18 hours ago
Dana Holgorsen finds a comfort zone at Nebraska: ‘I'm back doing what I love'
LINCOLN, Neb. — A whiteboard covers the east-facing wall in Dana Holgorsen's office at the Osborne Legacy Complex. On it, scrawled terminology and diagrams of plays mark the signature of an offensive wizard in his comfort zone.
'I'm back doing what I love, what I probably know that I'm better at than the CEO-type stuff,' Holgorsen said in the third week of June, his eighth month as the Nebraska offensive coordinator.
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His office windows allow a view to the north, and a glass door opens to a balcony with a table, where he can sit and watch over the practice fields below.
Rain splashed the table on this Wednesday morning during an interview in his office. Holgorsen said he doesn't care about getting wet. Nor does he care about the temperature as it soars to 100 degrees in June or when it dips to 15 below in January, when he would walk to work, slightly less than a mile, from his pad in the Haymarket district.
He cares about comfort. He didn't feel that at Houston, where he coached for the last five of his 13 seasons as a head coach. He'll always go back to visit his three children. He's closing on the sale next week of one home that he owns there, and he wants to unload the other.
Holgorsen hasn't owned a car for more than a year and a half. When he was fired as the head coach at Houston in November 2023, the dealer who provided the vehicle came to retrieve it and made an effort to sell him another set of wheels. Holgorsen said no thanks. The dealer offered to let Holgorsen keep the car he'd been driving. He declined.
Houston is paying Holgorsen's $14.8 million buyout over a four-year period. He inked a two-year deal with Nebraska in December that pays him $1.2 million annually.
'I'm in a good headspace,' he said.
Holgorsen is wrapping his busiest three-week stretch of the year, he said. Nebraska hosts recruits and stages camps on a seemingly endless loop for much of June. Mixed in, the coaching staff is allowed eight hours per week with the current roster in organized team activities.
The OTAs are generally broken into short segments. They don't include hitting or work in pads, but Holgorsen values the time to reinstall plays and concepts. The Huskers conduct film and meeting sessions and run individual drills, routes on air, and review motions and alignments.
'To me, it just gets you ready for camp,' Holgorsen said.
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Training camp starts July 28, one month before the season opener against Cincinnati at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. Meanwhile, Holgorsen is continuing a deep review of video cut-ups from spring practice. He's scripting the full first week of offensive install for camp. He'll be done with it this weekend.
Then what?
'Dana things,' said Holgorsen, who turns 54 on Saturday.
Holgorsen took control of the Nebraska offense in the second week of November after the Huskers lost four consecutive games. He'd been out of a full-time role in coaching for just short of a year and was living in Texas when Matt Rhule called.
The move by Rhule, in his second season, hinted at desperation. At minimum, it was a gamble.
But the Huskers needed to take a big swing. In 10 victories under Rhule before Holgorsen came on board, Nebraska allowed an average of 9.2 points, and not once more than 14. The problem was on the offensive side.
Finishing the season with Holgorsen calling shots, Nebraska won two of four games, allowing 24 and 15 points. In its 20-15 win against Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl, the Huskers' offense was able to run out the final 4 minutes, 11 seconds of the clock. Quarterback Dylan Raiola took a knee three times at the end to secure the victory. It represented a big step.
To that point, in four games with Holgorsen at the helm, Raiola completed 71.7 percent of his passes for 6.5 yards per attempt, with three touchdowns and three interceptions. In the four games prior, he connected on 58.5 percent for 5.4 yards per attempt, with one touchdown and six picks.
Nearly six months after the bowl victory, Nebraska's first since 2016, Holgorsen sees more growth from his QB.
'He's not a freshman anymore,' the coach said. 'Having a year under his belt, I see that leadership stuff start to stand out. He's doing a really good job in the locker room. He's doing a really good job off the field. He's bonding with his teammates better. I think those are all signs of maturity.'
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Raiola took receivers Dane Key and Jacory Barney to the College World Series in Omaha this week. That trio joined other pass catchers on a Raiola-sponsored trip to Texas for training exercises last month.
Raiola is a former five-star signee who spurned Ohio State and Georgia to play for his father's alma mater. When it comes to his QB, Holgorsen believes that to whom much is given, much is required.
'He understands that component of being the starting quarterback,' the OC said. 'I've been very impressed with how he's attacked this summer. I think it's awesome. I see a different side to him now than I did when I got here.'
The integration of Holgorsen's offense and how to build it with pieces at his disposal, he said, 'makes sense to me now.' In November, he had to adjust his standard approach to running an offense to avoid disrupting players.
'Going into Year 3 with coach Rhule, the continuity just makes a lot more sense,' Holgorsen said. 'And it's night and day compared to what we were doing toward the end of the year.'
On Sunday, Holgorsen will travel to Key West, Fla. There, he plans to reunite with Hal Mumme and Kliff Kingsbury.
They connected at the memorial service for Mike Leach in December 2022, days after Leach died of complications from a heart attack at age 61. They're a tight group. Mumme contributed heavily to the development of the air raid offense as head coach at Iowa Wesleyan from 1989 to 1991. Leach was Mumme's OC; Holgorsen played wide receiver for them.
They all moved to coach at Valdosta State. During that stint, Holgorsen first visited Key West with Leach. Leach and Mumme went to Kentucky before Leach reunited with Holgorsen at Texas Tech in 2000. Holgorsen served as Leach's OC in Lubbock for eight years. They designed plays for Kingsbury, the QB who became Tech's head coach in 2013 and now coordinates the offense for the Washington Commanders.
While at Leach's memorial, the air raid crew vowed to gather someday to celebrate Leach. Part of the group is doing it next week in Leach's favorite beach spot to relax. The legendary coach, who last worked at Mississippi State, visited Key West often and lived there between jobs at Texas Tech and Washington State.
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'He would just walk around Key West and talk to strangers all day long,' Holgorsen said. 'That was him.'
The multi-day event was coordinated by Eli Manning's TV series, 'Eli's Places,' produced by NFL Films and ESPN. The idea calls for Holgorsen, Mumme, Kingsbury and possibly some others — Holgorsen doesn't know many details — to simply pay homage to their lost friend.
'We're just going to go to different bars and spots and tell stories about Mike,' Holgorsen said.
From Florida, Holgorsen is headed to Europe with his son, Logan, to attend the F1 Austrian Grand Prix and tour the Swiss Alps. Dana said he might stay for a few days in Italy or Greece, then head to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico with his two daughters and Logan.
'Where I head after that is a mystery,' he said.
He'll be back in Lincoln a couple of days before camp in late July, ready to change the trajectory of Nebraska's offensive play. He'll do it by starting each day on his feet, getting outside and walking. It clears his mind.
'There's scientific evidence,' Holgorsen said, 'that sunlight for the first hour or two in the morning, that's the best thing for you to wake up.'
The walking, too, allows him to feel a connection to Leach, who famously walked to work often while at Washington State. Holgorsen said he feels a responsibility to help carry Leach's legacy.
In a place like Lincoln, that's not difficult, with its affection for football.
Holgorsen has taken well to this state — and to his place in the Nebraska football machine — since a hurried introduction last fall.
