Dana Holgorsen spent the month of January walking to work in minus-15 degree weather and watching film by himself in an otherwise empty corridor of coaches offices. He loved every minute of it.
For those not familiar with the former West Virginia and Houston head coach's 2024, you missed a doozy. In his first season living the buyout life following a 5-year run at Houston, Holgorsen began the 2024 campaign as an advanced scout and analyst at TCU. In November, he left the Frogs to become an analyst at Nebraska. Matt Rhule described Holgorsen's role as "evolving" at the time, and a week later he evolved to offensive coordinator following the midseason dismissal of Marcus Satterfield. "This is not about next year; this is about right now," Rhule said then. "This is about us giving our guys the best chance to go out there and win at USC."
Nebraska did not beat USC, but the Huskers defeated Wisconsin the following week, which secured the program's first bowl bid since 2016. The Huskers won that won, too, 20-15 over Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl.
That game took place Dec. 28, and Holgorsen was back in the office by Jan. 2.
"I know what the plays are now," Holgorsen quipped. Always a good thing for any offensive coordinator. "It was challenging to come in, dissect everything and figure out who we wanted to get the ball to, figure out what plays we wanted to run. Over the course of those four games when I was calling it, I understood it a little bit more. Obviously, right?"
The beginning of 2025 was a rare quiet time in the football offices. Players were home for a belated Christmas break. Coaches were off, and then back at work but off on the road recruiting. "It was me in front of my computer. Nobody was here. Everybody was on the road recruiting, that whole month of January is a challenging recruiting month. I think Coach (Matt Rhule) was out for about two weeks, so he wasn't even in here," Holgorsen said.
Players started trickling in in the second half of January, which allowed Holgorsen time to get to know them. "I learned all their names for the first time now" he quipped. The staff then took the first half of February off, so meetings to develop the 2025 Nebraska offense began in earnest after Valentine's Day. "That's when the staff meetings started. I gave them all my thoughts, 'This is what our install is, this is what we're going to do.' It made sense to everybody.
"There's subtle changes in terminology, subtle changes in sets, plays. The majority of it's going to stay the same. We have good coaches here, this is a good scheme," Holgorsen said.
Reflecting back on it now, Holgorsen said he's never worked harder across his 30-plus year career than he did in November and December, running an offense for a team he didn't work for one week prior. Three months removed from that, Holgorsen can now come up for air. He's glad he's at Nebraska, and he's glad November and December happened.
"I wake up happy every morning, walk my butt to work. Even when it was minus-15 I was walking to work... Fired up about where we're at right now."