Mike Dawson took off the baseball cap, a practice attire staple for many college football coaches, and leaned his head forward.
“I had hair before spring ball started and now it’s all gone,†he said with a laugh.
The coaching veteran, to be fair, did not actually start spring ball with a full head of lettuce up top, but the point came through loud and clear anyhow.
It’s not always a smooth ride working with a young, inexperienced position group.
That’s exactly what Dawson, the newly minted defensive front coach in charge of the Huskers’ interior defensive linemen and edge players, has in the middle of the defensive line.
He’ll get Casey Rogers back from a knee injury over the summer, but Dawson and company lost four defensive lineman from a veteran 2021 unit — Damion Daniels and Ben Stille to pursue the NFL, Jordon Riley to the transfer portal, and Deontre Thomas left, too — and they haven’t added any veterans to the mix via the transfer portal at this point. Those four combined for nearly 1,300 snaps in 2021, according to Pro Football Focus numbers, which represents 66.7% of NU’s interior defensive line snaps.
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“It’s always a good and a bad thing, where you have guys that are maybe a little bit inexperienced but not a lot of numbers,†Dawson said of spring ball so far. “So what ends up happening is they get a lot of reps. Now, when they’re out there an extended period of time, they get more fatigued, so for them as a player, I’m sure they’d like a little bit — not that they don’t want the reps — but maybe get a blow in between a little bit more. For me as a coach, No. 1 you get to get them more reps. You get to show them themselves on film more and, also, you like to find out how guys are going to perform when they are fatigued. It’s a little harder than they want it to be, certainly. It’s been good that way.â€
It is too early to make any bold proclamations about who might break through, but it’s clear beyond a shadow of doubt that the Huskers need somebody or somebodies to step up and do it quickly.
“It doesn’t matter what defense you play in, it doesn’t matter what league you play in, if you don’t have good defensive linemen, you’ll never be good on defense,†coordinator Erik Chinander said Monday. “I think those guys are very, very critical in your success no matter where you’re at, whether it’s high school, the NFL, college, the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, it doesn’t matter.â€
Which brings the key question facing Dawson and Chinander this spring: Beyond the two returning veterans, how much production can NU count on from Newsom, Nash Hutmacher, Ru’Quan Buckley, Marquis Black, Jailen Weaver and walk-on Colton Feist?
“Obviously, Nash got some reps last year. Colton Feist got a lot of reps last year,†Chinander said. “The guys who haven’t gotten a lot of reps — the Mosai Newsoms, the Marquis Blacks, Ru’Quan and Jailen — those are the guys we need to continue to get a little more out of moving forward.
“Mosai’s been in the system the longest, so I think he’s the closest to getting in. But Ru’Quan does a lot of good things in practice, Marquis Black does a lot of good things in practice. Even guys like walk-ons (Jacob) Herbek and (Ryan) Schommer, those guys have just kind of come back (from injury). It’s really nice to get them back and see them work.â€
Newsom is heartened by the work the group has done so far this spring.
“It’s been going really well. The D-line is getting real close,†said the Iowa native, who arrived on campus around 260 pounds, has dealt with injuries over the past couple of years and now sits in the 295-pound range. “There’s a few of us right now, but we’re all going out there and competing. Coach Dawson is teaching us some new stuff and it’s been really good to learn and get better.â€
A lot of young players getting work, though, is a recipe for some bad mixed in with the good.
“It’s a fine line because the guys, they want to do well, right? No one wants to do well more than the guy that’s out there,†Dawson said. “It’s not like they go out there and go, ‘You know what, on this play I think I’m going to do the exact opposite of what he told me to do.’ But sometimes it looks like that and it feels like that as a coach, like, 'What in the world? How can you be doing that after this amount of time in practice?' But it’s all about habits.â€
Habits take time to build, and players ready to withstand the rigors of playing in the trenches in the Big Ten take even longer.
“So for guys that are still kind of young in the process, Ru’Quan and Marquis and Jailen, those guys, they’ve got to continue to develop and they’ve got to continue to get stronger and take advantage of all the awesome stuff we have here,†Dawson said. “We talk about what a great strength staff we have, great nutrition staff we have, the guys in the training room are the best there are. …
“I think just not expecting the results right away and understanding that there’s a process that you’re going to have to go through to have to compete in this league.â€
In today's college game, it's easy to assume that NU can fill any depth deficiency up front with a player from the portal, but productive, high-level defensive linemen don't grow on trees. NU lost out on Miami transfer Nesta Jade-Silvera this winter and any player worthy of snaps in the Big Ten will garner substantial interest on the transfer market this spring.
"It’s hard to find guys in the trenches pre-transfer portal and it still is," Dawson said. "Finding big guys that want to play and are good enough to be physically there, I think, is a challenge. Then the portal brings on a whole other list of challenges. When I first started coaching, I had a mentor that would tell me, 'Hey, there’s no waiver wire in college football. These are the guys that you have, you have to coach them and make them better.' Well, now there is a waiver wire and it’s called the portal. Guys are jumping in and some guys are leaving and some guys are coming and you don’t know yet how that recruiting process is going to truly go until we’ve been through this whole, entire cycle.
"It’s been crazy so far."