Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule Pre-Illinois Press Conference

On Bret Bielema
“I’ve only gotten to know Coach during my time in the Big Ten, at Big Ten meetings, at the Fiesta Bowl Summit, where a lot of coaches go down to. He’s a leader amongst the Big Ten Coaches, he’s on the AFCA committee and some other different things, so he’s always very involved with all the issues and things that are happening. He does a great job at that. He’s very personable, just a really, really good guy. We have a Big Ten coaches group chat to discuss issues and he heads up a lot of that. He’s great about those things. I had a chance to meet his wife this year and they’re a lovely family. I have a lot of respect for him. His teams, they’re going to play great defense, they’re going to run the football, they’re going to play great special teams. Obviously, after an illustrious career as a head coach, he went and was with Coach (Bill) Belichick, so he knows that way of thinking, which is probably a lot like how we think. He’s doing a great job at Illinois, so I have a lot of respect for him.”

On if Micah Mazzccua will be available
“He won’t play this week. He’s on the team. He’s practicing with us. He is just working through some stuff right now doing everything we asked him to do. He won’t be available.”

On Henry Lutovsky filling in
“If you go back to the Colorado game, we put in Henry (Lutovsky) in the fourth quarter against Colorado. Henry’s a guy that got marked as a starter coming into the year for us. Mike (Booker) and Justin (Evans) did a great job for the first and a half and Henry's healthy now so we’re ready to go.”

On the performance of the defense last year and making plays against Illinois offense
“We hit the deep ball to Marcus (Washington) on the first drive. We hit some screens to Billy Kemp IV that led to some big plays. Ran Heinrich (Haarberg). They’ve altered a lot of what they’re been doing. They're a different defense than what they were. Aaron Henry is their defensive coordinator who I’ve known a long, long time. He’s done a good job of putting his imprint on it. They’ll show man and play cover too. They’ll show man and play zone. They’re some four down as well as the bear that they’ve been in. It’s not like last year where you’re coming in and it’s only going to be bear, man to man. You have to be ready for man zone with a young quarterback, he has to recognize the zone on the snap. They’re taking the ball away at a really high level. Besides some of those guys making great plays on defense. Some of it is them doing a great job disguising it and throwing a man beater into the cover zone and picking it off. We have a lot to get done there, but to your point we’re a different team than we were last year. We keep track of the yards after contact. Last year we had 71 yards of contact after this game, which is about as poor as you could ever be, but we had a lot of explosive plays that made up for it. We had a bad fourth quarter where we started turning the ball over. You can’t turn the ball over on them. I think they’re plus eight on the year right now, they have nine takeaways, they’re protecting the ball.”

On the offensive line’s performance so far
“We don’t know anything about those guys until we play in the Big Ten. They've done a really good job versus who we’ve played against. There’s areas we’re always trying to work at. This will be such a different challenge facing these guys. They have huge guys inside, they have excellent pass rushers on the outside; 9, 17, 3. Now they’re playing 17 and 3 together. They create 5 one on ones. So everyone has to win, if one guy loses they struggle. I’ve been pleased with the offensive line so far. They’ve done a really nice job. I think anytime you don’t punt in the game, you feel pretty good. I felt pretty good about what we did in the game on Saturday offensively. That was all preseason to me. Now the season starts, this is the first game in the Big Ten for us and we’ll find out where we are.” 

On the historical meaning of the 400th sellout
“To be quite honest I haven’t. I certainly understand the gravity of it. The one thing that’s really easy for me and great for me is to explain that to recruits. The first thing we do is explain to recruits that show up here on their official visit, we don’t do some fancy thing. We take a picture with them, then we walk them right out onto the field. We show them ‘Hey, here’s the number of sellouts in a row and here’s the All-Americans.’ We talk about the field and how our hope is some day that they win a championship on that field but also that they graduate on that field, and how the University of Nebraska is not a football factory. It’s a place of development and that’s the proof of it. That you can sell out 400 straight games and you can graduate an Academic All-American. They’ve changed the parameters or given some away to others, but we’ve been the leader in that for a long time. So it’s just a perfect blend of everything. It’s what drew me here. It’s what draws other people here. I think getting to 400 sellouts will be great. My job though is to make sure that we win that game so that people leave happy about it, not anything else. I have just been trying to stick to football.”  

On if Jimari Butler will be available
“Jimari (Butler) could’ve played Friday night. I think it was more, we got Cam (Lenhardt) in there and we liked the way Cam was playing. Then got Kai (Wallin) in there and just thought, we were in control of the game. Let’s push him to this week and get him a little bit healthier for the Friday night game. We play on a short week. We probably put some of the twos in earlier than I normally would, which was actually beneficial. They got a chance to play. Even on that fourth down, fighting to keep them out of the endzone. That was good for us so Jimari should be good to go this week.” 

On conference play being different than non-conference
“You think about it very simply. Our goal is to go 1-0 every week. Now that we’re over with it, though when you look back on it in hindsight. You went 1-0 in non-conference play, which is what we’re supposed to do. Good teams do what they’re supposed to do. But now we have Big Ten play. We’re trying to compete to win the Big Ten. All of these games matter. All of these games are important. This is a great opportunity. It’s our first league game. We didn’t certainly approach this preseason like the preseason. To me it’s just now we’re entering Big Ten play. Our approach doesn’t change but just the gravity of the situation is a little bit different.” 

On how they’re doing physically
“I think we're doing fine physically. Defensively, I think if you asked everyone on defense they didn’t like the tackling the other night. Our yards after contact the first two games have been in the 80s. That game was 180, so it was 100 more yards than it had been. I think that was something that really bothered us even at halftime. I was very calm and stoic at halftime. I was like ‘you’re going to win the game, it’s bothering you guys right now’, which is a really great thing. I’m really happy it bothers us. We’re not just happy to win, now we’re starting to play to a standard and understand when we’re not playing to the standard, it really bothers us. Giving up a long drive and then giving up three points in the first drive really bothered them. That means our guys are maturing and they’re not just playing for the result. They’re playing for the way that they play. Physically, that was the game we went out and decided we were going to throw it more than run it early on and then hope to run it more in the second half and have a lead. I told our defense that we needed to play better to run the ball more. We needed to run the ball more than 45 times. I think we’re a pretty physical team, but we’ll find out this Friday night. This is a really physical team. You look at their stats and they’re about like us in every category, so we’re playing a mirror image of ourselves.” 

On creating situational things in practice
“It’s really hard. We have to focus on Thursdays. We have a lot of different situations that we call; we have a rally, two minute, four minute, last shot. We have all of these things that maybe don’t make sense to other people, but make sense to our guys. We have to do them a little bit more. At the end of the half, we moved from last shot to what we call attack because we got a first down. Fourth and three, the analytics say to go for that. In a game like that, maybe you kick that field goal because you can go up 24-3. We have to convert crucial plays if we want to be a great team. Great teams make great plays. That was a great opportunity to get that play to Dylan (Raiola), give that play to the fellas, and say now go execute. We didn’t execute that one, so sometimes you learn more than when you do execute. I think everything we do is very intentional and again, we were pretty certain we were going to win the game, pretty certain that we were in control of the game. I would never do anything to hurt that, but when it’s borderline there, I think creating those scenarios are important. I think that those were good things. The other thing we’re now realizing is that we’re no longer like the hunter, we’re no longer the unranked team that people are like ‘who are we playing this week? Oh we’re playing Nebraska.’ Now you’re the team that people are preparing for. I had a lot of respect for those UNI players. I thought that quarterback was a dude, I liked him. After the game, he talked about how we talked about this game all summer long. Our guys have to understand that when you start putting numbers in front of your name, people want to beat a ranked team. So you bring out CU last week and they start putting zeros in the red zone, they got us on one which could cost us a game at some point. We have to be better in those areas. We’re having to do a lot more situational stuff, to your point, because we haven’t had to go down there in the end.” 

On Kai Wallin
“Kai (Wallin) is the guy that could have played for us last year. We redshirted him because we are trying to build a championship-caliber roster. Sometimes we do things that are difficult to do in the moment that pay off in the long run. Kai and James (Williams) were two of those decisions last year that we redshirted last year. I appreciate the confidence Kai and his family had in us to do that because he was playing pretty well when we redshirted him. But now he’s out there redshirt sophomore, he’s 260 pounds and he’s playing better than he would have played if he played last year. He’s rugged. He’s physical. He can go inside and play a three-technique. He can go and play as a five. He’s getting good pash-rush. He’s a guy that you can put in there and mix with the twos, mix in with the ones, and know that your level of play isn’t going to drop off.” 

On Riley Van Poppel being a four-game player and how he communicated that to him
“Riley (Van Poppel) will be a four game guy. ‘Hey, you can play eight to 10 plays a game this year. Or you can be Ty Robinson of those guys when they leave.’ So that’s a decision they make. It’s a credit to Riley. It's a credit to his family. Riley was joking with me yesterday. He said ‘Hey, when they went out on the field for the first drive, I was waiting for you to say forget it, get in there.’ I just think it’s trust. In an era where I go to a lot of meetings, there’s a lot of people who say ‘these kids are gonna transfer anyway. Play them.’ Just because the system has changed doesn’t mean coaching has changed. Coaches are here to do what’s right for the players. So Riley could certainly help us. We have other guys that we think can help us. I think he’s going to come and be healthy here soon. We have two more games with Riley. I think Riley’s going to be a great player here, I think this year, because he stepped up last year. This year of development because he’s on our scout team now and just how they get better. When we’re out there today and we’re having to block him. Then we got Brodie (Tagaloa) back. So happy for Brodie for him to get on the field this past Saturday. Such a monumental thing. I’ve watched him in the weight room at 6 a.m. for the last two years. I think back to when he got hurt, his dad and mom coming, his dad saying to him ‘sometimes in life you have to embrace the delay.’ I wrote that down, I said ‘what a beautiful thing.’ Brodie’s just grown in the interim so we have some guys back now.”

On Ty Robinson coming back this year
“I told him to leave. He didn’t trust me too much, because I told him he should go take some money. I just think the world of him, honestly. I think the absolute world of him. Guys like Ty Robinson are why guys like me coach, just that daily interaction, the daily relationship. The great thing about Ty is that he lets me be me. I’m sarcastic and snarky out there on the field, I’m taking shots. Guys like Bar (Barret Liebentritt) and him, I teased Bar the whole week of Colorado that we weren’t going to need him that whole week because it wasn’t a run game, it was going to be a pass rush game. He got a sack and he was yelling at me from the field. That’s why I do this, I don’t do it for any other reason. I love watching those guys, so Ty is bringing that group along. What I love is, when they leave, their legacy will be there. Ty talks a lot about the guys that were here before him, so it wasn’t like there wasn’t a lot of great leadership in the d-line group before him. Coach Dawson, all those guys, did a great job. Ty talks a lot about that. Ty, Jimari (Butler), Nash (Hutmacher), I can’t imagine a better group and next year when it’s Cam (Lenhardt) and Riley (Van Poppel) and those guys, we won’t skip a beat.”

On Ty Robinson’s video clip with Jack Potenza
“After we beat Colorado, Jordan (Litten) sent that out, just the video of it, on our whole staff group chat. It’s like 100 people. I put it on my family group chat and my 9-year-old and 11-year-old, they thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Julie thought it was the funniest thing in the world. I saw on Twitter, them shaking hands now. We can have fun without being silly, so I like that they’re having some fun. No one practices harder than Ty. He comes to practice every day like it’s a game. It makes it fun to coach.”

On Aidan Flege
“I thought he was great. It was great. He was going to do the short snaps, Cam (Camden Witucki) was going to do the deep snaps. Again, we didn’t punt, so we didn’t need that. I thought they put the ball in his hand – our field goal operation is still a work in progress. We made a couple short ones, but we’re still a work in progress. To be the team that we want to be, it’s going to have to continue to improve. Each week is just taking another step. Our protection was better, our snaps were better. Now, to do what we want to do, you have to hit a 57-yarder to win it like Alex Henery did, however many years ago. Those kinds of moments happen, so building up to that is important for us. It could be this Friday.” 

On the importance of a Friday game being at home
“I definitely think so. I think, with it being a night game, just the fact that we can come over here and use the facility and all that stuff is great. That being said, last year, we went there and we were emotionally, physically and mentally ready. There’s three levels of ready you have to be – you have to be physically ready, you have to be mentally ready, you have to be emotionally ready. Last week, we were physically and mentally ready, I don’t know if our defense was emotionally ready. That’s hard to do, that's why teams don’t go undefeated that often unless they’re way more talented. It’s very hard to win every game. I thought our offense was definitely emotionally ready. Last year, when we went, we were all three. They were a really good team and there was nothing that was going to stop us. I’m happy we’re at home, but it’s really about those three things. Are we going to be ready to play on Friday night or is it going to be about all this other stuff? This is going to be an absolute battle. They’re a really, really good team. It’s why, in preseason, people started asking me about how the schedule was easier, but is it? I’m looking at power rankings now and we have one of the harder schedules in the Big Ten moving forward and coming to the last week. All that preseason stuff is fluff. It’s not real. Especially now, in the transfer portal era, you better just get to the season and see who you’re playing. Now we’re facing a ranked team in week four and it looks like we’ll be facing some more ranked teams. The key for us is to play well so we can be a ranked team. This is an excellent team we’re facing that’s on a mission right now, so we’ll have to be ready.”

On Illinois’ playmakers
“You look at their offense and their big, powerful running game with a mobile quarterback. Mobile quarterbacks have bothered us. They have two explosive receivers on the outside, whether it’s (Pat) Bryant or whether it’s (Zakhari) Franklin, they can attack you. They try to stress you by putting them both out here so you have to play them one-on-one to stop the run, or you have to double them and play cover two or quarters or something, like we did against Colorado, and now they can run the football with a 250 pound back. Their other backs got in there this week, and they all ran the ball well. They’re very well put together with how they’re doing it. Those guys, one thing about them, is that they’ve thrown the deep ball, they have more explosive plays than we have. They’re throwing the deep ball, getting one-on-one coverage, not afraid to open it up. They’re big, they have great catch radiuses, they can hold off a defender and go up and catch the football. Luckily with Tommi (Hill), he’s 205 pounds, he’s not a little corner. (Marques) Buford has been doing really well, he can play corner. He played the dime for us against Colorado. He’s very versatile, and Jeremiah (Charles) and Amare (Sanders) can play as well. That’ll be one of the main matchup issues in this game, how well we do against those two receivers and if we choose a run front, can we win the one-on-ones. How well we do with the quarterback and containing him. You saw UNI was using the zone read and all that, and they can do that with the quarterback. Wisconsin last year, did the drop back quarterback draw, which they do. It’s our front, stopping the quarterback, and the power run game, and if we give up 180 yards after contact, we won’t win the game.”

On managing the short week
“I take maybe a different approach than a lot of people. Monday, Monday, Tuesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Wednesday. I don’t move it up a day. A lot of people move it up a day. On Sunday, we came in, we cleaned up the practice film, we cleaned up the game film. There’s a lot to learn from that game. We didn’t move ahead. We sat there and did all that, we got our lifts in like we would normally do on Monday, then we walked through Illinois and did that. Today is a Monday for us. We’ll do Tuesday, we’ll do Wednesday, then our normal Thursday practice will be a walk through. We also walked through on Friday, just like we would have on Saturday. We don’t overdo it, we don’t move it up too far forward, and to your point, I got a text from Dylan on Saturday morning saying ‘this is what I need to improve on.’ He’s very good about illustrating that for himself so he can get better. He takes great ownership of his things. I think a lot of our guys do a great job. They watch the tape before we watch it with them. That’s a cultural thing we have here that guys have instilled in them.”