So when Nebraska defensive players were asked Tuesday about weathering 90 plays from the opposing offense, well, just know that no recent college football team faces that on a weekly basis. The highest per-game average over the last five years was the 2016 South Florida team, which faced 82.8 plays per game.
That said, NU’s defense this year could face more plays per game than, well, ever.
“The offense will move fast,” defensive tackle Mick Stoltenberg said. “We’ll spend a lot of time on the field.”
Surely more than it did under previous coach Mike Riley. The Huskers faced an average of 68.8, 65.8 and 68 plays per game in 2017, 2016 and 2015 under Riley. Nebraska used a huddle — and burned play clock — helped reduce the amount of time, and thus plays, the opposing offense was on the field. In 2017, as bad as the defense was, it increasingly gave up bigger and bigger plays as the season wore on, reducing the amount of total plays NU faced. Minnesota ran just 61 plays. Iowa ran just 67.
Even at the end of the Bo Pelini era, when the Huskers were running a no-huddle, up-tempo offense, the Husker defense faced 71.5 plays per game in 2014 and 71.2 in 2013.
In new coach Scott Frost’s last year at Central Florida, the Knights’ defense faced 74.5 plays per game. And that was down from 77.5 in 2016. At Oregon, where Frost’s offenses perhaps moved even faster, the Ducks’ defense faced 80.5 plays per game in 2015, 77.9 in 2014 and 80.2 in 2013.
But nothing was quite as fierce as UCF’s final six games of 2017. The Knights faced 83.7 plays per game. That’s way up there.
OWH