Dana Holgorsen using spring practice to refine Nebraska’s offense

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska’s offense hit a big roadblock after a 5-4 start in 2024, which led to Coach Matt Rhule making a major decision to salvage his second season in Lincoln.

Rhule raised thousands of eyebrows across Big Red Nation after he hired Dana Holgorsen as an offensive consultant. After all, several fans viewed it as a desperate move to help out a Husker offense that was in a downward spiral under Marcus Satterfield’s direction.

However, Rhule received a return on his investment, after the offense showed promise with Holgorsen’s play-calling over the final three games of the regular season. So much so, that Rhule demoted Satterfield to Tight Ends Coach, and rewarded Holgorsen with a two-year contract as the program’s Offensive Coordinator.

The news ignited the players, and Nebraska later thumped Boston College for its’ first winning campaign since 2016. It’s no mystery that Holgorsen’s first month on the job was a rollercoaster ride, and he made the most out of a messy situation.

“It was challenging to come in, dissect everything, figure who we wanted to get the ball to, and what plays we wanted to run,” Holgorsen said. “Those four games were valuable, if I would’ve just took over and started rolling it out in January right now my head would be spinning.”

Now Holgorsen is working non-stop to further install his scheme as the Huskers gear into spring ball. The Iowa native decided to stick around because of his connection with quarterback Dylan Raiola, Offensive Line Coach Donovan Raiola and Rhule.

In his mind, Nebraska is trending up, and Holgorsen wants to be part of the program’s return to national prominence. He even stayed in Lincoln this past January and continued to work, while the rest of the coaching staff hit the road to recruit.

“We have good coaches here, this is a good scheme, it makes sense to Dylan, it makes sense to Coach Raiola, which from an o-line perspective is incredibly important,” he said. “I see tremendous amount of growth with him (Raiola), with his leadership skills, he’s a good teammate and he understands the importance of leading, and that’s rubbing off on a lot of the guys.”

Holgorsen also walks 12 minutes to work everyday, even in freezing temperatures, just to remind himself that his journey is all about making adjustments. He’s making a lot of those to Nebraska’s offense too. Although Holgorsen was all about airing it out during his time as an Offensive Coordinator at Texas Tech, and head coach at West Virginia, he prefers more of a balanced attack now.

Nebraska finished 94th nationally in total offense last year, but Holgorsen could care less about cranking out yards. Instead he wants to focus more on efficiency, third-down conversions and touchdowns in the red zone. The Huskers have key pieces in place for Holgorsen to build the offense around too.

Raiola is coming off a solid freshman campaign, in which he threw for 13 touchdowns and nearly 3,000 yards. Running back Emmett Johnson started five games last year, and rushed for 314 of his 598 yards under Holgorsen’s watch.

Wideout Jacory Barney led the team in receptions. Not to mention Heinrich Haarberg, who’s a converted quarterback, is starting to blossom at tight end.

Everything starts with the big boys up front though, and that group will likely dictate what direction Holgorsen wants to take with the offense this spring.

He hasn’t decided on who’ll be Raiola’s backup, but if he had to choose now it would be senior Jalyn Gramstad because he’s familiar with the system. The next few weeks of spring practice are going to reveal what type of offense Holgorsen wants to run.

The 53-year old is installing three new sets in his scheme, and making changes to the passing game. Despite not knowing what his unit is going to look like at the moment, Holgorsen is finding it encouraging that everyone wants to improve.

“I can take the same offense that we had, which I’m going to be a lot more comfortable with it, but then tweak it based on what I see being good and bad, and that’s what spring football is all about.”