Matt Rhule
Nebraska Head Coach
Postgame Quotes vs. Michigan (Sept. 30, 2023)
Michigan 45, Nebraska 7
Opening Statement
“Obviously a disappointing day. Lot of credit to Michigan; they’re a tremendous football team. Really couldn’t stop them today. Methodical converting third downs in the run game. Get some fourth downs early. Some big plays. The early turnovers didn’t help. Offensively, you know, we have the drive got down there, had the fourth and one early to make it 14-7 we thought. Didn't have that work out for us. Went down in the first drive in the second half and did not get points there. If it wasn’t for the late touchdown. I thought they were an excellent football team that played really well. We obviously weren’t good enough today and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
On being pushed around on defense early
“I hate to use the term pushed around. Just because that’s a big term for me as a coach to say. I have to see it. I will say I heard a lot of today. We haven’t had a lot of mistakes. We had a lot of like, ‘hey this guy is supposed to slant and spill and he runs and he’s up the field.’ So certainly they controlled the line of scrimmage. I wouldn’t want that in any way but I felt there were a lot plays that hit today that were guys supposed to spill the ball. He does, the ball rips inside for a six for eight. I did not see us not being able to control the line of scrimmage to that level. I thought it would be more of an even game in the run game. I have to be careful about being emotional in this moment. I have to go back and watch the tape. My history with these games is you hate these kinds of losses. They all count the same, but they hurt when you have that type of loss to go back and watch the tape. Make sure I deal in truth and see what I see. I was disappointed. I thought their quarterback made some excellent throws. Man-coverage, we were all over the guys. They made plays, and we had enough pass rush at times. There were a lot of things defensively that didn’t go our way, starting with DeShon (Singleton) injured on the first play and Tommi (Hill) going over having to play full-time. A lot of things happened that we have to get corrected. The good news is we got to see probably the best run game and what it looked like and people probably will copy that. (Coach) Tony (White) and his guys have a lot of work to do to correct those things.
On going under center when it was fourth and one
"No one has converted against them in 4 and 1, so we ran a quarterback sneak from the gun. I think Heinrich (Haarberg) panicked. I thought we knocked him off the ball, and he just ran his feet. I thought he was going to get it. I think he tried to jump a little bit, and that prevented him. That’s a situation in fourth down where he can reach the ball too. They’re excellent. They stopped Rutgers at fourth and one and fourth and two. They’re excellent short-yarders defense. There’s a reason they are put together the way they are. I thought we had a good play and knocked it back. This was a real growing day for Heinrich. I think the one third down he called the wrong play, we had a false start and a shift. You guys have seen me very stoic when you guys ask me about him. It happens to a lot of quarterbacks. The first time you go out there, you’re playing and having fun. You’re having fun starting in Colorado and coming in against Northern Illinois. All of a sudden, people are talking about you, and you start trying to do a lot. And I think we coach him through that like ‘hey, be Heinrich, go out and be the guy who is out there having fun. I was happy to see him play throughout the game, but I thought it was an instance where he could’ve got it but I’ll look at the play.”
On Michigan’s intensity and if the Huskers matched it
“I don’t want to sit here right now and say that our guys didn’t want to play hard. I don’t think that. I think that would be a lie about who they are and the team that they are. They are the number two team in the nation. I kind of alluded to it the other day like we are the number one rush offense and rush defense. He was gonna run for 300 yards against us and send a message. I don’t know if it wasn’t intensity. I still think our guys are trying to figure out if they are good enough to play these teams. I feel us cutting loose and attacking them. That’s kind of where we have to get to. I address the older guys and the younger guys after the game. The younger guys will have to play against them again. There’s only one way to play and win and that’s to attack.”
On the team’s reaction to the first half
“I can’t really say until I got to the locker room. We got to the locker room. I challenged them in that everything happens for a reason. Down 28-0, maybe you come back and win and it’s a storied game. Maybe you lose 45-7 and you find out a lot about the guys playing for you. You find out a lot about, maybe there’s some things we can do. We put (Joshua) Fleeks in and he hit that ball, and ‘alright, maybe Fleeks needs to play more.’ We found some things in the passing game that worked out for us alright. I always just feel like you hate these moments, but you can’t waste these moments. You can’t sit there and feel sorry for yourself and I can’t say ‘hey, let’s just get ready for Illinois.’ You have to get ready for Illinois. But we have to identify what happened and why and fix it. I didn’t feel like our guys weren’t responding, I think they were a good team. I think our guys – if the word is hesitant from the beginning – maybe a little hesitant to go out there. Some of the mistakes we made aren’t the typical mistakes we make and that part was disappointing to be out there, even that last drive. Those things are going to happen and you have to battle back. We’ll learn from it.”
On if there’s anything he wants to change with Heinrich Haarberg’s throwing technique
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to change his motion. He kind of is who he is and he does kind of throw from different arm slots. Early on in the game, they weren’t really rushing as much as they were twisting because of the quarterback draw game. The challenge for him was to keep climbing in the pocket. One was batted by a second-level defender. He was running the RPO and the safety came over the top. If the safety can bat the ball, you probably should have handed the ball off. I say that without seeing the tape. The ones that got batted down early – I think the big thing we wanted from Heinrich was to set the edge of the pocket and get up in the pocket, find those windows. In the NFL, there’s 10 5 foot 11 inch quarterbacks and they throw through windows as opposed to over the top of people. Again, he hasn’t played a lot of football, so we want him to play through those moments. He got sacked today, but protected the football. He got sacked off the edge. Those are hard to play through. We wanted him, even at the end – I don’t like when a team kicks our tail, to call timeout on second down. I don’t like doing those types of things. To the victor belongs the spoils. That being said, I also owed it to our quarterback – for Jaylen Lloyd as a freshman to catch that incut at the end of the game, that’ll pay dividends down the line. I think for Heinrich, we just want him to climb in the pocket, find windows. We haven’t been throwing the ball a ton with him, so now all of a sudden, you pick it up and you throw it a bunch of times, there’s going to be some things for us to work through. I think the biggest thing with Heinrich is I want him to not try to be something he’s not. I want him to be himself. I don’t want him to start trying to be perfect, I want him to play the game.”
On the biggest improvement Nebraska needs to make to close the gap on teams like Michigan
“I can’t answer that right now. They’re the number two team in the country. We’re not in that conversation right now. To me, it’s just holistic. I’ve stood on the field at Baylor in 2017 – forgive me for talking about another school – and they were beating us 59-16 or something. They were throwing balls in the end zone and laughing at us. I told Charlie Brewer and all those guys ‘we’ll come back here and we’ll beat them.’ We beat them the next year and two years later, we beat them 45 to whatever. We’re going to recruit. There were recruits there today. Hopefully they say ‘wow, I can really come make a difference.’ We’re going to develop. We’re going to keep coaching these guys. We’re going to coach these guys this week. They were in the same spot last year. They were 2-3 last year, right? They battled, they won some games. We’re going to have a chance to win games. The biggest difference is, I’m not going to get up here and make excuses. I’m not going to get up here and blame the players. We’re going to recruit, coach, develop. We’re going to learn from this game. This game sucked. Pardon my language. This game stunk. But, at the same time, we play again Friday. That’s kind of the approach. It’s a methodical process. One step at a time. Again, I’ll probably watch the tape and see some things. I’ll see some young players out there playing and say ‘man, he’s going to be really good.’ And Tony (White) will make the corrections on defense and we’ll keep coming along as an offensive line and we’ll get there.”
On DeShon Singleton and Barret Liebentritt’s injuries
“Liebentritt came out of the game last game, hurt his elbow. So he’ll be out for a couple weeks. I don’t know what DeShon’s is. It was his knee. He got cracked from the side and maybe his knee got stuck on the turf or something. I don’t know. He was in a lot of pain and was out. I don’t know that it’s anything beyond – I don’t think it’s an ACL as of yet, but we’ll see. They’ll obviously do all the tests and all those things. Obviously, Luke (Reimer) was unavailable for us today. Our thoughts and prayers are with Luke. He was unfortunately taken to the hospital this morning from the hotel, so we’re hoping that he’ll be okay. But, we just err with an abundance of caution for him.”
On if Luke Reimer was with the team
“I didn’t see Luke. I was told he was at the hospital. Obviously, Luke was injured this week, and just so you guys know, I never lied to you. You guys asked me if he was going to be fine. I said he was going to be fine. He just started to have some pain yesterday and they said it was nothing, gave him antibiotics and the antibiotic didn’t heal it. They just wanted to rule out infections and MRSAs and all those things. I don’t have any knowledge now, but that was a complete and total surprise to me this morning. He was actually at breakfast and then the doctors came to me and I said ‘let’s get him to the hospital.’ The last thing I would want would be for something worse to happen to him.”
On how he keeps the team positive and gets them ready during a short week
“We shouldn’t be real positive about that game. It’s an amazing tribute to the crowd that they stayed that long. I appreciate them very much. We should just learn from that. We should say ‘you know what? It’s a really good team. They absolutely got after us. We just couldn’t respond.’ There’s probably some good things in there. We should never accept that, though. We should never accept losing. We should never be like ‘it’s okay. It’s Michigan, it’s okay.’ We should never accept that at all. They shouldn’t be real positive. Everyone in Nebraska will find out about this team next Friday night. We’ll find out about me. We’ll find out about them. We’ll find out about all of us on Friday night. And that doesn’t mean winning and losing. If Illinois is better than us, so be it. But I can tell from your guys’ questions, there’s some sort of feeling of ‘hey, did they really fight back?’ a little bit. I’m hesitant to say that until I see it. It’s always hard to tell from the sidelines. But, we’ll see it on Friday night. We’ll see how excited we look, how much we’re flying around, what we look like. We’ll see. I hope it bothers them and we’re in a day and age where sometimes, everyone wants to be too cool for school. I hope it bothers them because it bothers me. I can tell you that much right now. That game bothered me a lot. But I don’t want to minimize my credit for Michigan. That’s a good football team. So, we’ll try to get there. I will say this – I love these players. They’re great young men and they all want to win. There’s no ‘hey, it’s their fault.’ We’re all in it together. We’ll battle. We’ll find out who we are Friday night, so I hope everyone watches.”