Cheetah, Colandrea, Chicago
A wide-ranging grab bag of Husker news from the weekend, all of it fun.
The most exciting news that can come from spring football is new terminology. It combines the joy of learning a new word with that of feeling 3% more knowledgeable about football scheme. It identifies something that is important enough to have a name, and then it becomes too important almost instantly thanks to people like me.
Remember the Pelini Bros. Peso defense that wrecked the Big 12 in 2009? No, that wasn’t just NU’s occasional use of a 4-2-5 alignment, which has only grown in popularity across the country…that was the peso. Or what about Scott Frost and his Duck-Rs?1 That was that staff’s term for the hybrid receiver/runner that was often bullet sized but also that fast. At Oregon at least, I remember those guys tallying (these are approximations) 1 million yards and 200 touchdowns a season. Never quite worked that way at Nebraska, but Wan’Dale Robinson was quite good.
Following Saturday’s practice and scrimmage, we got our new terminology for 2026. Defensive coordinator Rob Aurich, who is installing a 4-2-5 in Lincoln right now, mentioned a Cheetah package. When asked what it was, he seemed to downplay it.
It’s “just our four best rushers, our five best DBs in coverage,” Aurich said.
Yeah, well, why’d you name it after an ultra-fast predator then? Why not call it Gray, or something? Names have meaning, and Aurich did reveal that this one is part-ethos, part-label, as well.
“Our Cheetah package is what we call it when we’re hunting the quarterback a little bit.”
The real news from this line of questions was that it produced another favorite rite of spring—a mention of early movers on the depth chart. Aurich said “he probably shouldn’t” mention any individuals, but then did anyway, highlighting tackles Sua Lefotu and Pittsburgh transfer Jahsear Whittington alongside edge rushers Williams Nwaneri and UCLA transfer Anthony Jones Jr.
No such starter list came in the secondary, but it’s a safe bet safety Dwayne McDougle III, who accompanied Aurich from San Diego State, is in that group of five. Based on early praise from the DC, Donovan Jones and Jamir Conn probably are, too, thanks to their coverage and “football processing” traits, which allow them to fit at corner or safety. Cornerback Andrew Marshall, who also has a history with Aurich from Idaho, has to be considered an early contender as well.
Plenty of time to sort all of this out, but when you give a name to what is effectively the Special Forces of these new-look Blackshirts, people will be intrigued. I will be intrigued. That’s why you name the group after an animal fast and agile enough to hunt during the day.
And it works.
“Everybody wants to be on Cheetah, man,” Aurich said. “We evaluate all those one-on-ones, who can corral AC, the quarterback, and we’ll see who it is.”
QB Clarity
Did you catch that in the last Aurich quote? He said his prospective Cheetahs are trying to hunt “AC, the quarterback.” This would all be more dramatic if, a few minutes earlier, offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen2 hadn’t announced that UNLV transfer Anthony Colandrea was getting the majority of the snaps with the ones, which is what most people had assumed was the case anyway.
But this was still a departure from how Nebraska has chosen to share its spring practice hype-up posts on social media, all of which seemed to take particular care to feature all three quarterbacks. And to be clear, the Huskers are in an almost impossible to reproduce scenario right now where I think they could feel good about playing or starting Colandrea, TJ Lateef or Daniel Kaelin. Only one guy, however, gets to be the guy to start, and right now it would be Colandrea, by far the most experienced and productive option, but also the only one who hasn’t worked with Holgorsen previously.
Despite that, Colandrea “gets mad if I tell him the same thing twice,” Holgorsen said. “He’s like, ‘I got it.’ So, he’s an experienced, bright kid…He’s fun to watch.”
Former Husker quarterback Eric Crouch, who attended practice Saturday, shared the same assessment with Holgorsen: “fun to watch.”
Colandrea’s mobility—he had 649 rushing yards last year at UNLV and was over 200 in each of his partial seasons at Virginia—is offering the veteran Holgorsen something he’s rarely had over a 30-year career.
“He does some things I’ve never had,” Holgorsen said. “I’ve never had that mobile of a quarterback. Probably the closest I’ve had was Skyler Howard3 [at West Virginia]. He was a runaround guy, that threw a good deep ball.”
Holgorsen never coached his quarterbacks to extend plays. It’s different with Colandrea.
“It used to really piss me off when guys would extend plays,” Holgorsen said. “I was just like, ‘You’re never going to do that in a game. You’re just not mobile enough to do that.’ I had to coach those guys different. Get the ball out, bet the ball out, get the ball out.
“Now I’m like, ‘First read ain’t there, run.’”
Sounds good here in the spring, but Husker fans have seen this type of quarterback more often than maybe Holgorsen has.
We’ll see what it adds up to in the fall. Right now, it adds up to QB1.
No. 2 in Chicago
As a sportswriter, maybe I’m prone to making too much of things,4 but I thought going in Nebraska basketball’s home finale against Iowa was the biggest game of the season. Putting aside the Iowaness of It All, I just looked at it from a momentum perspective.
Beat the Hawkeyes and the Huskers could do all of the following:
Secure the 2-seed in this week’s Big Ten Tournament. NU had already locked up a top-four seed, thanks to other weekend results, and the crucial triple-bye, but a two is still better than a three or four.
More importantly, I think this allows Nebraska to go to Chicago for the tournament on something of a free roll. Win the whole thing and the Huskers probably get a two-seed in the NCAA Tournament. Lose their first game and they still probably get at least a four-seed. It is still better to win than lose, but if the Huskers dropped the regular season finale to Iowa, they would’ve finished the season 5-6 after starting 20-1. It would’ve been hard not to wonder if Nebraska was fading down the stretch of its best season.
Now to bring the Iowaness of It All back in—it looked like the Hawkeyes were about to crush Husker hearts again (even if there still would’ve been plenty to play for in the weeks ahead). Up 10 with 5:14 remaining, Iowa used a 16-6 run over the rest of the game, aided by two crucial missed free throws from NU and a killer offensive rebound that led to the game-tying 3, to force overtime.
The opposite of those bullet points above was suddenly on the table. But, as these Huskers have done often this season, they figured it out. They beat Iowa. They’re situation in the Big Ten Tournament is better and their future place in March Madness is less volatile.
Most important, however, is they can turn to the postseason on the attack rather than trying to defend what they were at the end of January.
Nebraska won’t play until Friday (5:30 pm CT, BTN) where it will face one of the following: (7) Purdue, (10) Indiana, (15) Northwestern or (18) Penn State. The Huskers went 4-1 against that group, the only loss by 3 points to Purdue.
Every time this term came up, I thought of the M R Ducks joke that was popular in my elementary school. L I B. M R Duck-Rs.
I’m really starting to appreciate the dichotomy between Aurich, a fast-riser in his first power-conference coordinator job, and Holgorsen, the world-weary traveler whose seen it all. I don’t know if it will work this fall, but it’s good entertainment this spring.
Coming later this offseason: A deep dive on what those Howard-led West Virginia offenses looked like and produced.
See, basically, all of the above.
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