When Greg Austin arrived at Hudl’s Haymarket headquarters in early March to present to the Lincoln Football Coaches Association, he apologized to the organizers for not bringing along new offensive coordinator Matt Lubick like he had hoped.
The reason: Lubick was holed up in the football offices slugging through a weekslong self-scout and binge-learning session that included watching every snap the Huskers ran in 2019. It was a guided tour with the help of head coach Scott Frost, Austin and others to identify areas for improvement and also learn everything that’s been tweaked, added, kicked out or otherwise altered in the four years since he and Frost last worked together at Oregon.
The final product won’t be seen on the field until, pandemic permitting, Sept. 5 when Nebraska is set to open its season against Purdue at Memorial Stadium. But early conversations with the NU offensive braintrust shed some light on the task: Find new things that work within the framework of Frost’s system, but don’t reinvent the wheel. Just make the wheel more efficient.
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“There are a few new concepts, (but) more than anything it's just us dialing in the detail and technique of things,†Frost said.
From 2018 to 2019, Nebraska fell from 20th to 72nd nationally in yards per play, 25th to 55th in yards per game, 16th to 60th in yards per rush, 31st to 72nd in first downs per game, 67th to 100th in red-zone touchdown percentage. The numbers go on and on. Not many of them got better.
Lubick replaced Troy Walters in February and Austin was promoted to run-game coordinator. Frost still runs the show and will call the plays, but the next two in line each talked extensively about the road map to improvement in 2020.
To start, Frost had his coaches study other successful offenses around college football — think LSU and Oklahoma, among others — and the NFL. Tight ends coach Sean Beckton watched NFL tight ends. Lubick from the couch marveled at LSU’s passing game. The staff presented its findings earlier this spring.
“The challenge of that is you don’t want to run 10 different offenses,†Lubick said. “You still have your base system, and you want to make your system as good as it can possibly be but still have the flexibility to add other plays that might fit in or just other ways of doing things. It’s always good to look at other ways of doing things because that’s how you get better. …
“That’s a challenge of coaching. There’s a lot of good offenses, a lot of good ideas, but they still have to fit within the framework of what you do.â€
While there’s always room for new ideas, the lion’s share of any improvement for NU from 2019 to 2020 is most likely going to come from getting better at the things already in the playbook rather than a sudden infusion of new material. Take, for example, the way Austin smiled when asked about the self-scout process this winter.
“The good thing about our self-scout this year that was different than years past was that the O-line coach was on the same page with every single coach in the room,†he said. “I’m not going to say that we brushed over it in the past, we didn’t. But it was more of a detailed conversation. Why did he take that step? Why are his eyes supposed to be there? Why is his hand supposed to be there? Why is that route depth 8 yards? How many steps is he taking before he makes the cut? All those things, it’s almost like it was when it was Year 1 at UCF when we were just learning this deal.â€
That’s clearly a reference to Lubick, who said he’s admired Austin’s work for years and added, “He has a different area of expertise than I do, so I lean on him for a lot.â€
Austin has assuredly made it clear to Nebraska’s new offensive coordinator that he thinks the Huskers were too scattered in their run-game approach in 2019. That frustration showed periodically over the season, dating to September when, after a loss to Colorado, Austin said, “Every time we called an inside run, it was a 5-yard gain. Most every time. Every time we ran to the outside … not so much,†while noting the lack of inside run calls.
“There’s a million ways to run the ball, but what are you really good at? That’s what you have to determine,†he said this month. “… Then make that your bread and butter. Last year we got into the habit of doing this and then doing that and then doing … no, no, no. Let’s just get really good at doing these few things. Then we can have little things off of that, but let’s get really good at this core.â€
Now that is his province. Frost will call the plays, but Austin believes he’ll have more say in what’s on the menu. Of course, this all has to wait until NU and college football programs around the country can reconvene. And nothing about having a blueprint guarantees success. Austin, though, knows what his approach will be, and it sounds a lot like a microcosm of the whole offseason for Nebraska’s offensive staff.
“We’re going to run zone, we’re going to run power, and then there’s the element about us that we’re going to run our old-school stuff that we ran last year, but we’re going to be a little bit more structured about how we’re doing it,†he said. “The implementation of it, the structure of it is going to be more sound.
“That’s the overall top-down view of it. We’re going to be really good at a few things and not trying to be average at everything under the sun.â€