Dana Holgorsen on 2025 offense

Dana Holgorsen remembers the old days.

The days when fax machines were being used on signing day, which was always the first Wednesday of February. But as Bob Dylan once wrote, the times, they are a-changin’.

The sport of college football is changing drastically off the field. The early signing period in December has been the primary signing time for high school recruits since its inception in 2017.

“A lot of the times, we knew who we were going to sign at this point in time right now, in early December,” Holgorsen said during an appearance on Nebraska football’s #2FiveCrew Signing Day Show. “But you had to recruit them all December, then you had to recruit them all January and waste a whole lot of money recruiting these guys, and then you sign in February.”

It’s truly a whole new world for college football players, coaches, staffers, everyone. They’re adjusting to a new normal no one has experienced before at this level. Holgorsen, brought in following the UCLA loss in early November, has a lot of catching up to do.

Part of catching up involves Nebraska’s 2025 class, which, as one can imagine, Holgorsen is still learning about.

“I still don’t know who they all are,” Holgorsen joked. “I don’t know when they’re coming. I hear a lot of them are going to be here in January, which I’m excited about that.

Holgorsen touched on a bunch of topics during his appearance. Here’s a quick breakdown of what the Huskers’ offensive coordinator said.

Chip Kelly may have started a new trend when he chose to be the offensive coordinator at Ohio State following six years as UCLA’s head coach.

Why be a head coach and have to deal with everything the new landscape of college football requires — be friends with donors, be a fundraiser, recruit next year’s class, re-recruit your own roster — when you can, for the most part, worry about calling plays and creating game plans as a coordinator. You know, worry about the football.

We’ve seen Gus Malzahn leave Central Florida to be the offensive coordinator at Florida State. Now Holgorsen, who’s been a head coach for 13 years across West Virginia and Houston, can’t hide his excitement for calling plays and thinking up ways for Husker players to score touchdowns.

“When you’re head coach, you think you got your hands on everything and you’re coaching all the positions — you’re not,” Holgorsen said. “You’re doing a whole lot of things other than coaching football. So I think the thing that has been fun for me is just sitting in there and really coaching football, coaching the kids on the field and focusing on specific things as opposed to the big-picture stuff.”

Holgorsen signed a two-year contract with Nebraska that will pay him $1.2 million annually.

Securing Holgorsen was a massive and positive move from head coach Matt Rhule during a time of shock and confusion in the fan base as several Huskers started announcing intensions to enter the transfer portal when it opens.

Why did Holgorsen want to stick around?

“We should have won three games when I was here. I think that’s kind of the biggest thing,” Holgorsen said. “I’d sit back and I watched the USC game. Probably had as much fun as I’ve had in the Wisconsin game. And then the Iowa thing, we let that get away from us. And that…that bothers me.”

Holgorsen is a competitor at the end of the day. Just like the players he’s calling plays for. The USC and Iowa games left a bad taste in his mouth. May have even pissed him off a bit, too, because Nebraska was so close to winning both games.

But the Huskers didn’t, of course. They weren’t good enough. Not buttoned-up enough. It all created motivation for the OC. He wants another crack at this.

“For as odd of a situation as this was, for me to go into a room and not know anybody or anything, including the calls and the offense and stuff, the way that our staff came together, the way that the players respected responded to it, for us to be able to be close was encouraging,” Holgorsen said. “Give us another month and the product should be a little bit better. Give us another year, and the product will be better.”

In the new college football, rosters will drastically change each offseason. Coaching staffs will likely do it, too.

The transfer portal, which opens on Monday, will be as crazy as ever with players looking for new homes, new NIL deals and better situations. Holgorsen isn’t worried about what his roster and personnel will look like when the Huskers kick off against Cincinnati to open the 2025 season.

He’s worried about practicing with the young guys and seeing who’s developing. And, of course, winning the bowl game. That’s important to him.

“We need to go win this game. The fact that Nebraska hasn’t been to a bowl game in eight years or whatever it is, is just mind blowing to me. It’s just, I can’t fathom it,” Holgorsen said. “So we need to take advantage of this and go have a good performance in the bowl game. And then we’ll shift to next year.”

Holgorsen knows the roster will change, and Nebraska’s staff as transfer candidates already lined up to take visits, which can begin this weekend.

“We’re going to probably bring in 20, 30 transfers on visits. We’re not gonna take that many, but we’re gonna bring that many in to be able to fill the spots that we need, to be able to change our team,” Holgorsen said. “I look forward to that process.”

The way Holgorsen sees it, he’ll be evaluating the players on the current roster and deciding if they can help the team win next season or if they’re not ready to do that yet.

“Based on the amount of people here who can help us, you’re not bringing in people to replace guys who can help you win. You’re bringing guys in to fill spots on where you need people to be able to help you win,” Holgorsen said. “So I’m looking forward to that process, it’s already been fun to evaluate guys out there.”

Holgorsen wasn’t sure what to call the offense he called the final three games of the regular season. He was taking suggestions from each assistant coach on offense. If it made sense to Holgorsen, he kept it on the play sheet. If it didn’t, he took it off.

It was pretty simple, Holgorsen said. He was going to call a limited amount of plays in the games. And those plays would be repped at practice over and over and over. And then again.

Simplifying the playbook was a major positive, especially with a true freshman quarterback who’s mentally capable of handling it, but was a true freshman playing Big Ten defenses at the end of the day.

For Holgorsen, if he sees success with a play, he has no issue doing it again.

“I’m going to call the same play twice if it works,” Holgorsen said. “And if it works, I’m going to call it three or four times. So why do you need 150 plays on your sheet? You’re not going to get to them. So quit putting them on the sheet because you can’t practice them and you’re not going to call them all. So that’s just what I did.”

So, the next question: What’s the 2025 offense going to look like with an entire offseason to work on it for Holgorsen?

While he got his coaching start in the Hal Mumme/Mike Leach Air Raid, Holgorsen has made his own unique tweaks to his offenses over the years. But he keeps coming back to the same trait: balance.

“It’s a lot easier to hand the thing off and score,” said Holgorsen, who had multiple West Virginia teams that had successful run games. “…Just the execution of calling to play, if you can turn and hand it and go score, I mean, that’s a lot easier than dropping back and pass sets and routes and progressions, and that’s coming from me. At the end of the day, I think it’s about balance.”

As Husker fans have learned, Holgorsen is blunt. He’s direct. He doesn’t really send mixed signals. He says what he wants to say.

When asked about what kind of player he’ll be searching for on the recruiting trail and transfer portal, Dana was Dana.

“Guys who can really make plays,” Holgorsen said, which got a chuckle out of studio hosts Jessica Coody and Damon Benning. “Athletic playmakers is kind of who we’re after. I don’t care if that’s at receiver, inside receiver, outside receiver. I don’t really care about the size. We’re not looking for specific size and stuff like that. Bigger, faster, stronger is always better.

“But just guys that are good humans, good kids, good people, hard working guys that are intelligent, that can learn and will work hard, I think is kind of what fits what we’re trying to do here.”

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