Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule Pre-Louisiana Tech Press Conference

Opening Statement

“Just a couple of injury announcements. First of all, at quarterback, Jeff (Sims) was able to practice last night, so we’ll go through the week with him and see what his status is in the game. Full disclosure, I won’t make any comments until game time, just for competitive reasons, obviously. We’ll try to get all three quarterbacks ready to play this week. In injury news, we had some guys’ seasons end early, unfortunately, on Saturday. Rahmir Johnson will have surgery; he dislocated his shoulder. It’s serious enough that he’ll miss the year. Gabe Ervin dislocated his hip and will have surgery on his hip, so he’ll be done for the year. And Dwight Bootle hurt his shoulder in the game and will have to have surgery, so he’ll be done for the year. Football impact aside, especially for Rahmir, who’s a senior, I can just tell you it’s heartbreaking on this end. He’s an unbelievable young man and just a leader. Gabe has done a great job for us – excellent leader, excellent teammate. My heart really hurts for those two guys. Dwight is a young player, had the shoulder before, so hopefully we can get him healthy. This could be one of the best things that happens to him. We’ll try to get him playing a little bit. He’ll redshirt now and come back better than ever. With that, obviously we’re getting ready for an excellent Louisiana Tech team – a team that was down 17 and came back and tied the game and lost a heartbreaker. 2-2. Sonny Combie is an excellent coach. Smoke Harris is one of the best players in college football and it should be an exciting game. With that, I’ll see what questions you have.”

On who they lean on in the running back room to step up this week, other than Anthony Grant

“Emmett Johnson is ready to play. He’ll play. Kwinten Ives – it’s funny. Before the game, I walked around the field with Kwinten Ives and just said ‘hey, this is where I think you’re going to be someday. I don’t know when your time is going to come, but you need to keep getting ready for it.’ I didn’t know it was going to be 24 hours later, but Kwinten is going to have to step up and play as well. From there, we’ll have to see anybody else, but those will be the first three tailbacks into the game this week.”

On what Emmett Johnson and Kwinten Ives bring to the table

“Emmett’s been Rahmir’s backup as that third-down back, catching the ball out of the backfield, excellent change of direction. The thing about Emmett is he’s really smart, highly competitive. You hear us sometimes say ‘he’s one of us, he’s got that mindset of whatever it takes.’ I said ‘Emmett, can you go over and play safety this game?’ He says ‘yes sir’ and will go over and find a way to do it. I have full confidence in Emmett. It’s a loaded backfield with some older guys, so he’s just been waiting his turn. But he can run between the tackles, he can run outside, he can catch the ball in the middle of protection. Kwinten is the big, powerful – he’s an I-back. He’s a downhill runner. He doesn’t know everything, because he’s been reading off of a card, but he’s been in all the meetings. There’s a reason why we do what we do and practice the way we practice, and meet, so that when these things happen, guys are ready. Rahmir (Johnson) obviously was crushed, but he was at practice last night, walking along, following him around and making sure he knew what he was doing. All hands will be on deck.”

On how he feels about Anthony Grant going forward

“I don’t think he’s been through anything. There were a lot of people last week talking about if he was in the doghouse. If you’re the tailback, you have to protect the ball. Simple. If you’re the tailback, you have to protect the ball. He’s worked on it. That’s my biggest thing with Anthony. We all have weaknesses, you know what I’m saying? Or things we’re not doing well. Our program is built on correcting those things. After the last game, after the Colorado game, I told Anthony – I said ‘hey, if you have a great week, you’re going to play this week.’ Anthony had a great week. I don’t play guys because of what they did last year. That’s not me. That’s fantasy football. You play guys based on what they did at practice. That’s how you develop players. That’s how a guy like Heinrich (Haarberg) was ready for his moment. Anthony had a great week at practice. You can see he has natural ability in the games. It’s his show now. It’s time for him to go. It was his show last year, so it’s his show now. At the same time, hopefully he developed and improved his ball security. That was the issue last year in the Illinois game. It was an issue in the Minnesota game. My job is to take players and show them what they’re not doing well so they improve those things. Hopefully, he’s improved that. Because when he’s right, he’s right, and he’s really good. So I think he’ll be a dynamic playmaker for us on offense. He’s going to step up.”

On experiences he leans on when managing quarterbacks

“I had a lot of them in Carolina. A lot of different changes in Carolina. At Temple, I put PJ Walker in the fifth game of the year, I think it was, his freshman year, and he never came out. Charlie Brewer, I put him in the fourth or fifth game of his freshman year at Baylor, and he never came out. So, I didn’t have a lot of it in college. Those were my quarterbacks and those were my guys and they knew what to expect. Obviously, in the NFL, you had some changes and some different guys. I think the biggest thing at quarterback is, we’re always going to play the guys we think give us the best chance to win. That doesn’t mean everybody doesn’t give us a good chance to win. You don’t want guys feeling like you have a quick trigger on them, like you’re pulling them too quickly. They need to settle down and play. I think what happened in the last game is that when we had the turnover at the five-yard line, the defense took the field and stopped them the way they did. I think Heinrich (Haarberg) knew he could go cut loose and play because he knew the defense had his back. That was the team type of environment that I’ve been talking about for forever. That’s team football. I said to (Luke) Reimer in the middle of the game in the third quarter – it was 14-3 at the time. ‘We’re running the ball. We’re running the ball and chewing up clock. You guys have to keep playing defense.’ He’s like, ‘I love it.’ So, they’re understanding complimentary football. We’re not a spread offense, we’re just trying to play together. So, anyway, the quarterback position, I want them to know that they can go play when it’s their time to play.”

On game film after Saturday’s game

“Northern Illinois is a really good football team. I think their d-line is explosive. I liked the way some guys stepped up like (Luke) Lindenmeyer and (Barret) Liebentritt came in that 22 personnel package at the end of the game and were running outside zone and that’s kind of their role. They don’t have any other roles in that game plan for that game. They stepped up and made those blocks. Anthony (Grant) gets the long run and Liebentritt sees some color and he cleans up the color and he snaps back on it and snaps back out and blocks the safety. Unbelievable play from the fullback. (Ethan) Piper blocks like three guys so I like some of those things. I like the third and 9 catch by Marcus Washington. That’s what we need. We need guys inside leverage who call slant. You got to go make it happen. I like (Thomas) Fidone’s block on (Billy) Kemp’s touchdown. He recognized it was man to man and blocked the guy who was running over the top. On defense, some guys played that haven’t played yet like AJ Rollins and I liked the juice and the energy that they played with a lot of guys in the secondary. Special teams I thought Tommi Hill in the opening kickoff runs down and knocks the guy over. We end the game with Roman Mangini going in and cracks the safety and knocks him out of the screen. I thought we were physical. Coach Osborne talks about 1.5 knockdowns per play and Ron Brown counts those for me. This is the first game where we were over 100. And it used to be that you could cut there’s a lot more knockdowns but we got a lot of them by being a little more physical on offense versus a physical team.”

On Phalen Sanford and his role on defense

“Phalen’s role on defense is what it is. He rotates in and we have a lot of trust and faith in him. He’s the next guy in. I think he played 10 plays in the game before. I’m not sure how many it was this game. If we need him to start he can go start. He’s an excellent special teams player. He’s doing high level things. I hope he’ll continue to play this way and someone will give a shot to go do those things. He’s a four-three guy. He’s really fast. In that play that was a huge play in the game. Sometimes we just watch it offensively. The first drive of the game we go three and out and force a bad punt. Balls at the 45 yard lane, we go down and we go down and score. That drive the offense gets a couple first downs. They punt the ball to the 2 yard line. Defense goes three and out. We get the ball at the 40 yard line and we score. That was a huge play by Phalen and he’s doing it on every team so I don’t know what will happen on defense because obviously we have three safeties we trust to play a lot of football, but Phalen’s like three and a half. We’re ready to put him in any time.”

On how the special teams have played through the quarter poll of the season 

“It's good and bad. I think there's a lot of positive things and it looks the way I want it to look. It looks well coached. Obviously, we've missed a field goal, we've kicked the ball out of bounds, so things like that have to get corrected. We've had some really close misses on our punt return team and had a really explosive kick off return early on. We have not necessarily had enough of the ‘WOW’ plays yet for me that I'd like to see. We do have some solid stuff, I think we have to continue to get better in the actual kicking the ball game. Tristan (Alvano) is gonna be unbelievable. He's a young kicker. I love his demeanor. Ball goes out of bounds and he comes right back. I think there's been some good things. (Brian) Buschini bounced back from the previous week. What I would like to see is that we have some guys that are difference makers. The culture is still somewhat ‘Oh I wanna play on defense, I wanna play on special teams’ and when we've won some of our best players are on special teams. I'd like to see some more dynamic plays as we move forward. We're gonna need those. We’re gonna be in these tight ball games and we're counting on special teams to not play as the special teams but to play as one third of the game. To win some of the games we want to win you got to block a punt. These guys (Louisiana Tech) are dynamic this week. We're gonna have to play really well up front on special teams.”

On Cameron Lenhardt

“I would expect him to have a chance to practice tomorrow. Just a gruesome play. He’s lucky. He got hit right in the back of the leg. It looked like a devastating injury but he bounced up with kind of an ankle sprain. Those ankles. You never know. He practices on Tuesday and then all of the sudden it’s two weeks later. Sometimes they say ‘Tuesday’ and they are out there on Tuesday. If Cam can go he’ll go. I’m expecting Cam to go. Blaise’s (Gunnerson) shoulder acted up in the game and he came out early in the game. We had a chance to get some other guys in the game which was really good for us.”

On what stands out about Louisiana Tech

“They’re explosive. They are opposite of us in that they are going to drop back and throw it, they will spin in, they will play with tempo, they will run it too. They will RPO you, they are going to get the ball in Smoke Harris’ hands and he is one of the more dynamic players you’ll see so they are never out of a game. The quarterback got hurt and they put the second quarterback in and he brought a running element to the game and so offensively they will present a lot of challenges to us. Defensively blitzing us and playing man has kind of been what people have done. I thought we had some better answers the other night in terms of running the quarterback and some of those things but that’s what they do. They are going to bring pressure, they are going to play man, they are going to challenge you, they are going to move, they are going to try to disrupt you so to me it’s another game where we just have to understand the format we are trying to win with. We are going to try to establish ourselves, throw body blows, play the game and win the game in the fourth quarter. Our guys can’t start listening to the noise of, ‘Woah that was a lot of punts.’ Just keep flipping the field and play Big Ten football. That is what we are trying to get done. This will be a team that can challenge all that with the pressure. We have to play smart football versus a team.”

On the defense

“A lot can be better. A lot can be better. Just like after the loss when I said we were so close. Javin (Wright) jumps up and he almost hits the ball on the long pass against Colorado on third down. Those same plays are still there. We just happened to win the game. When you lose a game you’re like ‘look’ but when you win the game you have a tendency to go ‘When’s the next opponent?’ No. They’re all still there. All those plays are still there. Still the fullback and the flat out leverages Omar. He runs and makes a tackle or we get out-leveraged or beat on a double move and we just get pressured. They’re still there. We have to just coach. That’s what I like about Tony (White) and (Evan Cooper) Coop and all of them. They’re not result-based, they’re process-based. The film is the film. The score went in our favor but the film is the film. More macro. What I will say is I think we have to be better with the four-man rush. Everything can’t be pressure. When I say better, you know, people are vertically-setting and they’re afraid of the blitz packages. They came out and ran the first third down of the game. Tony said that to me in the pre-game. He goes, ‘I bet you they’ll come out and run the ball early on third down.’ They played cover two and we stopped it.  But some of our base four-man rushes for zone coverages, I want to see us improve in those because we have to be better at that. ‘Tampa 2’ were letting number two catch the ball way too much. Some of the four man rush and going into this game was third down. I challenged our defense about third down because we're giving up almost 50 percent going into the first two weeks. It was way better this week. We're not taking the ball away enough. We got one. Two of them happened in the last drive of the game. That doesn't even really count to me. Early in the game, we gotta go knock a ball out. As hard as we were hitting people, we gotta start punching the ball out. A lot of things to work on. That's why I like our defense because Giff (Isaac Gifford) and all those guys. They're not sitting there like 'Coach come on man, we just beat these guys.’ They're like ‘We gotta get the ball out.’ That's why we have a chance to be good. A lot of these guys are exhilarating right now because they’ve played in some games. A lot of guys have played in some games. So Teddy (Prochazka) as well as some other players, I’m challenging our coaches in practice. Go out to practice. Whoever gives us the best chance to win, let’s play. As Teddy gets his legs underneath him. I think that’s true for a lot of positions.”

On Teddy Prochazka making his season debut and deciding who has the opportunity to play

“I thought Teddy did a good job. I think you can see Teddy – he’s getting closer and closer. Turner (Corcoran) is a good player. He’s a good player. My challenge to our coaches every week is don’t do it based upon the last four months, but let’s look at this week and who played better last week. As a coach, what happens to you, is you’ve seen these guys for so long but they’re growing and a lot of these guys are accelerating right now because they’ve played in games. There’s a lot of guys who are playing who haven’t played in games. So, Teddy, as well as many other players. I’m challenging our coaches to go out to practice and whoever gives us the best chance to win then let’s play. As Teddy gets his legs underneath him and I think that’s true for a lot of positions.” 

On morale on the team after Saturday’s win against Northern Illinois

“100%. As much as I’d love to be stoic and to be like the results shouldn’t matter, obviously they want to win. They were happy that they won, I mean I was happy we won. Of course they’re happy. I just appreciate the fact that a lot of them had belief before they won, right? (Marques) Buford and I are walking around the field before the game and I’m just talking to him. I’m getting him ready for when it’s his time and he’s like ‘Coach, I 100% believe in the process. I understand what we have to do. It was good for them to get that win and it’s also good for them to not forget the first two games, and what we’ve learned. Championship teams come out of teams that learn hard lessons. You have to learn what it feels like to lose and what it feels like to win. The margin is small for us, we have to just keep airing and making the margin a little bit bigger by getting better.” 

On Coach Rhule’s experience at Memorial Stadium

“It was unlike anything I’ve ever been a part of. I’ve gone into those environments before as a coach. I’ve never coached in an environment where you have – I don’t know if there’s another place in the country – where there’s people in the stands that early just to watch the warm ups. A lot of times you’ll see me defer so we get the ball in the second half on the road because there’s no one in the crowd. Our fans were all in the stands after half time. It was unbelievable. Issac Gifford said to me right before the game as they’re waiting to punt and then go in, he said no matter what coach this will never get old. Not only for the recruits, but for some of the young players that are redshirting that are going to be unbelievable players; I just remind them that this is all going to be yours someday. You need to make sure that once it’s your time you take on this responsibility, it’s a lot of responsibility. Make sure you’re ready for your time to play. Issac was one of those players I said that to, not knowing that the next day. I thought it was an amazing experience. I thought it was a tremendous crowd and I thought it was great for recruiting obviously, but it was great for our players and hopefully it was great for the fans. Hopefully they like the way that we played.” 

On the chemistry on the team, specifically with Heinrich Haarberg and Thomas Fidone II

“I think he definitely has a connection with Fidone. I think all young quarterbacks, I think everyone wants a big tight end, right? I’m sure Patrick Mahomes loves having (Travis) Kelce out there. You love having a big target that you can see. So when you’re not sure, you just throw it to them and they go get it. I think Heinrich is respected by his teammates. He’s a guy that battled all last year as a scout team quarterback and I’m not sure if he was even in meetings last year. I’m sure when you’re walking through the adversity and you’re not complaining, guys will gain respect for you. So, it’s one of our messages to our guys all the time. I just talked about championship teams. Going through adversity is good. So often, we don’t want our kids or children to go through adversity. Going through adversity is good because A. you learn a lot and B. people learn about you. I think when Heinrich had his opportunity to go play when that ball got fumbled on the ground, his fault or not, I think the defense went out there and they were going to show him that they had his back. I think the defense did that and they let him take the pressure off. I think the guys respect him.” 

On Heinrich Haarberg’s resilience 

“I’ll never say to anybody to stay here. My whole thing is I’m not going to beg anyone to stay, but I do want to give them a vision of what I see. I think that’s really important. When Jimari (Butler) went into the portal I called him and I was like, ‘What are you doing? Yeah we think you’re a good player.’ It’s such a hard time. I remember like it was yesterday. What we did is we made cut ups of all the players, playing in games, and we also made practice cut ups of everybody. So we watched everybody and we studied them. We were like, ‘man this guy has a great release.’ He’s athletic and everyone was like ‘yeah he’ll be a great tight end,’ and he’ll be a great fullback. At the time the offensive staff room/quarterback meeting room was part of my office. (Coach Satterfield) Sat has since stolen it. He walked by and I stopped him, and I was like, ‘Hey let me talk to you for a second,’ and I said, ‘You know everybody says you should go play tight end. You should go play full back.’ I looked at the look of disgust on his face and I said, ‘I think you should play quarterback. You should try to play quarterback and see what happens. If at some point I don’t think you can play quarterback then I’ll tell you, you should play something else. Make a decision if you should leave or stay here, but you should take your shot at this thing.’ Then I brought Satterfield in and asked what he thought about this guy. He said the same thing. I just think from that day on Heinrich was like okay. There were times in camp or in the spring where he was third or fourth, but he’s gotten better and better and better. Again that’s our job. Our job is to not write guys off. It’s to get them better. The credit to me goes to him and his family.” 

On the resilience of the team

“It is next man up. If you go to summer workouts and summer seven-on-sevens, they’re throwing the ball to those guys. It’s a whole different set of guys, so we’re asking guys to do a lot. The first play the other day, Billy (Kemp IV) catches the punt and comes back off the field and forgets to go back on. We are asking a lot of guys to do double time. ‘I need you to be the X in this and the Y in this,’ and it’s not planning, it’s just kind of moving on. What’s going to happen now is we’re going to have some young players. It’s their time. Where a lot of them have been trying to figure out, ‘Hey am I ready?’ I have just told them, ‘Hey guess what, you’re ready.’ I have confidence in them. I don’t put anybody out there that I don’t believe in. We have some guys, we have Tommi Hill playing both ways a little bit, we have Billy playing multiple positions. We have (Joshua) Fleeks sitting over there, Fleeks could do anything he wants if he puts his mind to it. So I told him this week, hopefully he’s going to put his mind to it. He had a good week of practice last week, played some plays, he needs to play more. I think we are just having to adapt and morph and as much as it stinks to go through those things, what it does is it gets your offensive coaches to really have to adapt and find out what guys can do. Once you settle into things, if it’s later in the year or next year or whenever, you have an offense with guys that take advantage of their strengths. So you see (Thomas) Fidone III catching more balls and you see guys catching more balls. Thomas is a way different player now than he was three or four weeks ago. His legs are underneath him, hitting records on the GPS. The whole process, Corey Campbell to the training room, it’s all working for a lot of these guys.”

On players watching film

“I 100 percent would prefer they watch in the office with a remote. That's the way to do it, a pen and pad. I can’t get that done all the time but being in the NFL, the things you learn like Brian Burns would sit there for us and he would lay on the training room table and he would be there until 8 o’clock at night when we were done at 5. He would have an iPad in front of his face and he would be watching tape the entire time so everybody’s process is their own. With some of the young players, what I’m looking for from them is, ‘Hey let the older players help you. Go in there with Billy (Kemp IV), go in there with Marcus (Washington).’ It is a little bit different on defense because on offense you’re looking at who you’re going against. On defense, you’re having to recognize the run concepts and those different things so I just want them working at it. You are what you repeatedly do so I would love for it to be in the building because there’s synergy when guys are together. They talk. They communicate. I came down to the Minnesota game, the starting defense was in there, about six or seven of those guys were in there that afternoon watching tape together getting ready for the game and I was like, ‘We are going to be good on defense.’ On offense, the O line does it together. (Ethan) Piper or whoever gets them together because they are such different worlds but we are starting to slowly figure out on offense how to work together.”

On Marques Buford Jr.

“In a perfect world, he started on individual drills yesterday so we are not going to rush him. If he does not play a snap all year, so be it but we would love to have him play the last four games of the year. Use his four games there and redshirt and get that year back and really get his body healthy for the future but we are not going to risk anything or rush it.”

On the grass/turf debate

“I think grass is safer than turf. I think grass is, I guess anywhere from 10-18% safer. Now, there’s needs to play on turf. Turf’s not bad. I just think that when you can, grass is better. Different environments are different. The usage is different. Grass that has multiple teams playing on it that gets ruined is not as good as turf, then, right? So I think that every place is a little different, but I know when I was in Carolina, we went to turf, and then I think it was Manchester United that came in and they would only play on grass. So, we put a temporary grass field out there and played on that grass for the soccer game and went back to turf for football. I just think that a soccer team is always the epitome of sports science. If they will only play on grass, maybe that’s just the way the ball rolls and there’s something to it. Injuries happen on everything. I don’t ever elect one thing to be the end all, be all, but I’m a grass fan. That’s why I made the practice fields grass, so that we can have more reps on a softer surface.”

On how much time he spends with Coach John Cook

“I don’t have much time to spend with Coach Cook, unfortunately. I got a good chance – he and I went to the rodeo together and he took me to dinner. He came and talked to the team. He was right there on the sidelines on Saturday and I was walking down, he was right there next to me. He texted me after the game. All of our coaches here – Coach (Mark) Manning, all of them – I hear from so many of them. The great thing about our coaches here is, I didn’t hear from them just after the win, I heard from a lot of them after we lost. Coaches hopefully can recognize the way you’re trying to do something and I appreciate them all very, very, very much – Coach Cook and all of them.”