Can Nebraska out-coach its way to something good?

By one measure, the Huskers might have to over the final three games.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Well let’s get to it, shall we? Hope everyone enjoyed the week off from Nebraska’s current three-game losing streak and is now ready for a three-week stretch that could define the future of Husker football.

Too dramatic? Might be, but I like to think in terms of odds and the odds of a favorable future don’t improve if the Huskers look momentum-less at the end of Year 2 under a well-regarded head coach. Not when things looked on track the last time the team came off a bye with good chances to prove it was close to arrival over the final six games.

Bill Callahan had momentum at the end of Year 2. Bo Pelini was maybe post-momentum and in “oh, it’s happening” territory at that point, making a conference championship game and suffering a “we got jobbed” loss there. You could argue Mike Riley had it, though his 6-7 team was virtually identical to his 9-4 team outside the record. This might sound familiar but after a buzzy offseason, Scott Frost’s team looked on track at 4-2 after six games. It went 1-5 over the remaining six. No momentum.

Of course, it didn’t matter how much or how little momentum any of the previous four NU coaches had. They all suffered the same fate under different circumstances.

Still, even the illusion of momentum seems better for recruiting, roster retention and positive press than panic. It buys time, if nothing else, and it might be the most probable positive outcome left for Nebraska and Matt Rhule in 2024.

The good news for this staff as it looks to steer out of a skid: None of the remaining games looks completely unwinnable. At this point in the season—particularly for teams in the vast middle of an expanded Big Ten—winning should be mostly about coaching. Who navigates the inevitable injuries the best? Has the best plan and adjustments? Pushes the right buttons?

The bad news: On paper, Nebraska might not be a favorite in that matchup in any of its remaining games. At least according to one metric.

Last week I mentioned that one of the first numbers I looked for upon news of the addition of Dana Holgorsen to NU’s staff as a consultant was his standard wins from McIllece Sports. It’s a number designed to it measures coaches against expectation to estimate “how many wins (or losses) the coach contributed” each year. McIllece Sports sums that number for each on-field assistant and the head coach to produce staff ratings.

I don’t treat any of these numbers as infallible—no model is—and you shouldn’t either, but they are interesting, particularly now.

Nebraska’s staff rating entering 2024 was -1.6, which ranked 118th. If you’re looking for power-conference comparisons, that’s one spot behind South Carolina, one spot ahead of new-look Michigan and four spots ahead of Colorado. Examining why Nebraska has that rating would require an entirely separate post and is probably a can of worms best opened after the season.

For now, I just want to show how this coaching-first number has played out for the Huskers so far. Here’s the 2024 schedule to date (FBS only) along with opponent staff ratings, the difference to NU’s rating and the result:

A couple of notes:

• These ratings don’t include anything coaches did at FCS programs¹ and in some cases, there are staff ratings that don’t have a large sample. UTEP fits that description this year with seven of 11 coaches on staff having nothing in the database to go on. Colorado is also pretty light on data.

• OK, cool, but is this number working? Through 560 FBS v. FBS games so far this season, the team with an edge in Staff Rating is 344-216 (.614). From an odds perspective, that’s about the equivalent of being a 3.5-point favorite since 2003. I’d call this a decent number.

• Teams with a Staff Rating of 1.5 or better² and an edge over the opponent are 119-69 (.633) this season. That’s exactly how often 5-point favorites have won outright since 2003 per Team Rankings.

• Teams with a Staff Rating of 2.0 or better and an edge over the opponent are 90-48 (.652). That only bumps up the equivalent winning percentage to that of a 5.5-point favorite but might be useful in understanding the limit a coaching edge can provide. (There’s still talent, randomness, home field advantage, etc.) How much is the best coaching worth against the worst? I’d guess about a touchdown. We saw that matchup in the Big Ten this year. The team with the best Staff Rating in the conference, Indiana, played the team with the worst, Maryland. The Hoosiers won by 14 despite being -4 in turnovers.

Nebraska has only had two chances (at Indiana, at Ohio State) to beat a 1.5-or-better team this year and came up short, but it did beat Rutgers (1.4, 25th nationally) in Lincoln. The Huskers are about to have three more chances, however.

Here’s a quick look at the coaching quality of what’s left:

USC (Staff Rating: 2.6, 9th nationally)

All of the ratings mentioned in this post are from the start of the season. They aren’t updated week to week, which is interesting as it pertains to Nebraska’s next opponent. Would you buy USC’s staff as the ninth-best with the Trojans sitting at 4-5? Few would, but I’d be careful to come too far off it. The Trojans rate this highly because of Lincoln Riley’s track record (1.3), an offensive staff that is all above average over at least three seasons and DC D’Anton Lynn (0.8), the biggest acquisition of the offseason. That USC has a losing record despite not facing a team with a staff rated ahead of its own is troubling, but it’s hard to know how much that changes the challenge for Nebraska on Saturday. The Trojans were about a 7-point favorite as of Sunday.

Wisconsin (2.4, 12th)

This rating surprises me a bit as well, as I don’t think any Wisconsin fans feel they’re getting the 12th-best coaching out of their 12th-best staff this season. The Badgers have such a rating mostly due to the key three coaches: HC Luke Fickell (0.4), OC Phil Longo (1.0) and DC Mike Tressel (0.6). The only negative number on the staff is from “co-DC” and DBs coach Alex Grinch, who was fired from USC last season. Wisconsin is 5-4 with two of its losses coming to teams with better Staff Ratings, USC and…let it build…Iowa.

Iowa (3.0, T-4th)

Friday’s loss at UCLA aside, it’s not hard to see why the Hawkeyes are this high. Under Kirk Ferentz Iowa has played in such a way that it basically requires elite coaching and it’s apparent they have it most of the time. In addition to the head man’s 0.5 rating, guess where else this team is good? Yep, co-DC and secondary coach Phil Parker has a 1.4 rating, co-DC and linebackers coach Seth Wallace is at 1.8 and special teams coach LeVar Woods is at 1.0. Those four coaches would be expected to provide a .500 team with 4.7 extra wins per season, assuming no offset from basically the offense (which has seemed to be the offensive philosophy in Iowa City). Over nine seasons, as long as those four have all been together, that’s +42.3 expected wins. Since 2016, including 6-4 so far this year, Iowa is 42 games above .500. Maniacal. Devilish. Impressive. Everything you think about Iowa, good and bad, is true, and they ask teams “Are you prepared to be truer than we are?” Few are. The Hawkeyes will ask Nebraska that to end the regular season.

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From a coaching-only perspective, Nebraska isn’t facing any easy outs the rest of the way though that was the view from the consider-everything perspective, too. That the Huskers might be at a whiteboard disadvantage each time out, however, actually adds a little value to what remains in 2024. It provides focus. If you buy the numbers, even in part, it makes the challenge even more clear.

Time for Nebraska’s staff to go out and win this team at least one more game.

1. Also, the ratings start in 2005, which isn’t much of factor for most of the coaches in FBS football. But for a Kirk Ferentz, for example, his first six seasons aren’t being counted in his rating, which is 0.5 if you’re curious.

2. There were 24 such teams entering 2024.