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Previously: Nebraska Offense, Seth's Neck Sharpies on the Nebraska's 3-3-5 defensive system.

On Wednesday we profiled the Nebraska offense, a unit of intrigue and QB controversy getting back to the roots of Nebraska football. Today we move to the defense, which has been a pleasant surprise in rush defense but is now set to face by far the toughest rushing attack it has seen all season. 

The Film: This one was a pretty easy choice for me, because Nebraska has played exactly one offense that is not described as "actively rancid". That team would be Colorado, which is a bit of a clunky fit because the Buffs' air raid offense is not remotely similar to Michigan's but from a quality standpoint, it was the only option. To make up for the stylistic gap in opposing offenses, I also reviewed highlight packages of their other three games against Minnesota, NIU, and Louisiana Tech. 

Personnel: Click for big. 

Nebraska's DC Tony White made the move from Syracuse to join Matt Rhule's staff and is installing a blitzy 3-3-5 stack, something he learned right from the OG himself, Rocky Long. White was a player for Long's defense at UCLA and then an assistant coach on Long's staff at New Mexico. The first 3-3-5 that White is running in Lincoln sees a heavy amount of rotation among that front six, while the secondary is relatively constant. 

The defensive line's most consistent and best piece is Nash Hutmacher, a hulking nose tackle who we cyan'd last season who has made a massive jump in the offseason. Hutmacher is a former 4x wrestling champ of South Dakota who went 166-0 in HS(!!!!) and then spent years buried on the Frost depth chart. As of last year, that seemed justifiable, but Hutmacher has emerged to be a perfect nose for White's defense, eating doubles to keep those LBs free. The "defensive ends" next to Hutmacher rotate in and out quite a bit but the starters are Blaise Gunnerson and Ty Robinson, the latter of whom is set to make his third start against Michigan and just narrowly avoided a third-straight cyan. Reserves include true freshmen Riley Van Poppel (NT) and Princewill Umanmielen (DE), Cameron Lenhardt (DE, has been banged up), and Elijah Jeudy (DE, Texas A&M transfer). 

It looks like Nebraska will get their starting MLB back in Luke Reimer, a fixture of Husker football for a few years now. He's a player I liked back in 2021 before a rough 2022 gave way to injury, which was the reason Ernest Hausmann was forced to play as a true freshman. Reimer started the 2023 season healthy, suffered an injury, but plans to return against Michigan. WLB John Bullock is a pretty consistent starter but does rotate out, with 2021-22 starter Nick Henrich among the most likely to jump in the mix. The SAM spot is a bit more JACK/EDGE shaped and starts Mikai Gbayor, but MJ Sherman and Chief Borders join the fold there too. 

In the secondary, Quinton Newsome is a returning starter and one of the few players I praised on last year's Husker defense. He's continued his solid play and gets to be the Dangerman for the purposes of this piece. The other outside corner spot goes to undersized (5'9) true sophomore Malcolm Hartzog, who had a surprisingly strong rookie season campaign for being a Who Dat 3*, but Hartzog struggled in my viewings and narrowly missed the cyan designation. "Rover" Isaac Gifford is more safety than corner (he basically played free safety against Colorado, hence the diagram) but it's probably best to just label him a nickel. These three players are pretty much every-down players but if one has to leave the field, ASU transfer Tommi Hill comes on.  

Safety has stomached some losses, the injury to 2022 starter Marques Buford Jr. and the suspension/eventual transfer of Myles Farmer. That promoted the reserves, Omar Brown and DeShon Singleton, to fill the holes. So far they have been okay. Some wobbles in tackling, but they were better than I was expecting and PFF are mostly singing the praises at this time. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: hello again, 3-3-5]

Base set: Nebraska's 3-3-5 is its base set and it's the only thing worth showing: 

They tinker around with it plenty, sometimes lining the linebackers up wide in coverage, sometimes clustering all of the front six right around the line of scrimmage, but the personnel is pretty consistent and consistent enough that it's the base set and nothing more. 

Man or zone coverage: We list Nebraska as a base Cover 3 and they do fall into zone as a whole, but the details are a bit fuzzier than that. As you'll see in the pressure category, the Huskers blitz a lot and when they do that, Cov1 is the go-to, though I did see Cov0 in a few cases(!!). On the flip side, they also rush three and drop eight into coverage a lot. The pressure metric of the play mostly determines what coverage you're going to get but it is a bit more zone than man.  

Pressure: Against Colorado Nebraska had perhaps the most interesting allocation of rushers that I've charted, a nearly perfect 1/3 vs. 1/3 vs. 1/3 split in pressure. They rushed more than four players on 35.6% of snaps but also rushed fewer than four on 34% of snaps. If you do the math, that leaves you with ~30.4% of snaps having exactly four players rushing the QB. That 35.6% blitz metric ranks towards the high end of the scale we've established over the past several seasons of charting. Not the absolute high, but towards that direction. On the flip side, the 34% with fewer than four is also one of the higher rushing three scores. Nebraska is crafty and deceptive in deciding what to do, one of the advantages of the 3-3-5. You never know how many are coming for the QB and even more importantly, which players are rushing. 

Dangerman: For today's Dangerman designation, we're going with Nebraska corner Quinton Newsome. He was one of the better players on their dreadful husk of a defense last season and has returned to be their best DB in my view. While Malcolm Hartzog had some clear wobbles in coverage, Newsome was largely stout in his assignments. When mixed with my previous admiration for Newsome from last season, he was an easy choice. 

When Newsome is targeted, you typically see him within a pace or two of the receiver, even if the ball is badly overthrown: 

Here he makes a PBU in a 1-on-1 situation after the Nebraska DL blows up the initial intention of the play: 

This next clip is from the NIU game, another PBU he is able to make despite not entirely getting his head around: 

And here's one play of Newsome from last season that I liked, blowing up a screen: 

For the season, Newsome has allowed 13 catches on 23 targets for a respectable 56.5% completion percentage, while his NFL passer rating against when targeted is a stellar 74.7. Newsome is a rock-solid tackler in addition to his coverage chops, an all-around quality B1G corner.   

Overview 

Readers familiar with FFFF may recall 3-3-5 defenses from past opponents, most prominent being TCU in the Fiesta Bowl. Seth wrote a primer on it this week if you're interested in how it works. As he pointed out on WTKA, the biggest difference between Nebraska's 3-3-5 stack and TCU's is the linebackers. While TCU had some hulking, thicc boys at the LB spot, Nebraska has slimmer and blitzier linebackers they want to fling at you, Don Brown doom-squirrel style. Surprisingly, it was returning starter Luke Reimer at MLB who I thought had the best moments as a rusher from the LB position. On this clip he comes up the gut, mows over the RB, and sacks Shadeur Sanders: 

The blitzy nature of Nebraska's defense means that pressure can come from all over. Sometimes they're sending the house and on this clip they pair it with Cover 0: 

Sometimes they show you six but back off once the play starts: 

And sometimes the rush comes from out wide, as it does on this next clip featuring a hilarious, blooper-reel completion: 

The versatility of the defense, the ability to drop one DE into coverage in addition to the linebackers all being credible blitzers or coverage LBs, means that Tony White can disguise pressure and hide where the rushers are coming from. It's the trickiest part of this Nebraska defense and it's what makes up for a lack of a ton of organic pass-rush. With Garrett Nelson and Ochaun Mathis moving on in the offseason, there isn't a DL or even a SAM LB who really scares me as an organic pass-rusher. They sacked Sanders quite a few times in the Colorado game, but 1.) Colorado has a godawful OL and 2.) a lot of those were either RPS wins where the rusher came through untouched or coverage sacks/Sanders sacking himself. Here's an example of an unblocked Cam Lenhardt sacking Sanders: 

Michigan's OL should be able to win their blocks pretty easily in pass protection if they have their assignment correct. Getting that assignment right and IDing the rushers will be the challenge, so this game is going to be one that will test the cohesiveness of the line and the line calls of new center Drake Nugent. If Michigan can protect JJ McCarthy reasonably well by picking up the blitzes, I do like Michigan's ability to feast through the air. Nebraska's zones against Colorado were far from airtight and some holes ripped open in the back-half of that game to create points for the Buffs: 

The pass defense has performed well against Minnesota and Northern Illinois, not exactly a murderer's row of passing offenses, while given up gobs of yards in the other two games. Louisiana Tech's Jack Turner was 27/42 (64%) for 292 yards (7.0 Y/A) for 1 TD and 1 INT, while Colorado's Shadeur Sanders was spectacular, 31/42 (74%) for 393 (9.4 Y/A), 2 TD and 0 INT. CB Malcolm Hartzog was definitely a step down from Newsome, playing off coverage quite a bit allowing for easy 5-10 yard gains on hitches and the like: 

He also got toasted on a double move at one point, but Sanders' throw was inaccurate. On the season, opponents have a 96.0 NFL passer rating when targeting Hartzog, which is not quite what you'd want to see from a corner. Let's not pin it all on Hartzog, though. When Nebraska goes the other direction with their pressure and only rushes three, their eight man drops weren't airtight either. Sanders generally got all day to throw and a poised QB like him had no real trouble. Another example of a hole ripping open in the zone: 

It just doesn't feel like they're quite well drilled enough in their zone coverages to stop a good QB with a good passing game. They confused Arthur Kaliakmanis, but the gap between him and Shedeur Sanders is large. The gap between him and JJ McCarthy is likely even larger. And when Nebraska has to defend through more man coverage, their DBs are pretty solid, but not elite enough to strangle an opposing offense. 

Despite rolling with reserve safeties, I wasn't too concerned and neither is PFF. Omar Brown has had a nice season and he got an INT against Minnesota: 

The one issue I did have from the safeties was tackling, and this next clip leads us to discussion of the run defense: 

That's FS DeShon Singleton blowing the tackle allowing the big gain. Nebraska's run defense wasn't extensively tested by Colorado, a pass-heavy air raid offense. Colorado only had 21 non-QB carries, but those did go for 4.7 YPC. The defensive linemen held up pretty well for Nebraska, standing their ground and keeping lanes for the LBs clean, but again, this was Colorado's OL they were facing. I do like NT Nash Hutmacher and think he's come a long way from last season: 

There he stands tall in the middle of the defense while Lenhardt comes around from behind off the edge and halts this play. Hutmacher has had some solid pass-rush moments too, perhaps the defensive lineman I like the most as an organic rusher even though he typically gets doubled as a nose. One issue for Nebraska that has popped up in run defense has been the edge, which you saw a couple clips ago. Nebraska had some real trouble with the DE getting either caved in or losing the edge and the linebackers being stuck inside: 

Nebraska is a reasonably fast defense so their LBs are typically able to get outside to stop runs like this, but if Jim Harbaugh is able to scheme up some trickery via his Stephen King novel-length playbook of running concepts to confuse the LBs and trap them inside, I like Michigan's ability to get runs off the edge. Giving the QB some run reads and opportunities to pull the ball have gone well too: 

I would be fine giving JJ a few more opportunities to pull just to continue to keep the LBs honest. There are also opportunities for JJ to scramble on passing downs, as the Husker front is sometimes liable to get out of their rushing lanes and if they're in the 8-man drop with the LBs dropping super deep, free yards may be available. 

As for the rest of the run defense, again it's hard to tell because Nebraska hasn't faced anything remotely like the Michigan run defense. Sometimes the 3-3-5 looks like the problems Michigan had with it against the run during the ill-fated Don Brown attempt in 2017: 

The nose on this play (Ty Robinson) is doubled, RG hits the LB and deletes him and the other LB is not playside = chunk gain. Sometimes the 3-3-5 works because the DL are doubled and keep holes clean for the LBs to shoot through: 

When given a chance to be clean, I thought the LBs did a pretty nice job. Problem is, now comes an OL that may not allow many holes to be clean and is going to put a lot more complexity on the plate of those LBs. We'll see how they respond. 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

I don't think Nebraska's defense is a lockdown, terrifying unit. I do think Matt Rhule and Tony White should be decently proud in how they've gotten it to an adequate level of respectability compared to the manner of disrepair it was in last season when the Huskers made the trip to Ann Arbor. The defensive line looks improved, but I'm not entirely convinced they will be able to hold up to the Michigan OL, especially the pieces excluding Hutmacher (and even he isn't an all-out world-beater or anything). The linebackers seem fine, but have yet to be tested like Michigan will. The secondary is okay, some major kinks in zone and looser pieces among the individual parts but compared to a defense that last season gave up 600 yards to Georgia Southern, you have to think Rhule's staff likes the year zero improvements that have been made. 

With all that having been said, this defense did give up 453 yards to a Colorado offense that got stuffed in a locker by Oregon last week. They were strong against Minnesota and NIU, two decrepit offenses, and did alright against Louisiana Tech. Okay, now how about Michigan? I presume White will ramp up the blitzing even more just because JJ McCarthy has demonstrated the ability to dissect zones in his career, not to mention to how Shadeur Sanders was able to pick them apart. Additionally, I don't think I've seen enough from the organic rushers to think they can rush three and four and get by there, even against a Michigan OL featuring tackles we're not quite sold on yet. Ramp it up, make JJ's life uncomfortable, hope you don't get Jim Knowles'd by Cov0. This is Nebraska's first big test defensively and while I do think they will hang in there from stretches, I don't think they have enough talent or familiarity with the system to get it done tomorrow.