Previously: Nebraska Offense 

After covering the offensive side of the ball yesterday, today our attention turns to the Nebraska defense. The Husker defense was a solid unit a year ago but underwent heavy losses in the offseason and have found themselves unable to plug those holes. Schematic and talent problems at key positions led them to get eviscerated early in the season by the likes of Georgia Southern and Northwestern. After allowing 580 yards against Oklahoma, DC Erik Chinander was canned by interim head coach Mickey Joseph and replaced by Bill Busch. Since then the Husker defense has improved but some of that may be a product of getting to play such offenses as Indiana and Rutgers. We will take a closer look in this column. 

The Film: I debated between using Illinois or Purdue footage for this game, because I needed to pick a game after Chinander was fired. Though Purdue is definitely the better offense, Illinois looks more similar to Michigan with a ground-and-pound rushing attack behind Chase Brown. I did consult some of the Purdue footage but Illinois it is. 

Personnel: Click for big or here for PDF. 

We think Hayes and Wilson are back. Keegan went out late vs Rutgers.

The Huskers run a 2-4-5 or 4-2-5 depending on how you want to look at it. There are two defensive tackles, DT Ty Robinson and NT Colton Feist. Robinson is a returning starter, off of last year's very good three-man DL with Damion Daniels and Ben Stille. He was the weakest of the three last year, though, and seems to have regressed further, with an extremely poor showing against Illinois. Feist was alright but not great, avoiding the cyan. DT depth is very grim, with Bama transfer Stephon Wynn Jr., Texas Tech transfer Devin Drew, Nash Hutmacher, and Mosai Newsom all mixing in. All of those players are below average, with only Wynn avoiding the cyan. In total, they might go six DTs deep in a given game and four of the six got the cyan. As you will see, Illinois bludgeoned the Huskers right up the gut. 

The two ends or OLBs, depending on how you want to refer to them, are Garrett Nelson and Caleb Tannor. Nelson is more of a true EDGE while Tannor is more of a SLB, but both have the ability to pass rush (more often) or drop into coverage (less often). Nelson is Nebraska's top pass rush threat and the best player on the defense, while Tannor is mostly just a guy. TCU transfer Ochaun Mathis gets in the game at this spot, marketed as a premier pass rusher coming out of the portal but he has disappointed in Lincoln. Jimari Butler also mixes in, but I don't have too many notes on him. 

The LB level consists of returning starter Luke Reimer and Ernest Hausmann. I liked Reimer quite a bit last season but didn't think he had a particularly great performance against Illinois. His PFF grades on the year do not warrant star status this time around, either. True Fr Hausmann has been pressed into duty before he is ready due to the tough season-ending injury to Nick Henrich and Hausmann looks like a Tr Fr LB trying to play the position in the B1G. One-time Northern Iowa transfer Chris Kolarevic rotates in with Hausmann but he did not impress me much at all either and the fact he is not starting over a Tr Fr at LB of all positions says enough. 

In the secondary, Nebraska often plays with three corners, returning starter Quinton Newsome and Malcolm Hartzog outside, with Isaac Gifford as the nickel in the slot. Newsome is a pretty good player, as is Gifford, while Hartzog is clearly a cut below them. All three do not leave the field often as there is little rotation at the DB spot. There will have to be a new starter this week unfortunately, due to the DUI-related suspension of Myles Farmer, who is Nebraska's best safety (as if this defense needed to take another hit). Marques Buford Jr. is the other starter and is middling, while it looks like DeShon Singleton will get a crack at trying to replace Farmer (good luck). When any DBs come off the field, watch for Brandon Moore or Phalen Sanford to come on. 

[AFTER THE JUMP: Another big rushing opportunity] 

Base set: Like I said, Nebraska goes with something roughly like a 4-2-5 or 2-4-5. There will be two DTs on every play and then a pair of edges/OLBs, one often with a hand in the dirt and the other standing up, positioned like an edge rusher or in coverage. That's why you can get looks that appear like a 4-2-5, others that look like a 3-3-5, and bringing on a third DT and sticking with two EDGE/OLBs is not out of the question either, for a 5-2-4 look. They have a lot of bodies at DT they use and a number of guys at OLB they use, which is why it gets all funky. 

With all that said, here are the images. Typical 4-2-5 (closest to the base set): 

Sometimes they'll go 3 DTs + EDGE, lift a DB and go with another OLB on the field and look like a 4-3-4:

And here's the 5-2-4, which they used against Bert Bielema's signature beefy formations (thus making it something we could see against Michigan): 

Man or zone coverage: Nebraska runs mostly zone stuff with Cover 2 as their shell defense. To tell you the truth, I wasn't focusing on the pass defense so much because Illinois threw short routes and otherwise rode the ground game, but from what I have seen from Nebraska this season, they are in the zone bucket. 

Pressure: Against Illinois I charted the Huskers rushing more than four guys on 26% of snaps, which clocks in right in the usual range for teams blitzing. Not dropping everybody into coverage every snap like Iowa and Maryland, but not as aggressive as Rutgers or Michigan State or of course, Indiana. On the flip side, they rushed less than 4 on 10% of snaps I charted, which is a little bit higher than that of your typical team, so there were some cases of dropping eight into coverage.  

Dangerman: The Dangerman for this one is EDGE/OLB Garrett Nelson, the only organic pass-rushing threat on the Huskers. He was my highest graded player during my charting of the Nebraska defense and was very pleased to find out that PFF was in agreement and also have Nelson as their highest graded Nebraska defender (by a wide margin too). The highlight of his performance against the Fighting Illini was this sack, burning around the corner: 

Nelson was going to have another sack later in the game but unfortunately the Husker defense declined to cover a wheel route and Tommy DeVito got the ball out just before Nelson was about to crunch him: 

There were two other instances I had where Nelson got himself free into the backfield, blowing a sack one time after DeVito made a shifty move to evade and another where he helped flow the play to another defender in position for a TFL, who in turn blew the tackle (because Nebraska!). 

By virtue of his position, Nelson is asked to play in coverage some. I didn't see him do too much of it against Illinois, but he looked passable here: 

PFF's coverage grade for Nelson is 69.1, which is totally fine when you add the pass rush sizzle that he has. On a Nebraska defense that is tied for 95th in sacks per game in the FBS this season, Nelson is the only weapon that you have to watch out for on his own, capable of getting by a tackle and causing havoc for the QB. There aren't many impact players on this defense, but Nelson is one of them. 

Overview 

Nebraska's defense was what got Scott Frost fired. Just putting it plainly. Early in the season with Casey Thompson healthy at QB, the offense was doing fine. They scored enough to beat Northwestern and Georgia Southern, the problem was they let themselves get torched by Northwestern and Georgia Southern on defense. It was enough to pull the plug on Frost right away and after the Oklahoma thrashing, Chinander followed him out the door. The results of those first four games, with FCS North Dakota looped in, are comical. They allowed over 300 yards to North Dakota, 580 yards to Oklahoma, 528 yards to NORTHWESTERN, and the culmination of it all, 642 yards to GEORGIA SOUTHERN. You have to try to be as bad as the Nebraska defense was earlier in the year and boy, they were tryin'. They couldn't cover, they couldn't get after the QB, and they especially could not stop the run. 

After Chinander was fired, things returned to a common sense bad, and Nebraska got two get-right games after the bye week against horrendous offenses to get things under control. They held Indiana's screen-heavy offense to 21 points and 290 yards and Rutgers to 349 yards. That Rutgers total in particular is not good if you read last week's FFFF or happened to watch this past Saturday's game, but compared to the early season, it was a step in the right direction. Since then, Nebraska started to delve into the meat of the B1G, playing Purdue, Illinois, and Minnesota. The Huskers were torched again by Purdue (608 yards), but Illinois gained 367 yards and Minnesota this past week only got to 300. Still a bad defense given quality of competition, just a lot less bad than they were pre-firings. 

What is the central problem with the defense? For me it's the defensive tackles, and that's what I want to focus this piece on because it's such an obvious mismatch for the Wolverines and it's why watching the Illinois game was so instructive. Against an offense with some similarities in terms of desire to run the ball in an old-school manner, Nebraska's DTs were repeatedly abused. This play on 1st & 10 from the Nebraska 11 summed it up for me: 

That's a red zone, dig-in-and-defend-the-goal-line situation, and it was a walk in the park for the Illini. 

Problems with the DTs were everywhere. Like I mentioned, they like to go deep into the depth chart at tackle and there were no answers. Everyone was somewhere between "meh" and "atrocious", getting blown off the line of scrimmage repeatedly. Here's one where Nash Hutmacher and Colton Feist are the victims: 

Two plays later and they + EDGE Caleb Tannor are all on the hook for a long run for Brown: 

Ty Robinson as a returning DT (who was solid last year!) was particularly disappointing for plays like this: 

DT #99 lined up second from the bottom of the line

There was so little resistance from the defensive tackles often times that it didn't matter what the LBs did and that was the story of the game. It allowed the Illini to move up and down the field in their typically Illinois methodical style early on in the game to get points and then it allowed them to bleed the clock in the second half en route to victory. I see little reason why Michigan won't be able to exploit that advantage, except on an even grander scale. 

Most of Illinois' damage was between the tackles, while Purdue's offensive explosion against Nebraska on the ground (the beneficiary being RB Devin Mockobee) was nearly all outside the tackles. Not surprising if you know Purdue's situation on the OL, but it goes to show that Nebraska's issues in the run game are not just that the DTs get stomped on alarmingly often. Here's an example: 

Help from the secondary and LBs in run defense outside the tackles is, according to the Purdue game footage, also not great! This all sums together to be a run defense that should not give Michigan any trouble whatsoever. Against Indiana's outfit that cannot run the ball, the Hoosiers' 3 RBs rushed for over 5 YPC. Against Rutgers, also a poor rushing attack, the Scarlet Knights were right around 4.0 YPC. Mockobee carried it 30 times at 5.9 YPC. Chase Brown for Illinois carried it 32 times(!) at 4.7 YPC. Mo Ibrahim last week carried it 32 times(!) for 4.0 YPC. You can run it again and again and again and you are guaranteed to get 4.0 YPC, no matter how poor of a rushing game you have. And if you have a good one, with good blocking WRs, a mighty IOL, and good RBs (sound like a team you know?), you should probably soar to well over 5-6 YPC. That is the primary mismatch in this game. 

Outside of that, the rest of the defense is less important, but there are a few notable areas. Like I mentioned before, Nelson is the only guy who gets organic pass rush on a team that has few sacks, but they do dial up their fare share of blitzes, being able to disguise them with the glut of EDGE/OLB types they use and one of note got home against Illinois: 

They show zero blitz, send only four, but one blitzer is the nickel (Isaac Gifford) lined up way outside, Illinois doesn't account for him, sack. 

LB Luke Reimer was our Dangerman last season and in this game I thought he was merely okay. He did a decent job getting out into space and making plays: 

MLB #28

Unfortunately I also felt that there were too many issues inside the box that contributed to Nebraska's troubles stopping the run. Reimer is still a notch well beyond Ernest Hausmann or Chris Kolarevic, both of whom are liable to getting caught on blocks or taking poor routes to the ballcarier, helping those run plays turn from bad to worse. 

In the secondary, I don't have too much to say because of the game that I watched. Illinois mostly throws screens and mesh routes to the two receivers they believe in, which had some success but isn't strong evidence of Nebraska's ability or failure to cover. CB Quinton Newsome, who is Nebraska's best outside corner, did make a heck of a play to blow up this bubble screen: 

The last thing I do want to note is that the suspension to S Myles Farmer is a big loss. Nebraska has ridden he and Marques Buford Jr. extremely heavily this season, so the rotation of players to try and fill that hole is pretty shaky and inexperienced. When you combine DTs who get blown up, a Tr Fr LB who doesn't know which way to be running, and an iffy safety on the back-end, you can see that there should be a pretty good recipe for some explosive plays, either in the running or passing game for the Wolverines tomorrow. 

What does this mean for Michigan? 

Though Nebraska's defensive metrics have improved from their catastrophic start to the season, they are still not a good defense and the weakest point matches up exactly with Michigan's strongest area (the IOL). Given what I saw from the Huskers against Illinois, their struggles to stop the Illini from paving them between the tackles, I'm not sure how they will attempt to hold up against the likes of Oluwatimi and Zinter. Heck, given what Purdue did to them, I assume that Michigan will be able to get close to whatever they want running the ball outside the tackles as well. This is a game you can likely win without JJ McCarthy throwing the ball, but you want him to do that just to keep him in rhythm for the season. Against a secondary like Nebraska's, there will be some holes that open up in the zone, plus Hartzog feels exploitable. Pick your spots in the passing game and then just run them right off the field on the ground. No reason to bring anything new out of the playbook; the bread and butter will get it done.