Moving faster now, it's getting out of hand

Thanks to a fast-out-of-gates defense, Nebraska is experiencing something new as national expectations increase.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

About a year ago, we toyed with the idea of a newsletter that treated Nebraska’s most challenging win probability charts as art. It was after the Huskers had lost 13-10 to Minnesota in Matt Rhule’s debut, one of many games since 2018 where the line on the graph touched 90% or better for NU only to crash to zero. Like paintings¹ on a gallery wall, the thought was everyone could look at the images individually and collectively and sadly laugh or something. I don’t know. It felt a little too heavy on the gallows humor just one game into the season, so we punted.

But now with Nebraska 2-0 and a new addition to the AP and Coaches polls,² have a look at these beautiful, boring graphs from the first two games. Far from violent rollercoaster rides, these are like coasting gently downhill on a bike on a 72-degree day where danger doesn’t exist.

Diptych No. 1, Nebraska Football, 2024

Appreciate their relative flatness like only a Nebraskan could. This is what being in control looks like.

This is what taking control looked like Saturday night against Colorado.

• Play 3: Shedeur Sanders sacked on third down.

• Play 7: Dylan Raiola scrambles for 12 yards on third-and-10.

• Play 11: Dante Dowdell rushes for a 12-yard touchdown.

• Play 12: Shedeur Sanders sacked on first down.

• Play 20: Brian Buschini punts 60 yards to the CU 2.

• Play 21: Tommi Hill’s pick-six.

It was at this point that Nebraska’s win probability reached 87% in ESPN’s model. It wouldn’t drop below 87% the rest of the night. It was only 14-0, but in basically 20 plays the Huskers had the game in a chokehold.

Football is full of a bunch of mini-games—third down, red zone, special teams—and none is more frequent than first down. The Blackshirts were the biggest reason Nebraska executed a nearly flawless start against the Buffs. If Colorado’s explosiveness on offense was the primary concern entering Saturday, the Husker defense exceeded it by sowing disorder.

On 13 first-down plays in the first half, Nebraska held Colorado to 30 yards (2.3 ypp). It generated an absurd 30.8% havoc rate,³ and limited the Buffs to a 23.1% success rate.

Through two games the Blackshirts are allowing 1.24 yards per first-down rush (4th), 4.85 yards per pass attempt (28th) and 3.27 yards combined (15th). From an Expected Points Added (EPA) perspective, Nebraska ranks third nationally⁴ with the average first-down play decreasing the projected value of an opponent drive.

Here’s what dead-ending all those drives has meant for Nebraska. The offense only ranks 76th in first-down EPA, but thanks to the defense the Huskers’ first-down EPA differential ranks 21st. Even with a strong defense last year, Nebraska only ranked 58th in that category.

The defensive dominance on first down has allowed the offense to operate at its own pace⁵ and keep things pretty vanilla. While the offense is no doubt improved, most of the underlying numbers on that side are fairly average. That’s an upgrade from 2023, and more than enough when the defense is forcing teams to play uphill on a nearly drive-by-drive basis.

This is a luxury that allows freshman quarterback Dylan Raiola to have a solid-if-not-spectacular night against CU. His 73.7 completion percentage through two games ranks 13th nationally, and while most of that is no doubt due to his talent, Nebraska has also had the luxury of engineering some of it, too.

Raiola averaged 6.2 yards per attempt against the Buffs, but without his two longest, not-very-replicable plays—a 36-yard heave to Jaylen Lloyd that seemed risky, and the 18-yard follow-the-bouncing-ball touchdown reception by Rahmir Johnson—that number drops to 4.7. Each of Nebraska’s QBs last season averaged at least 6 yards per attempt on the season.

To be clear, this is a good thing for now. One of the major storylines of the Big Ten era of NU football is the Huskers needing a talented quarterback to do too much. Thanks to strong starts and a fast-out-of-the-gates defense, Raiola has flashed his talent but shown us more of his advanced decision-making ability.

The games get tougher in the near future, and attention on the program is already increasing. Things are speeding up. Eventually, Nebraska won’t be in complete control of a game this season. How the Huskers respond in that situation remains an unknown.

“We still haven’t solved the close game thing because we haven’t been in that yet,” Rhule said Saturday. “I think, probably a lot of people thought this was going to be a close game. I’ll be honest with you, we expected this score. We expected this to be like this.”

Fair enough. For a lot of Husker nation, however, it probably still feels fairly new, but being in control has worked here before.⁶

Helmet Stickers

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

RB Dante Dowdell: The guy runs with a rudeness that’s quite becoming. Dowdell’s three rushing touchdowns are already tied for the most any Husker running back had last season.

DL Ty Robinson: He only has four tackles on the season, but three of them have gone for a loss, including two sacks. Robinson has also broken up a pass and blocked a kick already.

P Brian Buschini: He’s one punt short of having enough to qualify for the national leaderboards right now, but his average of 50.1 yards per punt would rank second nationally. That’s up from 40.7 a year ago for Buschini. So far, at least one part of Nebraska’s kicking game appears to have rebounded from 2023.

B1G Things

Thoughts from Week 2…

»The drastic Michigan downgrade has begun after Texas went to the Big House and completely controlled things in a 31-12 win. The Wolverines should be able to play enough defense to be a problem in the Big Ten, but if the offense doesn’t find something soon, having to play close, hard-fought games puts three or four losses on the table.

»I expected Illinois to have a pretty good shot at home against Kansas, but seeing the Illini pull out a 23-17 win as a slight underdog still impressed. I was a little less impressed after checking out the box score. Illinois was +3 in turnovers, intercepting Jalon Daniels three times. That’s a lot of takeaways for only a six-point win. Doesn’t matter in the win column, but when it comes to projecting the Illini, who visit Lincoln in two weeks, I’m in more of a wait-and-see mode than I was when that game was just a score ticking by on the bottom of the screen Saturday night.

»Umm, Oregon, are you on? After last week’s clunker against Idaho, Boise State pushed the Ducks to the brink with Oregon needing a walk-off field goal. The Broncos are better than the Vandals and it showed in a box score that was pretty much even. I’m having a hard time figuring this one out as the Ducks’ numbers don’t look that out of the ordinary.

»Wisconsin’s 27-13 win over South Dakota didn’t blow anyone away, but the Badgers had much the best of it on paper—23-13 in first downs, 5.7-4.6 in yards per play. Next up for Wisconsin: Alabama.

»In lieu of any power rankings, here’s how Big Ten teams performed relative to the spread in Week 2 along with the cumulative ATS +/- on the season. This will get more useful later in the year.

What’s Next?

Having proven a few things through two games, now Nebraska gets a test of its ability to maintain effort, energy and execution against a team everyone will expect the Huskers to beat. There’s a winning culture at Northern Iowa, though the Panthers aren’t currently near the top of the ultra-tough MVFC. That said, UNI has made the FCS playoffs six times since 2014.

1. The working title for this exhibition was “Ope, You Lost Again.”

2. Nos. 23 and 24 respectively.

3. Tackles for loss plus passes defended plus takeaways, divided by plays defended.

4. The Huskers trail Missouri, which has yet to give up a point, and Louisiana-Monroe, which played FCS Jackson State and UAB.

5. At 29.8 seconds per play, Nebraska ranks 105th.

6. Joy Division provides today’s musical accompaniment in this column bit I’m maintaining until it gets too annoying (for you, because it won’t for me).