What You’ll Get From the Newsletter in 2025
A brief overview of the plan for the upcoming season
Hi, everyone. I just wanted to provide a quick primer on what I had planned for the newsletter for this upcoming season.
The short answer: It will be much the same as last year.
I still plan on doing one weekly game post covering both the offense and defense, touching on any interesting schematic, deployment, or performance developments we saw in the previous game. Those will largely be formatted just as last season’s were. The only real change will be that I’ve expanded the data I’m tracking on both offense and defense, but I’ll explain that more in a second.
I’ll also do the big tendencies posts for the offense and defense with Nebraska’s cumulative data on each element I track. Those will come out at the midpoint of the year and after the regular season. The past two years, I’ve been lucky that NU’s first bye came after six games and gave me a chance to get those tendency posts out on an off week at the exact halfway point of the season. This year, the first bye is after four games, so I’m still debating how to handle that. I’d prefer to do it after six games, but it might be tough to have time to chart a game, write a game recap, and format and write two tendency posts in one week. We’ll see; it may have to come after the fourth game or come out over a couple weeks after the sixth game.
And then I’ll also write posts if anything big in my schematic/play-calling “area of coverage” pops up during the year — like Nebraska changing a coordinator after nine games — or in general if I just see something interesting to write more in-depth about. I think there were three such posts last year; expect about the same number this year.
WHAT I’M TRACKING THIS YEAR
I will continue charting and tracking all the same elements I did last year, both how often they are used and through success rate.
On offense, that’s:
General performance (yards per play, overall success rate);
Situational performance (success rate on first/second/third/fourth downs, passing downs, short downs);
Explosives and havoc plays;
Tempo;
Motion/shift rate;
Personnel;
Play type;
General and specialty formation data;
Formational play-type splits;
What run concepts are being utilized;
Box data and what types of plays are being used against each box;
What types of passes are being called;
Passing success vs. blitzes, specific coverages, and safety alignment and off play-action
General pass protection data;
What pass concepts are being utilized; and
Quarterback accuracy/timing and decision making.
On defense, that’s:
General performance (yards per play against, success rate);
Situational performance (success rate on first/second/third/fourth downs, passing downs, short downs);
Explosives and havoc plays;
Personnel;
Types of plays faced;
Types of fronts used;
Front shift rate;
Box counts;
Data on rushers;
Pressure/blitz rate;
What gaps are being blitzed;
Situational pressures (simulated, creeper, etc.);
Stunt rates;
Safety shells;
Safety rotations;
Where specific safeties are aligned (in the box or deep);
Types of coverages; and
Specifics of coverages.
But I’ve also decided to start tracking some new, more granular elements to hopefully give us even more insight into what’s occurring on the field.
The most notable will be that I’m going to try and evaluate player performance more broadly across the team to give us a better picture of who’s playing well and where problem areas exist. I already did a version of this with QB play last year, but this year I’m going to expand it to the offensive line for run and pass blocking, the receivers/tight ends for pass route wins/separation, the defensive line for run defense and pass rush, and the back seven of defense for quality of coverage. I’ll chart “wins” and “losses” for each area within those position groups off film, and the rate of success should give us some insight into how those units fared each game.
I’m also going to start providing more detail for some of the elements I’ve previously tracked.
On offense:
More specifically tracking shifts and motions. In the past, I just charted if a shift or motion occurred. This year, I’m going to track the types of motions or shifts, and who’s going in motion or shifting. This should tell us more about NU’s motion package in general and who NU coaches think is a player they can move to threaten defenses.
More specifically tracking condensed sets and bunches/stacks. I’ve previously charted overall use of bunches and stacks, but this year, I’ll chart the side of the field the condensed formation is to, and the type of bunch/stack and whether it’s attached to the formation or not.
More specifically tracking pass protection data. I have always kept tallies on the amount of blockers NU has used on its passing plays, but this year, I’m going to chart the types of protections used, whether they’re half-slides, man protections, etc. This should tell us a lot more about NU’s pass protection plans and strategies in each game.
Charting all coverages used against the offense. In the past, I’ve tracked how NU’s passing attack fared against man or zone coverage, but I only charted it on passing plays only. This year, I’ll track the coverage used against NU for every snap to hopefully give us some better insight into how opposing defenses are playing NU and what types of coverages teams are using game-long.
On defense:
Charting pass rush more specifically. I’ve tracked total numbers of rushers and blitzers and what gaps they come into, but this year I’m going to try to be a little more detailed about the types or rushes or blitzes that are happening. I’m also going to chart which downs blitzes are occurring on and when NU brings on specific pass-rush personnel packages.
Charting coverages more specifically. In the past, I’ve just looked at the general type of coverage being run and not the details, such as whether it was true zone or zone-match, who is functioning as the robber, etc. I’m going to start doing more specific coverage breakdowns this season.
WHEN THE NEWSLETTER WILL BE OUT
Last year, I was usually getting posts published Thursday evenings after a Saturday game. I’d obviously like to get them out faster — I understand you all don’t want to be reading recaps of the previous week a day before the next game — but the charting does take quite a lot of time, and I have a day job that can require extra hours early in the week.
That being said, I’ve done a lot of work this offseason to automate my charting and tallying processes, which I’m hopeful can speed me up some. At the very least, there will be a lot less time spent on manually entering data into spreadsheets.
But I’m not sure how much overall effect this automating will speed up my ability to get the posts out. So, still expect them on Thursday, and hopefully I can deliver some or most posts more quickly than that. I appreciate the patience everyone has with me taking several days to get these out. I work as fast as I can, but it’s, frankly, a lot of stuff to track and evaluate, especially when I’m not doing it full-time.
PAYWALL
There’s going to be a $5-a-month or $50-a-year paywall on posts, with an occasional free post. That’s no different than the past couple of years. Last year, I made every fourth post free for everyone to read. I will probably do that frequency again, which I felt like was a good balance of letting people who weren’t paying get to read some posts while making sure those who were paying were getting something special and worth their money.
I’m always grateful to the people who have signed up and are willing to pay for this; I hate charging anything at all, but it does take a lot of work and time, and I do have expenses in running the newsletter. The paywall largely helps me offset both of those. But, as always, thank you to those of you who are paying.
Also, if you know anyone or any online community that may be interested in reading the newsletter, please share it with them. I’m pretty horrible at promoting this anywhere or making it online-growth friendly — as you can probably tell from the giant-length posts on niche topics — but I largely just rely on people sharing it or finding it. So, please, feel free and encouraged to spread the word if you know people who may enjoy this.
SHARING
I’ve had a few people message me about sharing data or content from the newsletter on message boards or other places online. Generally, I don’t mind at all if people are sharing excerpts or numbers from the newsletter, as long as I am credited as the author. Obviously, I wouldn’t be OK with cutting and pasting a whole paywalled post somewhere for everyone to read, but if you want to share a stat or a couple paragraphs of a post somewhere — while crediting that it came from here — be my guest. Sharing interesting details from the games and/or hopefully helping people understand what is happening on the field a little better is sort of the point of me doing this, so I wouldn’t view that as theft or a violation at all.
And, if it’s a community where you think they might enjoy reading, encourage them to subscribe, if you feel like it, too.
Thanks for reading. Game week is here! I’ll have a pretty lengthy season preview coming out Wednesday morning, and then after that the next thing you’ll get from me is the Cincinnati recap post.
Jordan, I love your analysis of Nebraska football. An interesting addition to the your newsletter would a pre-game analysis of the next opponent. Of course, I wouldn't expect you to have the detailed stats you track manually on Nebraska available for each opponent. So, an analysis using publicly available stats would still be interesting. Just a suggestion.