So how good will this defense be?

[Roll Skers]

I am expecting a very good defense this year, maybe top 20 caliber. I think Diaco will work wonders this year, and has a fantastic secondary to work with. K/A Williams, Jones, Kalu, Jackson all played solid last year, and I think Elijah Blades can make an impact this year as well. Our linebackers will be good this year IMO, with Young, Gifford, and Weber all looking very nice in the spring. Everyone knows the make or break this year on defense is the DL. I think we rise to the occasion, and freedom, mick, and the davis twins will play great.

Our ceiling this year is how well we are on defense, and I think we will be a very solid defense. So how far can we go with this defense?

[Decked]

Freedom & Davis being our best players at the DE and the boundary OLB spot scare me. Would also like to see Gifford beat out Newby. However, we seem to be building depth at most positions across the board. I'd venture to say around 30-35 range with the transition and needing more pieces such as extra pass rushers and one more solid DE.

[NUance]

New DC. Switching defensive schemes. This doesn't seem like a formula for success in year one. I think it will be good for us in the long run. But I'd be surprised if we field a top 20 defense this first year.

[BigRedBuster]

Expect breakdowns from time to time throughout the season. Hopefully most of those will be early then they finish strong. Hopefully the offense will carry them past those early mistakes.

[Moiraine]

I'm guessing we'll be average, which means better than last year.

[Caliborn72]

Weirdly, all of the public criticism of the OLine is what is making me nervous about the defense. The coaches know what they have, if they expected the defense to be an elite - top 25 defense - then I don't think we'd be seeing the same criticisms of the OLine, at least not publicly. I imagine that the defense will be above average but I do feel the transition year might lead to some frustrations. Also why I'm even more nervous about the OLine :-/

 

I fully expect a lot of coverage sacks and some interesting blitz packages. Hopefully with the secondary being such a strength, it will allow Diaco to be less vanilla than you'd normally see with a new defense.

[Toe]

Long-term, I think we'll be fine with Diaco. It's the short-term transition period that's a huge question mark...

[RedDenver]

I'll call my shot and say we'll have a top 25 defense this year.

 

Edit: I'll clarify to say we're top 25 in scoring defense.

Edited May 24, 2017 by RedDenver

[NUinID]

It may pain some of you guys to realize that last year's defense finished ranked 30th in total defense. This is not bad at all. The problem is that all anyone remembers is the couple of games that the defense really stunk up the place. OSU, Iowa, and Tennesee comes to mind.

 

It is a lot easier to go from a 4-3 to a 3-4 front thand vis versa. It is hard to add the second lineman for a lot of teams becuase they don't have them. Nebraska has the linebackers to make the transition.

 

I think overall the defense will be ranked pretty close to where it is at last year, but I think we see more consistant defense. I think Luke Gifford and Chris Weber and Deidrick Young have good years. Gifford is tailor made to play OLB in a 3-4. He looks just like one of those LBs that plays for Wisconsin. I just like the way Weber plays and Young is more of ILB than on outside. They just have a lot of options and I think we will see a lot of guys play this year.

[girlknowsfootball]

Any NFL player will tell you the first year a whole college team transitions to a new defense it is always rough. You see a huge jump from year 1 to year 2.

 

I met Michael Booker (1st round NFL draft pick in 1997, who played in the league 5 years) and Dejuan Groce a former all American at Nebraska who played 5 years in the NFL at an event two years ago. We discussed Nebraska's defense at length and they predicted Banker would struggle based on the personnel he had and the way he liked to run his defense. They were right. They told me recently that even though Diaco might be a great coach, to not expect our defense to be great this year. They said year one in a new defense that is multiple is always a big transition with a lot of mental errors. Plus we need to develop depth at a few positions we still really lack depth.

 

Look for a big jump in 2018 as we add more pieces and have an extra year of knowledge in the system.

[Mavric]

It may pain some of you guys to realize that last year's defense finished ranked 30th in total defense. This is not bad at all. The problem is that all anyone remembers is the couple of games that the defense really stunk up the place. OSU, Iowa, and Tennesee comes to mind.

 

No, the problem is that last year's defense looks a lot better than it actually was because we played a bunch of teams that were really bad at offense.

 

When we played teams that had some semblance of an offense, it showed up in a hurry.