Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule met with members of the media following the teams’ fall camp practice Saturday morning. Rhule spoke on the quarterback room, the defensive line and the scrimmage.
“I think we feel really confident in all of the guys,” he said. “I think the thing that we have is we have three guys that we feel like can lead us to win. So from that part it’s hard, but can someone be more advanced at this point than someone else. The difficult part in it is that you have one guy who’s played, and you’ve seen him play, and you know how hard it is to play. And you’ve seen two guys who haven’t played yet in college, so that’s maybe the unknown factor here, but all three guys have worked really hard, and I’m sure they’ll all continue to improve.”
Rhule touched on the improvements on the defensive line over the offseason.
“I think we’ve been patient,” he said. “Credit to the coaching staff and the players’ trust in us that a guy like James (Williams) we played and redshirted, if all of a sudden he was a junior right now, that’d be pretty difficult, but he’s a sophomore. I think us believing in the process and trusting the process on our end as coaches, players believing in what we’re doing and buying in to Kristin (Coggins) and Corey (Campbell), and all of the things that they do. I think it makes us a stronger team. I think the one thing about our pass rush right now is we understand that in the Big Ten, that you can’t just run around people, that’s not how it works. You’re gonna have to go through people, and we were able to run around some people last year to get our sacks, but we couldn’t really go through people. We have more size and power now to go through people, and I think it’s an improved area for our team.”
Rhule then began talking about the scrimmage and what he said to players afterwards.
“I told them I feel like they’re really close to being a good team, but they’re not there yet,” he said. “I feel like the offense was a procedure penalty, a crucial moment, or a big play a way from having a great day, but they got in their own way. The first-team offense didn’t turn the ball over, they protected the ball the entire day, but I think they had four or five penalties. And we’re trying to do some advanced things, we’re trying to go on two, we're trying to play more NFL-style football, and we weren’t able to handle that in crucial moments today where we would jump and hurt ourselves. There’s a lot of good things happening, way further ahead than where we’ve been, yet it just isn’t to the level we want.”
Rhule also spoke on reactions and feedback based on comments he made in the Huskers’ “Chasing 3” Documentary.
“I see some people took it the wrong way, like Footballscoop which represents coaches,” he said. “You’re a coach. If you’re a coach, you understand that pushing the guys is actually coaching. Drawing up plays isn’t coaching. Running individual plays isn’t coaching. Coaching is tackling hard problems, so I was really disappointed. Something that’s supposed to be about football, that can’t understand that it is growth. The fact that I’m able to coach a team that I can talk that directly to, and that don’t take it personally, and they just handle it, is why we’re going to win.”
Fall camp will continue on Monday, and the next media availability will be Tuesday, Aug. 20.