LINCOLN — Dana Holgorsen has patted the helmets of many college quarterbacks in his career — including current NFL starter Geno Smith — but the Nebraska offensive coordinator found, in Dylan Raiola, a unique trait.
“I’ve never been with a quarterback who is comfortable in the gun and can sit in pocket and be a drop-back passer,” Holgorsen said, “but also be able to get under center and make run-game checks and handle the run game from under center. He’s exceptional at it.”
At one point Thursday, Holgorsen pointed at his temple. Raiola’s got intellect, Holgorsen said.
Perhaps a little bit of his dad and his uncle’s thoughts inside of his brain, too. Dominic and Donovan Raiola are both former offensive linemen, and Donovan now coaches the pipeline. Into Dylan, Holgorsen said, they’ve instilled “the importance of being physical and tough and being able to run the football.”
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Dylan Raiola’s metronome ticks fast, too. He could handle a super-fast tempo if Holgorsen, who comes from the Air Raid system, wanted to turn the dial up to 11 to overwhelm foes.
Holgorsen paused for a half-second Thursday when I asked about NU’s between-play tempo. It remains a key question heading into Holgorsen and Raiola’s second year.
When teams have smart, strong-armed, comfortable quarterbacks, they tend to — at least until this most recent season — crank up the speed. Miami (Fla.) ran 71 plays per game with Cam Ward, for example. Oregon ran 68.5 plays per game with Dillon Gabriel — that play-per-game rate ranked fourth in the Big Ten.
NU ranked fifth. Nebraska ran six more plays per game in 2024 than it did in 2023. In Holgorsen’s four games calling plays, NU ran 1.35 more plays per game — 69.25 overall — than its season average (67.9). At 69.25, the Huskers would have ranked third — behind Maryland and Rutgers — in offensive plays per game.
There’s surely a part of Holgorsen, considering what he has at quarterback, that knows he can move the offense at ludicrous speed, the way Texas Tech once rattled off 87 plays per game with Patrick Mahomes. Holgorsen’s time as a head coach at West Virginia and Houston, however, revealed the value of a slower tempo, too.
So, he said, Nebraska’s pace depends on how quickly the offense picks up his tweaks to the passing game — for the run scheme appeared to stay mostly the same — what head coach Matt Rhule prefers and, more to the point, what the game requires.
Raiola said the Huskers have three tempo speeds, and they’ve installed all of them. The fastest can make a defense “scramble a little bit.” Raiola noted, too, that Holgorsen’s confidence and aggressiveness rub off on players.
“He’s got some swag when he calls plays,” Raiola said. “He just lets his guys roll out there and make plays.”
Nebraska’s offense needed that kind of playcaller. It spent the 21 games of the Rhule era inside its own head, trying to manufacture, with playcalling, advantages that rhythm and repetition naturally provide. You had center snaps hitting the butts of crossing tight ends, quarterbacks freezing on the option only to get smoked by a defender and consistent struggles in end-of-game 2-minute drills.
Raiola had those last season at Ohio State, USC and Iowa. Of those three, the march in Los Angeles functioned the way it should; NU fell short, but it also didn’t get a late pass interference call or have much time to execute. The other two, especially the sequence at Iowa, barely got going before turnovers.
“As much as it hurts watching it, you have to,” Raiola said of reliving those struggles through offseason film study. “You just see the mistakes and things. Ultimately, some games didn’t have to be in the 2-minute, but when it comes down to it, that’s when we win games and that’s when we make money.”
Nebraska’s recent 2-minute drill failures aren’t quite as legendary as the overtime scoring drought — which spans 10 years — but they’re close. Since 2019, NU has been successful with its 2-minute drill in the 2019 win over Northwestern and in 2023, when Chubba Purdy drove the Huskers to a game-tying field goal at Wisconsin, which eventually won in overtime.
Last season, the Huskers had those three road flubs and the home loss to UCLA, when Heinrich Haarberg took over for an injured Raiola and threw an interception in Bruins territory.
The passing line from those four drives: 16-24, 116 yards, three interceptions, one fumble. A lot of checkdowns — the 4.83 yards per attempt is low — and eventual turnovers.
Teams didn’t have to worry about Raiola running; the many checkdown passes to tight ends and running back Emmett Johnson shows Raiola didn’t run much. Haarberg, in his one 2-minute drive last season, scrambled for a first down on third-and-long. On Purdy’s 2023 drive, he scrambled twice, for 22 yards and six yards, notching first downs.
Consider that context when looking at Raiola’s last six weeks of workouts, when, with boxing and cardio and nutrition, he got into the best shape of his career. He didn’t slim down for the sake of fashion; it’s to give Nebraska one more option on third down and late in games.
It’s early in spring, but you can see what Holgorsen and Raiola intend.
An offense that can run any tempo — and get into and out of any play — on first and second down, with a reworked third down and 2-minute attack that adds Raiola as a run threat and new receivers — whom Holgorsen said “look different” — to the four-wide formations.
“It’s not ‘oh, here we go again,’ it’s ‘give me the ball, let’s roll,’” Raiola said of NU’s 2-minute drill plans in 2025. “That’s kind of the mindset shift we have.”
Intentions aren’t results. But they’re a start.
On with the Rewind.
Nebraska basketball hidden portal need
If Nebraska basketball had a top memory this season, you can’t beat forward Juwan Gary and Husker assistant Nate Loenser locked in a hug after NU’s 74-63 upset at Creighton. Loenser, the architect of Nebraska’s defense, patted Gary, the team’s top defensive warrior, hard on the back. Their plan had gone perfectly.
Ditto for when the Huskers held Michigan to 49 points a few months later. Nebraska couldn’t buy a shot, especially late in the game, but it had stymied one of the Big Ten’s most dynamic attacks, featuring two 7-footers.
Small sample sizes. Lasting impressions. Perhaps not the right one, either. It may inform how Nebraska attacks the transfer portal.
For all the talk of NU’s struggles on offense, the Husker defense, expected to anchor things in 2024-2025, too often disappeared.
NU allowed an effective field goal rate of 67.9%, 60.4%, 61.8% and 57.9% in four of its last five losses. The other game was Michigan, which shot 33.6% in eFG%, a stat takes into account the greater value of made 3-pointers. Nebraska offered little resistance to Penn State, then couldn’t get key stops in losses to Minnesota, Ohio State and Iowa.
For the season Nebraska’s eFG% defense was worse this season (50.9%) than last season (46.7%). Opponents shot better from 3 (34.1% to 32.5% last season) and better from 2 (43% to 40%).
Why? Well, NU’s Big Ten schedule was tougher, sure. But Hoiberg, midseason, was pointedly critical of his team’s defense.
“We’ve lost our identity,” Hoiberg said when Nebraska’s first losing streak hit six games in late January. “Our identity was a gritty, dirty, ugly, grind-it-out type of team.”
The Huskers rediscovered that identity for wins over Illinois and Oregon, in the second half at Northwestern and for the Michigan game. But, really, NU didn’t protect the rim, keep foes off the boards or rotate and close out quickly enough to deep 3s for much of the season. Figuring out Creighton — which Loenser had done — didn’t translate to the rest of the season.
Nebraska has at least one and maybe four more games to send the program into the offseason on a high note. But along with shooting, NU needs athleticism, length and tenacity for its defense.
NIL mystery solved
Why play in the Crown? There’s money to be made — for your collective — by progressing to the semifinals of the 16-team event.
If NU wins two in Las Vegas, it’ll receive at least $50,000. If Nebraska makes the finals, it’ll receive $100,000. And if the Huskers win the Crown, the collective gets $300,000.
Nebraska Athletic Director Troy Dannen dished that news last week on “Sports Nightly.”
So who gets that money? Current players? Future players?
“How that’s distributed, we really haven’t had those discussions yet,” Dannen said. “That’s really a coach-led decision at that point in time. It’s a little something different to play for.”
If the Crown returns in 2026, could the event move up a week? The first Elite Eight game on Saturday didn’t top off until 5:09 p.m., so the semifinals could be played before that. Then the Crown final could be played Monday night instead of Sunday afternoon.
According to VSiN, a gambling media company, Nebraska has the second-best odds to win the Crown behind Cincinnati. I’d probably tab Boise State — which has the third-best odds and sits on NU’s side of the bracket — as my favorite, followed by Villanova, Nebraska, Cincy and USC.
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