Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule Bye Week Quotes

On the biggest challenge this week
“I think this week is a week of introspection. After the last three ball games, I think it’s looking at everything that we’re doing. I think for each assistant coach, it’s looking at everything we’re doing. What are we doing well, what are we not doing well. Bad organizations point fingers, good organizations look at themselves. This is a tough time so we have to be a good organization and look at ourselves and challenge ourselves. It’s also a week of recruiting. I know it’s disappointing on Saturday, yet I’m in the office at 9 o’clock on Sunday meeting with recruits that were there. They do see a great game day atmosphere, a great place. They see us playing freshman. We’ll hit the road as well. It’s a lot of introspection, and at the same time we have to get ready for USC. We’re going to gameplan them, today we’re treating this like this isn’t a bye week, it’s a game week for us. We’re staying here late tonight working on USC, we were working on USC yesterday.”

On considering changes to jump start the offense
“My job is to consider everything. Part of that is ‘What are the problems? What are the issues?,’ looking at everything. One of the first things I’m doing this week is I have a lot of friends in the business, I’ve had some outside people come in and tell me what they see. In my history, that’s one of the best things you can do, have a fresh set of eyes look at it. I’m going to have some people I trust to look at us both on offense and defense and look at what we’re doing and then go from there.”

On what he thinks isn’t working for the offense
“We’re not able to run the ball to control the game. I’m a big believer that you have to be able to control the game. We were able to make some big plays in the game, but we weren’t able to handle the third-down pressures to stay on the field. It’s very hard because I don’t want to throw the kids under the bus, because it can be one person here, one person there. At the end of the day, we get a couple of big plays, then we’re off and running, but we’re not able to run the ball consistently enough. We’re not able to convert on third down. I’d say it’s a little bit of everything, to be quite honest. If you watch us, we’re just not playing well enough on offense to have a chance to win. The last two games, we’re facing Ohio State and UCLA, and we have the ball at the end with a chance to go win, and we have not been able to do that. It’s not like we have to fix this one thing, we have to just play better. That’s my job this week is to look at it and say what can we do. Hopefully, the players instead of saying, ‘he’s got to do this, he’s got to do that’ hopefully the players say, ‘I’ve got to go do this better.’ You have a couple of really bright spots, Jacory (Barney Jr.) out there consistently making plays. He’s like a lightning rod out there. Isaiah (Neyor) showed up in the last game and made some plays. We just need a lot more of that. We have three opportunities left to do it, we’ve got to play better.”

On if the lack of run game takes him by surprise
“I thought we would be playing better on offense than we are. I thought we’d run the ball better. I thought we’d have a really good play-action game. I thought we would be playing better than we are. Again, even within the game, there’s times where we’re down 10 to nothing, we have a drive to answer. There’s moments where that’s what it looks like, it’s just not consistent enough. Against Ohio State, we scored against them four times, we just got held to field goals. There was a lot of work this week on the redzone. We were able to get in twice. I thought we would be further along than we are.”

On his conversations with Dylan Raiola
“I didn’t watch anything with him this week because he’s been getting treatment all day and getting MRIs and all those things. We’re playing better people. One of the reasons why I recruited Dylan and when I recruited Danny (Kaelin) I sort of talked like ‘come here, this is an opportunity if you can win the job, one of the benefits is playing early.’ When you go through and you’re playing early, everything’s not going to be a sunny day. You learn how to handle all the different things that you see and you have tough moments and you overcome them. I think this is an unbelievable, invaluable experience for Dylan. When it’s good, it’s good. There’s been some tough moments. You throw the pick-six, he doesn’t quit, he goes back out and brings us back into the game. Heinrich (Haarberg) comes out, he takes us down the field. This is the Big Ten, this is a whole new world, a whole different league. Every week you have to be at your best, we haven’t been consistent enough. I think for a young freshman quarterback, this is on the job training, on the job learning. This is not an excuse, we’ve had three straight teams coming off a bye, going into our fourth one. We’ve seen so many different things. The third down packages we’ve seen cook up for us, you’re on the side, Dylan’s having to compute it and learn it, as are the O-linemen. I thought in the second half I thought we were better. I think at one point we were one for seven, and we finished much better than that. So, if you can just weather the storm as a young player, you say to yourself ‘what am I supposed to be learning’ and you learn all these things. We played Tom Brady when I was at Carolina, we kept bringing this zero look against them. We got him a couple times. The third time he threw a glance against us, he signaled it and saw it and burned us. While it’s frustrating right now, if he weathers the storm, he’ll have so much experience and as things get better he’ll be a unique player. 

On his feelings about Marcus Satterfield’s play calling
“Part of my job this week is to look at it. I don’t have tremendous issues at times like why we called this, why’d we call that, because all those things are kind of game-planned during the week. Are we game-planning the right things during the week, that might be one of the questions we have to talk about and look at. If you score 18 points, you’re going to be under fire, it just is what it is. It’s really important that our players take accountability as well, we don’t call any plays that they can’t execute. When they jump up and make the catch, it’s ‘great job Isaiah,’ when they jump up to make the catch and they don’t make the catch, it’s ‘come on Satt (Marcus Satterfield)’ so I just want all of us in the program to take accountability together. That’s the introspection I talked about this week, we’re looking at everything. Same thing on defense, we can’t go out there on defense and just let them go right down the field against us. When they took the ball, it was a smart move by them. Had we won the toss, I probably would’ve taken the ball because they’ve been really hot early. But we didn’t play defensively the way we’ve been playing, but 18 points a game, there’s nothing you can say, it’s not good enough.”

On the drive when NU ran four times in a row and if he told Marcus Satterfield to call run plays
“I don’t think that I interjected anything. I don’t remember the exact exchanges. We had a game plan going in that we had certain runs that we liked. Early in the game, they went eight minutes and we went three plays. We didn’t really have a ton of opportunities in the first half. But we know based upon the way that they’ve played that we were going to have more opportunities in the second half. In terms of that exact frame, when you get down, like when you were down against Indiana and we were down this game. Typically, when you are down 20-7 I usually say don’t panic here just go back to the game plan. Don’t worry about what the score is. Just go down and score a drive. The thing I’ve learned and you study all the analytics, is just go down and score. Don’t rush. Go down and score the first one. If you trust your defense you’ll get the ball back with the chance to win the game. If I say anything it was probably that. But there was no directive from me I believe.”

On the identity he wants to see from the team in the last three games
“I had a really good friend of mine text me and say man it must be frustrating that the team is so inconsistent. That’s hard for me to hear, that is not what I want. I want us to be consistent. I am the same guy everyday and so I think I have to really look at my approach. I think I have to look at the way that I am doing things with our team. After the Ohio State game, Troy (Dannen) reminded me of what I said to you guys. We played hard against Ohio State but if we don’t back it up next week then it’s all for not. I didn’t like the way we played on Saturday. I’d like to see us have three games where we absolutely fight, scratch, claw and compete. That’s the danger with all of the Satt (Marcus Satterfield) stuff. It’s not good enough we get that. But then it takes all of the pressure off the guys that are on the field. Go catch the ball and make a play. You can’t catch the ball and fall down, you have to catch the ball and go make a play. That’s the slippery slope of this world and so I think I have to really look at my approach this week. Am I being demanding enough, am I being tough enough, am I being hard enough. This day in age where everyone says kids are anxious be easier on them. But then I was disappointed on Saturday with the way it looked. I love the kids, I love the guys, I want them to be great and I see greatness in so many of them. The last three games I would like to see that greatness emerge and see them play their best football and see them all-out compete and fight. This will be a real week for us. There is a lot that has to happen this week.”

On the practice approach for the bye week
“We’ll practice Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, all USC practices. This won’t be a developmental (week), we’ll get ready for the game. I’ll leave Wednesday night to go recruiting, I’ll just trust the coaches that are in to coach on Thursday. Then we’ll give the guys Friday and Saturday off. I’ll recruit Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. We’ll practice Sunday night, against Indiana, I kept the normal Monday schedule. I think we’ll go Sunday and then give them Monday off so that way we just kind of get them back. This is a pivotal time, we’ve got a bunch of great seniors. We got three games that I’d like to see them go out and compete in. We’ll focus our attention the next couple of days on USC. At the same time, what can we do well, but also USC.”

On how important it is to keep the team positive
“I’ve always believed players win games. I try to do a good job protecting the players, but at some point you’ve got to go out there and play. You’ve got to go out there and make the plays and do what you’re capable of. I’ve been here a year and a half now, two years almost. I’m not doing the ‘I’m afraid to make a mistake’ anymore, I just want the guys that want to go out and compete, we’ve got enough of them. I want them to go out and fly around and compete, you’re going to make mistakes out there. This is what life is, you hit adversity, if you quit then so be it. I want the grown men out there. I’m happy to talk to everyone’s parents, I’m happy to have personal one-on-one meetings. But at the end of the day when the ball is snapped, you better play. That’s what these weeks are for, to go out there and establish who you are. It’s a great opportunity for some of the young guys to go out there. I keep bringing up Jacory (Barney Jr.) and Vincent Shavers and those guys. When the ball is snapped, they play point-blank. It might not always be right but they play, and they play, and they play. So catch our breath this week, we’ll practice for USC, and we’ll go out there and compete.”

On injury updates
“Tommi (Hill) went into the game and played. Another week, I think Tommi will be even better. I think Malcolm (Hartzog Jr.) was available if we needed him to be available. He made tremendous progress in a short amount of time. He’ll be able to play next Saturday unless there’s a setback. That’s a big piece for us. Guys like Marques Buford that are out there, he’s had two ACL injuries. This is a good week for him to maybe have a little down time and comeback and be healthy for the last three games. I think health-wise, the bye comes at a good time, we should have a lot of guys out there next week.” 

On UCLA’s offense having a high-scoring first quarter
“Their offense is kind of their offense. There wasn’t much that was super new. Most of the stuff that we’re seeing that is new has been defensively. They’re a huddle team that tradeships motion, so they hit it in new ways. They’ve kind of been very consistent. I said that last week that it was a good team that had played Oregon, LSU, had played some really good teams and had hung in there against them. Against LSU, it was 17-17 with six minutes left in the third quarter. When it was 27-20, it was kind of where I expected us to be. We practiced two-minute more on Wednesday than we normally do because I was like ‘hey this is going to come down to the end’. They do it against Minnesota, they do it against Rutgers, they went right down the field on their opening script. If you can weather that storm, then you have a chance. If you think about it, they went down and scored on the first three drives that they had it, then we settled down and they only scored one more time the entire game. The quarterback, (Ethan) Garbers, was playing really well and we never really hit him. We bought pressure and he ran into the A-gap, makes a guy miss in the middle of the field. You take away any one of those plays and all of a sudden we’re playing much better. I don’t think they surprised us as much; they've been super consistent throughout the year. 

On the spectrum of talent in the Big Ten
“I don’t think there’s much difference. Ohio State is at a whole other level, don’t get me wrong. But I think UCLA is a talented team. If they didn’t recruit them they are transfers from Notre Dame and USC so they aren’t not good players. I coached at UCLA, they have never had a shortage of talent. There are a ton of great players at UCLA. I think if you look at Indiana, they have got really talented players too. Their quarterback (Kurtis) Rourke, he had ten wins and ten wins I think at Ohio, he is a winner. What they’ve done is they brought over a whole bunch of guys that know how to win. They won at James Madison and they won at Ohio. I don’t see huge drop-offs when we face different teams. Some teams have better offensive lines and defensive lines and that’s really what I think makes a difference. And some teams have better quarterbacks. At the end of the day when you face a veteran quarterback who has played a lot of football and they are in tune they are hard to stop. When (Ethan) Garbers was in tune, we started getting some pressure on him and then all of a sudden it changed a little bit. If we do a little bit better job of protecting Dylan (Raiola) early on then he’s probably in a little bit more rhythm. It goes back to that these are reps that you put in your brain and develop and grow from and you become better. But I do not see a major difference.”

On the team playing to the level of its opponent
“That’s kind of what I said earlier. That’s the disappointing thing about the job I’m doing. I’ve prided myself over the years that we’re consistent. I thought last year that we were consistent. This year, it’s not quite as consistent. Head coach 101, you’re not supposed to say those things in a press conference, but I owe it to everyone to be honest. I’m trying to find a way to get the players to be more consistent. This is probably the first time you guys have heard me say the players have to play. They have to play. They can’t say ‘did you see what they’re saying about Satt (Marcus Satterfield).’ You are Satt. You are the offense. You’re out on the field. Jacory (Barney Jr.) isn’t worried about what play call Satt is calling, Jacory is out there flying around. You can’t throw a bubble on the perimeter and have guys not block. It’s one man against another man. I have to block you. All that being said, it’s not consistent enough. I don’t think I’ve ever taken what I would call an easy job, come to a place that just won ten games. These are the hard moments. This is what you have to do, so I have to sit here and admit my shortcomings. I haven’t gotten it done yet at the level we need to have it done. We have had some good moments, too, and I’m just trying to get it to be more consistent. That starts with looking at the coaches, looking at the players, being honest. If I’m honest and they’re not, then so be it. I don’t know if I’m answering your question, but that is what’s happening, to be honest with you. If you have that Ohio State roster, if you think about our game against Ohio State, we moved the ball against them, but we had to kick field goals in the red zone. We kept it close, then they ended up winning the game in the fourth quarter. UCLA held the ball against us, we held them to field goals and had a chance to go win the game at the end. You’re going to have some games that are up and down, but I have to find a way to get this team to be more consistent. We have three games left. I hope that they block out everything, in general, the pointing fingers at each other – I hope they block all that out and they say ‘what can I do?’ Because that’s what Marques Buford deserves. Marques Buford deserves a chance to go play in a bowl game. That’s what this program needs. This program needs to go to a bowl game. It’s going to take unbelievable focus, because these are three good teams we have left. I’m going to work my tail off to get it done, and I hope the players join me. I hope the staff joins me. There’s nothing I won’t do to get there. There’s nothing that I won’t do to help us get over the top, because we will get over the top. This is not like I’m sitting here defeated, I’m just frustrated. You’re frustrated, I’m frustrated. We will get there, it’s just sometimes you don’t like the way it feels along the way.”

On the process of bringing in outside eyes
“I probably won’t say too much yet because I want to be respectful of everyone. I think I ask people’s opinions all the time that I trust. I talk to people, after Indiana, I called Coach (Tom) Osborne. Every team and every season is like its own organism. You’re trying to manage it and deal with things. I’ll always ask people. I think it’s pretty consistent for me. Bringing people here, maybe that’s not something I would normally do. We have some people that we hire as consultants that do advanced stuff for us each week. We’ll talk to them, Zoom-wise. I think coming into the building this week is good. At the end of the day, everybody needs to feel this right now. Everybody needs to feel what I feel. Everyone needs to feel like we need to get this thing going. There’s a certain expectation that you have to have when you’re a Nebraska Cornhusker, and that’s to play championship football. That’s not a ‘sometime’ thing. Bringing people in, if there’s a young player that can help us, redshirts are all off. We’ll put them out there. Whatever it takes.”

On the importance of showing progress at the end of the season
“I think, in general, if you want players to come play for you, they need to see progress. They need to see that we are better this year than last year. I’m not going to chase players on our roster. If you’re here, you get taken care of so well. You get taken care of so well. We have guys that are here from other schools, ask them. They’ll tell the guys. It’s natural when you’re on a three-game losing streak for guys to be like ‘I’m frustrated. Maybe I’ll go there, maybe I’ll go there.’ Every freshman goes through that every year. I only need about 22 guys to play next week. We’ve got a lot of guys that love it here. We have to show progress. That’s the goal. The goal is to make progress, not to show progress. The goal is to be better than we were. We’ve seen some moments, the Colorado game, the Ohio State game. We see what we could be, it’s just not consistent yet. I’m not going to start worrying. We have a great thing going here and we have recruits all across the country that want to come here. There will be kids lining up to come here. I don’t worry about any of that. I care deeply about my players. I care about my players. I care about their character. Some guys, if they want to play, maybe they should go down a level. If a little bit of adversity causes you to run – I’m not running. We have to show progress. The reality is, we were building this team from the very beginning. I kept telling them, we’re building this for November and December. We’re trying to work hard in the offseason to get you guys to this moment. Here we are. We’re obviously all frustrated about the last three games, but we have a bye week. We have to go play. We’ll see how we stand against USC, we’ll see how we stand against Wisconsin. We’ll see how we stand against Iowa. We’ll have a lot of good players next year.”