Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule Pre-Colorado Press Conference

On watching film and the offensive line
“I thought the offensive line played really well, the one sack we gave up was a miscommunication, between the receiver and the quarterback, it should have been a completion, so I thought they played really well. I thought the tight ends played really well in the run game, I thought the D-Line played well, we still have to improve out four-man rush, I’ll say that until it’s elite, obviously that’s a challenge this week, but we played a lot of three-down and I thought those guys played really hard. Ty Robinson was everywhere, I thought he played probably one of the better games I’ve seen him play. I thought the guys all played pretty well.”

On getting so much of the team playing time
“It’s always one of my goals, every year, is to make sure everyone who can play plays. I think it builds a sense of “I can do this,” for some guys. Or it rewards guys for their effort. I think it shows a team that cares about each other. Like Carter Nelson, the timing was a little off, usually that ball goes to Jahmal (Banks) but Carter got out a little quickly, but if you watch the play, Jamall just sprints and turns up and blocks someone for Carter and then goes over and kind of celebrates with him. So when the guys at half time made a decision to come out and play really well and get those other guys in, and I don’t know that I’ve ever done that with five minutes left in the third quarter, put all the twos in, but I thought it was really important for the development of our team, that a lot of those guys get the chance to play. You have a chance to put Heinrich (Haarberg) in, he’s a starting caliber quarterback, you saw that 87-yard drive he led. It was really good to get everyone in, and I think most years we’ve been able to do it, we weren't really able to do it last year, but hopefully we’ll do it again at some point.” 

On Shedeur Sanders as a quarterback, and preparing for him
“Well he’s got a big time arm, he can use all 53 and a third yards of the field, he can throw the ball from sideline to sideline. He’s got a great feel for the pocket, he moves in the pocket. He can hurt you with his feet but he slides in the pocket to find guys that are open. He’s got excellent weapons around him, they ran the ball well this past game, and he’s courageous and tough, he’s an elite competitor. You’re probably facing two of the first five guys drafted in the draft this week, and I think he’ll certainly be up there.”

On Colorado’s receiver room
“They’ve got great players, they’re fast, athletic, explosive. To me, five (Jimmy Horn Jr.) is a difference maker, you know 12, Travis (Hunter) is playing both ways, which is amazing, but to me five dominates the middle of the field. They brought in 10 (LaJohntay Wester) from FAU, who has a ton of catches, and you have a quarterback who can make all the throws, they can spread you out and open up the run game, utilize the receivers in the RPO game, so when you try to pressure they always have answers. Everyone always thinks of speed being running this way, but these guys can run across the field and away from man coverage so they're excellent players.

On Colorado’s roster changes from last year to this year and studying film
“Well they have two new coordinators, so some different offense and different defense. Spent a lot of the summer watching the Bengals defense and Coach (Robert) Livingston, where he’s come from and obviously Coach (Pat) Shurmur has been doing this a long time, a guy that I respect a lot. You can go back the last year and see some of the players and what they do, but I don’t think there’s any secrets here about what they’re capable of, they're dynamic playmakers. They’ve rebuilt the offensive line, they’re big, they’re physical, and defensively they play man coverage, they pressured a bunch of the second half to slow down North Dakota State, they play really hard, I mean Warren Sapp is their d-line coach. They fly around, they’ve got really good players, and a well thought out scheme and well coached team.”

On Dylan Raiola’s first week after watching film, and preparing for next week
“I think Dylan played really well. I thought he played a complete game, thought he did a good job in the run game, did a good job in the checks game, there were a couple communication things, just in general. Whether it was just the headset kind of being hard to hear, whether it was the checks getting out to the receivers, or the right check, there were a couple small things, but not much. I thought he was clean in the pocket, protected the football, still showed a level of aggressiveness that we want and gave his guys a chance. Like I said, eight seconds left and we took a shot at the end zone, we want to try and go make those plays. I thought he did a really nice job. In terms of this weekend, kind of the abscess of our program is that we don’t treat any game differently than another in terms of our preparation. If you prepare more for your game this week than last week then what were you doing last week? So Dylan will double down on his process and practice hard and get ready for the game and go out and play and we’ll go play as hard as we can and I’m sure he’ll lay it all on the line.”

On in-helmet communication and how big of a factor crowd noise can be
“Crowd noise is a real thing even as I watch college football I see a lot of the guys with their hands over their ears. College games just have a tendency to be a lot louder than a lot of NFL games. NFL stadiums are 65,000 some college stadiums are 85, 90, 105,000 people. Metal stadiums were built differently, reverberating, less sky boxes, it’s just night and day. I said I had to switch my headset. I had to go from the single to the double just to have a chance. Plus it’s the first time being used. You go out to test them, then you bring in all the tv trucks, WIFI that everyone uses and it starts to mess with the frequencies. Now, hopefully this week it will be a little cleaner, but it was loud. I think one great thing for the fans to know is that they have an impact. The very first third down the opponent, I think they false started.  That’s a traditional way but you know I think on the TV copy, Allison Williams did a nice job. She was listening to their headset. They were actually coaching the plays, they were actually showing them where to throw it. They weren’t making checks for them. They were going to motion saying ‘throw it, hand it’ They were coaching the game for them. We’re not doing that. That’s great for them to do. I’m saying in general how loud we can be in a stadium really impacts the game so it’s not just hey third down try to make them just offsides anymore. It’s let’s make it really hard for them to hear the play calls and the checks because it was hard for us at times.” 

On coaching all the way up to the snap
“When the Rams drafted Jared Goff – you can go up to 15 seconds – A lot of people said they would basically get on the line and instead of looking to the sideline holding up, like Sean, Coach McVay would help him make the checks right up till 15 seconds, so it was their way to kind of getting in the right play. Now people as they learn this, they will hold their defense you know for 15 and then they make their check. Yeah, there’s a lot of things you could do like you could say ‘hey throw it over here. It’s a man. Go here.’ So we aren’t really doing that. We’re not doing that. Giving the same parameters like, with last week it was, They have a zero-blitz team, now don’t be afraid to do this. We put it on Dylan (Raiola) to see it. You could certainly do that, so that’s why I thought our crowd was awesome. I’m not saying that so people come back next week. I am saying that the louder we can be every week is really important. I think Coach Saban on Game Day was talking about the difference, you know if you can’t do the clap and you have to start doing the hand signal, the D-line gets an amazing jump. All of these things matter. You know years when you have this many home games really matter. There are teams in college football that play three home games, non-conference, not alternate sites. We play five. When the place is loud. It’s hard.” 

On Colorado game being a measuring stick game
“I don’t think that way. This is our second game. We’re going to try and make an improvement from last week. I thought the guys handled last week great. I think everyday is a measuring stick for us and our program. Like everyday we are trying to see where we are. We’ll play the game and we’ll come in on Sunday whatever the result and we’ll get better for week three. That’s literally all I can say. We are as day by day as we have ever been as a program.”

On if he’s sees this game as a “culture clash”
“Not at all. I think they’re a competitive culture. They go recruit and get the best players they can get. They do well in school. They don’t get in trouble off the field and they compete. I respect that with what they do.” 

On impressions of the Colorado/Nebraska rivalry
“My wife and I went skiing this year in Beaver Creek. We took the kids up and met some friends. We were sitting down and hanging out and this young lady walked up to me and said ‘are you Coach Rhule from the Huskers?’ I thought it was a Husker fan and I said ‘yeah.’ She said something to me that I can't repeat out loud. Her boyfriend was like ‘ah sorry coach’ I was like no hey this is what’s great about college football right? We love rivalries. We love all of that so this is a long established rivalry and I think it’s great for the game. I think it’s great for our university. People from all across the country get to tune in this week to see this football game. They’ll see our fanbase. They’ll see the class with which we play. They’ll see two great teams compete. They’ll see our campus. We have enough games like this and applications start to go up and admissions start to go up. Good things start to happen. That’s happened at Colorado so I think rivalry is great and yes. As we went through this process, I was showing my family Nebraska. I was showing them these games. You know you get on Youtube, the algorithms start sending those things, so we were watching all of these old games. It was a great rivalry that I grew up on. A lot of those rivalries are dead now. So it’s great to play it.”

On how he motivates his team
“I don’t really know that I psychologically think about it. It’s really more like I try to speak from my heart and try to talk about where we are. We played them last year and we fumbled the ball five times, so what speech mattered? I have an idea. Don’t turn the ball over, make a better decision here. At the end of the day, it was something as simple as snap timing on motion. And the world says ‘why are you guys motioning so much?’ No. Why don’t we just motion in practice like we do in the game? I’m an incrementalist. I don’t look at these major things. I looked at the game yesterday. I told the team, everyone says to control the controllables. I say to correct the correctables. What are the things that need to be corrected? We didn’t tackle great in this past game. We didn’t take great angles. We gave up a big play again. We had several different issues and we have to correct those things. I just look at this as a really good football test for two teams. Two teams that have plans on being good teams and want to be relevant at the end of the year. They’re going to play us and we’re going to play them, and we’re not even in the same conference. So, while I know it matters to people and it matters to us and it matters to them, we’re going to see where we are. I’m just trying to get the football right and nothing else. I’m not going to not wear black this week and I’m not going to not say their name. I’m worried about our team. Literally, are we going to operate on third down? Are we going to play good football? To get to play the way we played last week and have three penalties, that was a step in the right direction for the University of Nebraska. We have to do it again. That being said, I’m human and there’s times that I’ll say that I believe in this and even I will jump away from it. I haven’t found that that’s always worked. It might work once or twice a year. At moments, it might work, but especially in today’s society where everything motivational is always on Twitter – everyone’s excited, which is great – I’m just going to keep bringing the guys back to ‘hey guys, let’s execute. Let’s play third down. Let’s protect the football. Let’s not fumble on the seven-yard line.’ For all we’ve talked about not fumbling, we fumbled on the seven yard line. We have a lot more work to do here.”

On if the players are good about coming back to the incremental practices
“I think we’ve been great. This team, it’s an older, veteran team for the most part. They’ve been through a lot. They understand that the process works, there’s nothing scientific about what we do. You come to practice, you prepare each week, you go to meetings, you’re coachable, you take care of your body, you lift, you hydrate, you sleep, you get to the end of the week, you get yourself mentally ready and know what to do, you get yourself emotionally ready and excited to play, and you go to the game and try to play one snap at a time. Stay in the moment, don’t get distracted and be great teammates. I think our guys understand that that’s not all this other stuff anymore. It’s just this. The trials we went through last year, starting off 0-2, getting blown out by Michigan, winning a couple in a row and having a tough end, I think has really matured these guys. They understand that it’s going to come down to our ability to cover, rush, block, tackle, stuff like that. It’s a really good group.”

On how he assesses the running back room
“Dante (Dowdell) is going to keep playing. I’d put Dante in. He had to sit for a while and didn’t see the field for a little bit, but I’d put him in again. I really liked the feeling of it on Saturday, and one thing I do is I always watch the TV copy the next morning. We watched the All 22 copy, and you’re sitting there and you’re so upset that someone’s foot went 45 degrees and three inches too wide, and you’re like ‘what are we doing?’ The details matter, but I think you have to get the feel of the game. Especially, when you watch the TV copy, you can feel it. I always watch the opponents’ TV copies, I watch ours. You can hear the game, hear how it sounds if you’re hitting people, if you’re running to the ball, if you’re striking. You can hear your cadences. I liked the way it felt – it was really hot out there, we were on the cooler sideline. They were going fast and we were getting three-and-outs and they were staying on the field a lot. To keep putting backs in there that felt fresh, I kind of enjoyed it. We had certain roles, obviously, Rahmir (Johnson) and Emmett (Johnson) were the sub backs, the third down backs, the big backs that went in on short yards and goal line. I think we will do that for another week. We’ll just keep doing that because I like where we’re at right now.”

On when he knew that Luke Lindenmeyer would be a good blocker
“It wasn’t in the first spring I was here. It really wasn’t until the middle of the year last year. I think he really started to develop some confidence, and as we started to go toward more of the i-formation stuff, he was more of the on-the-line blocker and I thought he did an excellent job with that. He’s just developed. He’s got great hands, he does everything right, but he’s a really excellent blocker and competes at it. I think he’s one of those guys that’s just really elevated himself since we got here. He played well the year before we got here, he played a little bit before we got here. I thought he played well, but I thought last year, and now he’s off and running.”

On how much Thomas Fidone II has grown as a blocker
“Fidone is an excellent blocker. When you’re playing tight end, you want to catch the ball a ton, I get it. And we want him to catch the ball a ton. We got him maybe five targets, maybe more, but the game got over early. Thomas, he’s so athletic, he can pull around and be that second pull-around counter when we do run that. He can split out and be a wideout and block the perimeter on some of the perimeter stuff that we do. It’s hard to find a guy with Thomas’ athleticism who can both play as a wideout and play as a fullback, really, and put his hand on the line. That’s the direction we’ve gone with Fidone, and now he’s playing three-point stance, on the line, reaching ends, so that will be a big thing. These guys, they have great edge players. Having the ability to get on the line and try to reach somebody that plays with length is hard, and Thomas has worked at that.”

On injury updates
“Malachi (Coleman) is healthy. We had no injuries. Malachi is doing great, there’s no problems, I just think that Malachi stepped up for us last year in a year that he maybe could have redshirted and tried to play. If we have to play him, we’ll play him, and it’s early, but we want to play him later in the games. We have these two big receivers out there playing well. If Malachi can have this year and can play four games and play in the postseason, I think he would be really picking right up where those guys have left off. He made a catch last week where I was like ‘wow, that’s awesome to see.’ We’re trying to take the pressure off of him for a little bit and let him go compete. I’m sure he doesn’t want to redshirt, I’m sure he wants to play. If something happens, he can play in the next couple weeks. I just didn’t want to put him in for a play here, a play there. When we use someone’s redshirt, we really want it to be worthwhile.” 

On how well the receiver group has elevated
“The receiver group, we have a really good group. I think one of the things that we have too, is we have some freshmen who came in that we’d like to redshirt maybe, but they can play, like Keelan Smith is really a good player. Quinn Clark is going to be a fantastic football player. He’s one of those guys that when you take him, you think he’s a big, physical athlete, maybe he’ll grow into a tight end or an outside backer, and all of a sudden he shows up, and he’s loose-hipped. He can run routes and get off pressure. He’s a wideout. Quinn could probably go play this season and that’s what those guys did last year. We’ve got them all in the game, so we know what it feels like, and we’ll see as the year goes on. That room, the guys who played last year have gotten better and the guys who have come in have really helped us. Sometimes, that bides time for someone like Malachi (Coleman) to redshirt, or maybe Quinn Clark to redshirt so that they can be bigger, more physical and stronger. The teams that win in college football right now, I think moving forward, are going to be the teams that have veteran players that are older.”

On his memories of the 1994 season
“I remember listening to the radio after we (Penn State) realized we weren’t going to win the national championship and being like ‘I can’t believe we’re not going to win’ – all the callers calling Pennsylvania, like ‘we should play a game. We should go play each other right now’, eventually what became the BCS. I just remember the heartache of us not getting a national championship. It always goes back to that Indiana game. Joe (Paterno) let all the twos go in. I wasn’t even two, I was three, I was a kickoff return guy. The twos and threes, I think we were winning 36 to something and they scored a couple late touchdowns and that hurt us in the polls. We have a much better system now than we did back then in terms of everything just being the eye test. One of the great things about this job is that you meet Tommie Frazier, you meet these legends that, even though I was around the same age, it was a whole different world. It was just legends of the game. It’s pretty cool that this weekend, the 1994 team is here. I remember great, great college rivalries, but I also remember how painful that was for us, that it didn’t work out for us.” 

On the return game
“I thought it looked pretty good, to be honest with you. I thought Jacory (Barney Jr.) almost busted out a big one. To me, if you look at a normal college football season, you might get between 12 and 15 punt returns. You look at the end-of-year stats, it’s usually around 13. One of the key factors for us is that we want to catch all the balls. Last year, I think our opening drive, the ball was at the one-yard line because we didn’t catch it and it rolled down there. Isaiah (Garcia-Castaneda), we knew he would be really solid in terms of catching the ball and managing the ball when the turnover battle is our number one priority. He got off the field and got us a first down a couple of times. I think it was 15 yards or so, but it got us a first down. We had a chance to block a punt. We should have blocked it, we didn’t. We were close. I was pleased with that part of the game. It’s only a matter of time with Jacory before he’ll bust one. Like I said, he almost got out on that one. Early in the year, when you bring out kicks – we’re trying to bring the ball out of the end zone. We had a penalty on the opening one, but once you get that out of the way, you don’t have holds, you’re not starting at your own 12-yard line. I learned this from Chris Tabor, who I worked with in Carolina, we want to deliver the baby out to the 20 or 25-yard line and don’t hurt ourselves. After that, eventually, you’ll pop a few. That really convinced me of that, so we’re trying to bring them out when we can. The team we’re playing this week, Colorado, has a dynamic return game. It’s about our return game but it’s also about our punt and kickoff game. They’ll bring it out and they’ll make plays, so it’ll be a big part. I think our kickoff coverage was solid. The kicks weren’t great, so – John’s (Hohl) first time playing this week, we have to kick the ball better versus these guys.”

On Shedeur Sanders' comments around last year's game against Colorado
“Everyone’s got their own things to do. Like I said, I’ve got nothing but love in my heart and a lot of respect for what they’re doing. Nothing really bothered me. Shedeur thought I disrespected his father and he’s standing up for him, good for him. My son would stand up for me. I think I’ve got a bunch of players in there that will show up on Saturday.”

On what he’s expecting of the atmosphere on Saturday
“That night game we had last year, we were 0-2. Like I said, I’m from Philly. I expected to show up and get booed with how things roll where I’m from. We were 0-2. The lights show, the drone show, I thought was phenomenal. I think it’ll be great. There’s a reason why you want to play rivalry games, historic rivalries, because people from Colorado can come over. Last year, we had a good contingent there. It means something to people. I think it’ll be rocking. I thought this past week was rocking. The first touchdown, the end zone shot, as I’m watching on the remote, just how many people were there, and how nuts it was. I think it will be a great, great, great atmosphere. Night game, people have all day to get themselves ready for the game, and it should be loud and it should be a home field advantage. It was loud there last year. It’ll all be Nebraska Nice on Sunday. It should be a loud, loud, raucous atmosphere.”