Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule announced earlier this week that Dana Holgorsen would be calling plays for the offense shortly after Holgorsen joined Nebraska's staff as an offensive consultant.
As a longtime college coach, Holgorsen has plenty of play-calling experience, and amid a three-game losing streak in which the team has averaged 11.3 points per game, Rhule thought it was the perfect decision to make.
“This wasn't some short-term splash thing,” Rhule said, via ESPN's Max Olson. “This was, to me, an opportunity to make an epic move that can push us into the next tier. And this is our first game on that push.”
Nebraska football's OC Dana Holgorsen tries to revive offense

The Cornhuskers, in Rhule's second season in Lincoln, began the season on a strong note. Nebraska opened the year with a 40-7 win over UTEP before decisively defeating former Big 12 rival Colorado 28-10, which earned the ‘Huskers a spot in the Associated Press Top 25.
However, after a 34-3 win against Northern Iowa, Nebraska ran into its first sign of trouble in a 31-24 overtime loss to Illinois. While they got back to their winning ways the following week at Purdue, the beginning of the end was near for Marcus Satterfield, the team's offensive coordinator.




After averaging 30.8 points and 405.4 yards per game over the first five games of the season, Satterfield's offense cratered once October began. Since the win over Purdue, Nebraska has failed to gain more than 322 total yards or average more than 4.5 yards per play. By comparison, the offense's worst game in the first five games was against Colorado, when the ‘Huskers recorded 334 yards and averaged 5.1 yards per play.
The proverbial final straw for Rhule apparently came in a 27-20 loss to UCLA, ironically Nebraska's best offensive game since September. On Monday, the head coach announced that Satterfield would be stripped of play-calling responsibilities, which would go to recently hired offensive consultant Hologorsen.
Holgorsen coached against Rhule when the two were the respective head coaches of West Virginia and Baylor in the Big 12. An Iowa native, Holgorsen is a disciple of Mike Leach and the ‘Air Raid' offense, of which he used a version as offensive coordinator of Houston (2008 and 2009) and Oklahoma State (2010), as well as the head coach of West Virginia (2011 to 2018) and Houston (2019 to 2023).
After a 4-8 season last year, Houston fired Holgorsen, who soon found his way onto Sonny Dykes' TCU staff as an analyst until Rhule called with an opportunity to be involved in the Cornhuskers program.
Fortunately for Holgorsen and Rhule, Nebraska would appear to have three winnable games ahead of them to close the regular season. First up is a visit to Los Angeles this weekend to take on USC, which, like the ‘Huskers, are coming off of a bye week.
Nebraska will host Wisconsin next week for its home finale before finishing up the regular season with a game against former Big Ten West foe Iowa. The Cornhuskers need to win one of their next three to reach six wins on the season and become bowl-eligible.