The Ekeler Effect

Huskers' hire is warming my special-teams-skeptical heart. At least somewhat.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

Nebraska made its hire of Mike Ekeler and it’s warming my sometimes-special-teams-skeptical heart more than I anticipated.

If I wanted to give myself more grace, I’d use pragmatic instead of skeptical, but when I say or write “special teams are important, just not that important” it probably reads as the latter most of the time. What I mean is the gap between the best offense (or defense) and the worst is far greater than the same gap for special teams, and resources should be allocated with that in mind.

That said, Nebraska ended up closer to the top end of the special teams coordinator market than I would’ve guessed, and that’s far from a bad thing.

“Mike Ekeler brings a history of special teams excellence to Nebraska,” head coach Matt Rhule said. “His work with Tennessee’s special teams has been elite. Regardless of what statistics you look at over the past four years, Tennessee’s special teams have been at or near the top in the nation.”

That’s easy enough to spot check using box-score stats: 31st in yards per punt, 9th in yards per punt return, 8th in touchback percentage, 20th in made field goals per game. That’s all from Tennessee’s 2024 season, but previous years are similar with at least a couple of Vol units ending up near to the top of the national rankings on the special teams side.

What I wanted to know: How good were those special teams as a whole over Ekeler’s four-year Tennessee tenure?