The Blackshirts Can Be Better

Nebraska’s top 10 defense seems likely to take a slight step back in 2024. What this post presupposes is … what if it doesn’t?

Safety Isaac Gifford breaks up a pass against Purdue. Generating more turnovers is one way the NU defense could stave off regression. Photo courtesy Nebraska Athletics.

In football data circles, elite defensive performance is viewed as less sticky year-to-year than offensive performance. Meaning: A returning very good offense is a safer bet to repeat that very good performance the next season than a returning very good defense is.

That’s for a variety of reasons, largely related to the inherent reactivity of playing defense. Defense is more affected by variables it can’t control: Your players and scheme can be just as good or sound as they were the year before, but if opposing teams or game flow deliver you less advantageous conditions, you’ll probably give up more points. Maybe you face a better slate of quarterbacks that throws your secondary fewer contested passes or runs into fewer bad sacks. Maybe your own offense is worse or has the turnover bug, leaving you on the field longer or needing to defend less yardage to give up a score. Maybe your one new starter blows a couple of assignments for big gains, dipping your efficiency a bit. 

That’s not to say great defense isn’t repeatable — many programs roll out sick units year after year, especially the ones that sign lots and lots of top 150 recruits — but, generally, repeating good defensive metrics is pretty heavily influenced by your luck.¹

Nebraska will enter the 2024 season trying to repeat an elite defensive performance. It’s pretty remarkable on its face the team finds itself in this situation: The Blackshirts were torn apart early in 2022 in games against Northwestern, Georgia Southern, and Oklahoma, and while things normalized to an extent around midseason, the unit still finished the season 61st in defensive efficiency per Bill Connelly’s SP+ and 91st per ESPN’s FPI, both abysmal numbers for a Power 5 program that pulls in as much talent as Nebraska does. The personnel from that unit mostly returned in 2023 with few obvious injections of readymade outside contributors, and a new staff was bringing in a 3-3-5 scheme that was a significant change in both alignment and philosophy. Before the season, considering the previous performance of the players who returned and the changes to the scheme, I had loosely thought a top 40 finish in SP+ or FPI defensive efficiency might represent the high end of what could reasonably be expected. But I also thought a disaster season was also on the table, too.

Instead, Nebraska finished sixth nationally per SP+ and 19th per FPI in defense.

It’s one of the clearest demonstrations I can think of to show the effect of coaching and deployment in college football. Using, essentially, the exact same roster of talent, coordinator Tony White and a crew of new assistants brought out career-best play from almost every defensive player, designing a scheme that asked them to more often do the things they were good at. Previously underperforming defensive linemen like Nash Hutmacher and Ty Robinson were no longer told to try to hold up mammoth Big Ten linemen or play a reactive gap-and-a-half style, but instead taught to use their athleticism and explosiveness to shoot past blockers into designated gaps at the snap and cause havoc. Linebackers like Javin Wright and converted safety John Bullock, both of whom would probably be considered too slight to man the middle in more traditional defenses, had their athleticism and playmaking weaponized to create chaos. Secondary players like Tommi Hill and Omar Brown who had struggled with the discipline of the previous scheme’s focus on deep zone shells were deployed more aggressively, seeing their man and press coverage rates rise and beating opponents one-on-one. 

The defense returns 78% of that production in 2024, which ranks ninth nationally, leading to a lot of optimism it will again perform to that level. For what it’s worth, SP+ has NU’s defense predicted in the preseason to finish sixth again.

But there are also a few big reasons to suggest the Blackshirts might take a step back:

• White’s 3-3-5 scheme was new to the league last year and caused a lot of confusion early, but late in the year teams had some better answers for it. In games against Maryland and Wisconsin, specifically, opposing coaches turned to more post-snap optionality and had a lot of success. NU will enter 2024 without that early schematic edge.

• The unit lost four major rotational pieces in linebackers Luke Reimer and Nick Henrich and secondary players Brown, Quinton Newsome, and Phalen Sanford, all of whom were plus players. While significant experience returns at those positions and none of those players were irreplaceable talents, Reimer, Henrich, and Newsome were all guys who had played a lot of Big Ten football, and Brown and Sanford were competent college safeties. The depth pieces now moving up to replace them performed well in situational or reserve roles, but translating that starting responsibilities not always is a guarantee.

• NU last season faced the most tepid schedule of opposing quarterbacks I can remember, and should, on paper, face better QB play this season. Shedeur Sanders of Colorado is a likely first-round NFL Draft pick who should be better in his second year in the FBS and with a (presumably) improved offensive line; Ohio State’s Will Howard, Indiana’s Kurtis Rourke, and USC’s Miller Moss are either proven or likely above-average college quarterbacks; and Purdue’s Hudson Card, Illinois’ Luke Altmyer, Wisconsin’s Tyler Van Dyke, and UCLA’s Ethan Garbers were replacement-level players for most of their time on the field last year. While that’s hardly a murderers row, either, it’s still seven competent (or better) quarterbacks on the schedule. Last year, NU faced four (or possibly five, depending on how you feel about departed Wisconsin starter Tanner Mordecai). If we believe the widely accepted knowledge that better quarterback play and creation is able to produce more offense even if your defense plays well, the Blackshirts will have to perform better than they did last year to keep up their same numbers against the pass.

• While the offense got hit hard by injuries, Nebraska’s defense stayed relatively healthy last year, with safety DeShon Singleton the only starter to miss most of the season and only a few contributors suffering multi-week injuries. NU’s best players on the unit — Hutmacher, Robinson, and Hill — also didn’t miss any time, each appearing in all 12 games.  

All are reasons that could derail another top 10 finish, and it’s a good bet at least some will come into play over the course of 12 games. That’s not to suggest the unit will be bad, per say, or even average, but it’s possible the same performance by Nebraska’s players makes this just a very good defense instead of an elite one.

The goal, then, becomes finding areas where NU can improve to stave off that likely regression. What new edges can the Blackshirts find to neutralize schematic familiarity, new starters, better quarterbacks, and injuries? There are several, both in advanced stat profile and in the intangibles — some which would suggest the defense has a chance to be even better: 

The Second-Year-In-A-System Jump

Changing your schemes is hard, and it usually results in a step back in the immediate future. 

Nebraska made an especially hard transition last year. Even in this homogenized defensive structure world we’re living in, Nebraska’s move to the 3-3-5 last season was about as drastic a change as you can make, in both alignment and mindset. A team that spent over 80% of its snaps in four- or five-player fronts and playing passive zone shells for five seasons under Erik Chinander was now suddenly embracing light boxes, speed, man coverage, aggressiveness, and dictating terms to offenses. That NU improved at all — let alone as much as it did — is remarkable. Most teams in that situation go backward, possibly by a lot.

Below is a list of every Power 5 conference team that changed its defensive coordinator before the 2022 season, its national finish in SP+ defensive rating the season before the change, its rating in that coordinator’s first season, and the difference in ranking between the two seasons:

Of the 27 teams that changed DCs, about 63% finished lower in SP+ defensive rating their first year under the new coordinator, falling an average of 2.33 spots.² And that figure is positively buoyed by some pretty remarkable/outlier turnarounds at Duke, Oregon State, TCU, Virginia; I’d wager that if you did this exercise for other years, that 2.33 figure would be worse. These numbers are a little noisy, as at least a few of these teams were veteran defenses at smaller programs that performed well, then lost their good players and their coordinator to bigger jobs; those teams probably were due for steps backwards regardless of who the coordinator was. Still — the numbers say defenses that change coordinators usually get worse in the immediate future.

But when those new DCs get into their second seasons, those teams usually see a big positive jump. Of those same 2022 teams that kept their new DC around for a second season, here’s where they finished in SP+ defensive rating in Year 2 under those coordinators:

Of those 20 teams, 15 saw improvements from the baseline performance when the coordinator was hired, with three of the teams that didn’t being Georgia, Clemson, and Texas A&M squads that saw marginal drops but still retained top 20 defenses. On average, Power 5 teams were 17.25 spots better in defensive rating in their second year under a coordinator.

Those big improvements happen in Year 2 for some pretty obvious reasons: Players enter the second season with better familiarity with the scheme and spend less time on Day One install and more time on refinement. They have another year of banked practice reps. They have increased familiarity with the staff and how they teach and a better understanding of their coaches’ expectations and consequences. In games, they spend less time thinking about their responsibilities and can execute and react more quickly. In a recent interview, Todd Monken — entering his second season as offensive coordinator with the Baltimore Ravens of the NFL — compared Year 1 in a new scheme as having to build a brand new house, and Year 2 to just having to repaint the one room.

Nebraska’s defenders enter this season with all those advantages. The unit finished sixth nationally and obviously can’t jump 17.25 spots, but the players and staff will have spent far less time time this offseason on general install and far more time on honing and perfecting things they already know. It will also lead to more depth, as those reserve players will be improved with more banked practice reps, too.  

You could argue White was so good and NU’s talent on defense was so misutilized that the Year 2 jump just came a season early. Could definitely be possible! But as far as the numbers go, defenses don’t usually get worse in their second season under a new coordinator — they get much better. 

An Untapped Edge

Nebraska’s top four interior linemen last year — Hutmacher, Robinson, Elijah Jeudy, and Riley Van Poppel — generated 61 combined pressures last year. Only four teams in the Big Ten had a better interior pass rush: Michigan (85 interior pressures), Illinois (68),³  Iowa (68), and Ohio State (63). The 61 interior pressures by NU was highly ranked nationally.

But Nebraska’s top four players on the edge last year — Jimari Butler, MJ Sherman, Cam Lenhardt, and Princewill Umanmielen — generated 71 combined pressures last year. Only four teams in the Big Ten had a worse edge rush: Wisconsin (70 edge pressures), Northwestern (70), Indiana (69), and Illinois (49). Most Big Ten teams’ top three edge rushers had more pressures than Nebraska’s top four.