Skip to content

Ad Disclosure

Dana Holgorsen shares challenge to Nebraska’s RBs, WRs after first game as OC

Paul Harvey

By Paul Harvey

Published:

Dana Holgorsen came away with some positive impressions of Nebraska’s offense in his first game coordinating under Matt Rhule. However, he did have challenges to give to a couple of position groups.

On Tuesday, Holgorsen made his first midweek press conference as a member of Rhule’s coaching staff. Early on, he was asked about the offensive line, and Holgorsen admitted he was pleased with the unit.

The OC did say he doesn’t have a frame of reference from the start of the season, but it was a good performance overall:

“I thought we run-blocked well on Saturday. They say it’s the o-line’s best game up front, I thought we played well upfront,” said Holgorsen. “I can’t gauge it on what happened in the first 9 games, but I was pleasantly surprised with our pad level, our toughness, assignment-wise being good.”

However, the performance upfront illustrated an area of concern for Holgorsen. He claims there were some yards left on the field against USC with running backs missing wide-open holes or not making defenders miss in the open field.

“I know coach Rhule mentioned it yesterday, there were a lot of yards left out there. When I can push the back and there’s a hole like this and the back’s not in it, it’s discouraging. Just got to get those guys to open their eyes and trust the blocks and hit it,” said Holgorsen. “… You get it up to the second level and we need to get some backs who can make guys miss in the open field. Some of those tackles that USC had are hard tackles, and they made them.”

The other group Holgorsen has been challenging is the wide receiver room, particularly for what he described as “embarrassing” blocking on the perimeter. The good news is the WR room responded and was able to deliver some positive moments against the Trojans.

“I thought they blocked well, and that’s the first thing I challenged them. I said you guys are fairly big kids… these guys are big bodies, why are you not blocking worth a crap on the perimeter?” questioned Holgorsen. “It’s embarrassing… First thing I said to them was if you don’t start blocking out there you’re not going to get the ball thrown to you.”

Now, Holgorsen gets two more games to show what he can do with the Husker offense. Nebraska remains in search of one more win to get back to a bowl game with matchups against Wisconsin and Iowa to end the season.

Paul Harvey

Paul is a lifelong fan and student of all things college football. He has been covering college football since 2017 and the B1G since 2018.