vertical threat to his area, the safety over Key pre-snap is also helping to the inside and can close down on the route. Key works inside ahead of the corner to his break-point on the route, at about the opposite 40 yard line, and maintains his speed as he makes the cut so well that he generates a good deal of separation before the safety can close, too:

A well-placed and on-time ball hits Key at about the hash, but the UK quarterback is about two seconds late with throwing this, allowing the safety to recover and break the pass up. But Key was able to gain the separation on the play, doing his job within the offense.

NU used these deep crossers frequently last year, especially off the heavier play-action shots during Marcus Satterfield’s games as offensive coordinator. Nebraska specifically used Yankee or Deep Crossers concepts on about 6.2% of its passing plays last year. It probably won’t be used as often under Holgorsen, but he has indicated some of the under-center shot-play elements from Satterfield’s time will remain in the playbook. Key is not really a player who can run the deep post on those, but he could immediately slot in as the underneath crosser on these plays.

Inside-Outside Versatility

As the usage of condensed formations and motion by offenses has increased in this era of football, it’s also become increasingly important for receivers to be able to function in multiple roles. You may start as the slot receiver on a play, but if the player outside of you motions to the other side of the field, you’ve suddenly been made an “outside” receiver. Condensed splits also mean the outside receivers may be operating in portions of the field that would typically be the alignment of a slot receiver. Determined X, Z, and slot roles are more flexible now, and all the receivers you have on the field need to be able to win both on the outside through physicality or speed or in the more two-way-go world of the slot.

Key was exclusively an outside player during his first two seasons, and slots in naturally as an X receiver who can play as a threat to one side of the ball. But in 2024 he flashed more and improved ability to play in the slot. His slot rate went up to 21% — not crazy — but he did play there. He was able to function in traffic while running quicker-breaking routes where he’ll take hits:

and showed a willingness to block from the slot, where he was often forced to contact linebackers. I think he’ll primarily play outside for NU, but I think he’s capable of doing both.

Key was also frequently a fly motion player for UK, starting on one side of the field and moving to the other side of the formation, often into a bunch or slot alignment to generate confusion.

Effort When Not Getting Ball

Nebraska averaged 71 offensive plays per game last year. Even the best receivers only receive about 10 targets per game, on average. So what are you doing on the other 61 plays of the game when you’re not getting the ball? Are you willing to block your corner downfield on running plays to spring a teammate for a bigger gain? Will you come inside and crack a linebacker on an outside run or RPO? Will you give make effort to sell a clearout route down the field to help a teammate get open?

That was a problem for Nebraska last year — especially with one of its starting receivers — to the point Holgorsen criticized it in his first press conference.

That shouldn’t be a problem with Key. He was a willing blocker and gave good effort on plays where he wasn’t a primary read on a concept.

Despite being skinny, he showed a willingness to mix it up with DBs and linebackers as a blocker and would stick his nose into bigger players, even when he knew it was likely to get him ragdolled or put him on his butt:

The blocking technique wasn’t always effective, but the effort was never really in question and he generally tried to lock on and follow his defender down the field:

And he was willing to give effort to help his fellow receivers eat. Below is a quarterback draw-quick out RPO with Key on the outside to the top of the screen. Key’s job here is to sell a vertical route to run off the outside corner and give the slot receiver space to break to the outside on the RPO route. There’s really no chance of him getting the ball here because this a designed quick read by the QB to keep the ball or throw to the slot, but Key runs it as hard as if he were the primary receiver:

Hands Catcher

Key typically displays good technique when actually catching passes, coming to the ball instead of waiting for it to get to him and catching it with his arms extended out in front of him, not relying on letting it get into his belly or body and fielding it underhanded, which can lead to drops. He sometimes let the ball get into his body when dealing with press or short-area possession catches, but when on the move he displayed good technique. PFF has charted him with only 9 career drops over three seasons over 215 career targets, with only two drops last year.

Focal Point Of His Offense

Key was 34th nationally with 92 targets last season, but that level of production came on a Kentucky team that threw just 280 passes all year. Key’s 32.9% target share in his offense was better than Colorado’s Travis Hunter, Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith and Egbuka, Texas’ Matthew Golden, Iowa State’s Jaylin Noel and Higgins, Mississippi’s Tre Harris, and Maryland’s Tai Felton and only slightly behind Tetairoa McMillan’s 33.6% target share at Arizona. Those were among the best power-conference receivers in the country last year. Most of those offenses had multiple threats and threw a lot more passes, which partially explains it. But Kentucky also had Barion Brown last season, who was On3’s No. 15 overall transfer in the portal this offseason and now plays at LSU, so this wasn’t just a situation where Key was the only good pass-catcher on the team.

Kentucky’s (very poor) passing offense ran through Key. When they needed a play through the air, they turned to him — not the guy 15 spots ahead of him in the portal rankings — and he produced. Key generated 32 of Kentucky’s 92 passing first downs last season, almost triple what Brown did.

Arm Length/Extension/Wingspan

Key is a lanky player with an impressive wingspan that allows him to extend away from his frame to get his hands on balls other people wouldn’t. He doesn’t always catch the passes or play to his size — more on that coming — but he has an undeniably impressive catch radius at 6’3 for quarterbacks to throw into.

The arm length is also useful for him against tight press coverage, allowing him to keep defenders’ hands away from his frame through extension or stun them and push off.

Fights Downfield After Catch

Key’s advanced data on his production after the catch was quite poor — he averaged 3.3 yards of run after catch per reception, which was 182nd of the 206 power-conference receivers to get at least 20 targets last year.3 That’s at least partially a function of the types of routes he runs — it’s hard to generate YAC on curls and comebacks where you’re turning around right into a guy than it is on some other “run-away” routes — but I also think his limited athleticism means he’s not ever going to be a real threat to get much after the catch.

Still I liked on his tape that he was willing to fight for yards. Some wideouts make catches and try to duck out of bounds and cost the team yardage, but Key will turn around and fight upfield into defenders on most of his reps:

He wasn’t often breaking those tackles, but the effort was there.

AREAS OF WEAKNESS

Top-End Speed

While he is a smooth runner — and I’m trying to put this nicely — Key is … not very fast.

He looks slow on tape compared to other receivers on his team and the defensive backs he’s going against. He doesn’t beat people downfield on vertical routes, or even really gain ground on them, and he’s easy for DBs playing off coverage to cap. This was from his games against SEC competition, so this was against the best athletes in the country, but even playing lesser competition this is not going to be a player who is winning on 9 routes or deep posts, the way Palmer or Toure did. Key is probably going to be limited to being someone who can help Nebraska underneath and in the intermediate area but is not going to be a threat deep in the third phase of the field.

Here’s one clip. Key is the receiver to the top of the screen after the motion. Both Key and his teammate Brown — the receiver to the bottom of the screen — are running deep stop routes to the same depth:

Look at how much faster Brown gets down the field than Key. Brown is one of the quickest players in the sport, so not a fair comparison, but the route on the bottom is what a fast player looks like. Key is a world away from that.

He can’t really make himself faster, and you don’t need great speed to be a good receiver if you can make up for it in some way, such as through being great with technique or being strong enough to dominate in contested-catch situations. But I also have questions about Key’s ability to win in those other phases, too.

Lack Of Explosivity Off Line/False Steps

Key is compounding his lack of athleticism by being slow off the ball.

Part of his lack of clear burst off the line of scrimmage is just that he’s not an explosive athlete. He can’t really do anything about that. But there also just seems to be a lack of urgency to get going and some clear technical issues with his releases.

Against off coverage — meaning the DB playing off the line of scrimmage and Key being given a clear runway to run down the field — he’s often in a balanced stance with his weight evenly distributed on his front and back foot. A balanced stance is the tact you want to take against press coverage — the DB up in the face of the receiver at the line of scrimmage — because you might need to move in either direction laterally to beat the press. But against off coverage, you want to be leaned forward, with your weight so heavily on your front foot that you’re almost falling over and so that your momentum can carry forward off the ball, almost like a track sprinter. Key is just content to stay balanced and even and start his route standing straight up.

Then there’s the wasted movement. Key’s first step — very frequently, but not always — at the snap is to lift his back foot up off the ground and place it back down, before then loading up his weight on his back foot and moving forward off the ball. The clip below is one of the clearest examples, with Key as the receiver at the bottom of the screen. I’ve slowed it down and rewound a few times to show it clearly:

False stepping at the line is pretty common among receivers and can be made up for by being fast after the release, but Key’s doesn’t have that kind of speed, so the false steps are putting him even further behind. This is a slow player who’s also letting everyone else get a head start on him. It’s also weird that a player who wins with so much technicality in other parts of his game is just wasting so much time with bad technique at the snap.

Struggles Against Physical Play

For a player who is 6’3 and 210 pounds, Key routinely gets pushed around and knocked off his route path by smaller defensive backs, both at the line of scrimmage against press and at the top of his route stems.

He does show some reps where he can beat press, but DBs too often lock onto him at the line they take him where they want him to go, even if it’s to the opposite direction of where the release should go on a route.

On this rep, Key is the lone receiver backside on a quads formation and is running a curl route vs. press coverage into what looks like a single-high man shell (that morphs into a Cover 2 look after the snap). On an inside-breaking route like a curl, a receiver can’t take an outside release vs. press — doing so would position the defensive back between the quarterback and the receiver, putting the DB in the throwing lane and rendering the route dead conceptually. Key has to beat the DB to the inside off the line here to keep his route open against any coverage. The DB gets this, too, and is going to force him outside at all costs …

… but Key offers little fight for the inside leverage, and the DB is happy to oblige pushing him up the sidelines and closing the throwing lane.

Not all of his reps against press are bad, but even when he does get off it, defensive backs too frequently succeed at forcing him off his landmarks at the top of his routes, too, making him run deeper or shallower than the route’s intended landmarks, which screws up the play’s timing and design.

And then he’s just constantly getting knocked to the ground by defenders, either while running or getting his feet tangled at the tops of stems:

Drops Away From Frame

The advanced data would say this isn’t an issue, but in the games I watched, Key struggled to make contested catches when the ball was away from his frame, either when he had to elevate to make a catch over a defensive back:

or when there was contact on his hands at the catch point:

PFF had Key making 11 contested catches in 22 contested targets, a perfectly reasonable 50%, but had him going 2 for 6 against Mississippi and 0 for 1 against Georgia, so it’s very possible I just saw his bad games. But I also know I sometimes disagree with the PFF charts as drops and contested catches, so I’m not sure I fully trust that, either. Something to watch out for.

CONCLUSION

Key is a high-level weapon for Nebraska right away on slants, curls, comebacks, deep breaking routes and mid-depth crossers, especially when he doesn’t face physical contact or press, with an ability to generate good isolated separation on those routes, with solid hands and few mental mistakes. And he will be a useful teammate and blocker.

But his lack of athleticism makes it unlikely he’ll be a weapon to third level of the field, where “star receivers” do a lot of their damage and separate themselves, and his struggles against physical play are concerning in a conference full of physical corners.

It’s not difficult to see Key replacing Jahmal Banks’ role as the X receiver and production from last year, and likely even being a rich man’s version of Banks. But the clear cap on his downfield production makes it difficult to see him making an All-Big Ten team, either.