Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule Pre-Northwestern Press Conference
Opening statement
“Just an injury update and you might have to help with this, Luke Reimer will be back with us this week so excited to have Luke back. Other than that, I think we’re a pretty healthy team. DeShon Singleton will still be out but we’re excited to have Luke back. Obviously he will be a big boom for our defense so big week for us, huge week for us. An excellent Northwestern team, three and three, an unbelievable comeback win over Minnesota down I think it was 31-10. Coach (David) Braun did a heck of a job so it will be a heck of a ball game, excited to have a chance to play them, excited for this week, excited to see our players after the bye week so I’m sure you guys have lots of questions.”
On opportunity within the Big Ten West
“I’m not worried about the big picture. I think that’s the problem with Nebraska football. I think that’s why we have gone one and five down the stretch most years, looking at things outside of just going 1-0 this week. Evaluating the offensive and defensive coaches, evaluating the offense versus the defense, all this stuff outside the program, I’m going to do my best to keep it from infiltrating the program. We have to get a way to get 1-0 this week. We have to try to improve this week. It’s going to be a real challenge. To me, I had a chance to watch the teams we play. I was really happy to see Illinois play well because obviously any time we play someone and we beat them and we see them play well, it makes us feel good about who they are. I saw Northern Illinois get a huge win over five-win Ohio U so I feel good about where our team is but our team has got to eliminate the looking past just what’s important this week. After we got embarrassed against Michigan, we didn’t think about anything else other than Friday night and we were locked in and we’re going to find out about myself as a head coach and our coaches and our players and our staff. Can we have that same focus this week? We better.”
On Nebraska fans always looking at the big picture
“I love Husker fans, let me say that. I am talking about the team. The only reason why we have the opportunities we have is because there’s so much care about the program. I just have to make sure our players don’t act like fans, they act like the guys that go out and play. If you’re not careful, then all these things start to infiltrate the team and so I go back and look at history and you look at the team, look at Nebraska football for the last eight to 10 years in the second half of the season, it’s abysmal. That’s not a knock on anyone. I respect the heck out of, those are good coaches but we can’t be the type of team that we lost to Colorado and we’re embarrassed and we come back and we win and we play okay, not very great against LA Tech then we go out and we get embarrassed by Michigan and then we go out and now we’re embarrassed and we play great against Illinois, we just can’t be that team. I don’t want to coach that team and our players don’t want to be a part of that team and so that’s what it is. At the same time, there’s this thing out there that I can hear like, ‘Is this coach doing a good job?’ They’re all doing a good job. This program is not in good shape. They’re all doing a great job, I think. I am in charge of this football program. (Marcus) Satterfield would love to go into a huddle and score 50 points. Tony (White) would love to blitz every play. I run the program and so we are playing as a team. So all that other stuff is why we haven’t been to a bowl game. We are the only power five team that hasn’t been to a bowl game in a long time so if I start talking about bowl games, I’m part of the problem. So the fans are supposed to do this. My daughters are like, ‘Dad if we go to a bowl game can I have Taylor Swift tickets?’ My daughters are fans. They’re supposed to do that. I just have to get the team to be really locked into today, tomorrow. Because think about Coach Braun and the job that he has done. He comes from North Dakota State and he takes this job at Northwestern. He’s the DC, Coach (Pat) Fitzgerald, a great friend of mine and a man I respect gets let go, he steps in as an interim head coach as a one year deal and he has this team battling man, they are fighting for their lives. What are we doing? What are we going to be like? We’ll find out on Saturday. So that’s the message I put out there usually on Mondays when I feel this because I want our players to have this mentality but they will. I hope our fans come to this game as locked in and thinking this game is as important as anything else because I respect the team we’re playing and I respect the coaching staff, to be in the situation they’re in, to be down 21 points and to fight back, that says a lot about the character. We better have the same character.”
On if players have said there was a lack of focus in past years or if it was something he saw
“I talk to the players a lot. I talk to the players a lot, and I’ve talked to them a lot in the offseason. The thing that I’ve done, I think better than I normally have, is after the first two weeks, I spent a lot of time one-on-one with the players. They’ve kind of given me a lot of things. I can also just kind of feel it in my daily conversations with the people in our building. People love to send me memes from Twitter – ‘hey, look, Coach, there’s a picture of you.’ It’s just not healthy for the team. This is a team that has to learn how to be the same team every week. Isn’t that what you guys all want? Do you guys want to watch us play badly on Saturdays? We want to be the same team every week. That’s hard to do. Either you’re so talented that you don’t have to do that – some teams are so talented, they have to get up for three or four games – we have to get up for every game. We had to battle to beat Northern Illinois. We had to battle to beat LA Tech. We’re not in that place yet. We have to fight, scratch and claw. The players have kind of addressed a lot of these things with me. I’m not worried about the players as much as I’m worried about our staff and coaches and all them. We have to lead the way, I have to lead the way. I woke up after that Michigan game, Mitch (Sherman), I felt sick to my stomach that whole week. I woke up after the Colorado game, I felt like someone was standing on my chest. I don’t want to walk around this week happy. I’d rather have that same urge to go 1-0 this week. But this is not about hating Northwestern. This is just about the program in general. I’m trying to do a good job of addressing it to people because I went to Tekamah this summer and I spoke and there was a 97-year-old woman who waited in line to meet me. When I think about Husker fans, I think about her. She waited in line to meet me, that’s embarrassing to me. I just want us to be that type of a team where when you come to see us play, you know what you’re going to get. That’s the challenge for us these last six games – not to worry about what comes after them, but just to worry about how we do them.”
On recent close games versus Northwestern
“Yeah I watched the 2021 game and I watched last year’s game a lot. I thought what Coach (Scott) Frost and the offensive staff did two years ago was phenomenal, (Adrian) Martinez was amazing, a lot of great things happened. They played great defense. Obviously last year was a hard fought battle back and forth, but you know they have a new defensive coordinator, so there’s not a lot of things that translate, so it’s all kind of new. Those are more like off-season studies for me. I get into game week, I usually try to go back and watch personnel, you know Coach (D.J.) Vokolek is there who was here, so obviously he’ll know our personnel, so I try to go back and watch their players versus our guys a little bit, but for the most part now I have six games on them versus really good competition, two top-25 teams that they’ve played, they’re just a lot like us.”
On Jeff Sims’ status and the quarterback situation this week
“Yeah I think we’re working hard to get Jeff to be the best he can be, working hard to get Heinrich (Haarberg) and Chubba (Purdy) to be the best they can be. We’ll play with Heinrich for now, Jeff is ready to go on a moment’s notice. We mix him in with the ones a lot in practice, I would have no problem ever having a package to play too, not saying we would do that, but I have no problem with the way he works. But to me, Heinrich’s played well, Heinrich’s done some good things, so he’ll be the starter.”
On improving Heinrich Haarberg and getting him to be the best he can be
“I think we were able to go back and really identify what he does well. Because when you build something, you usually build it around who you anticipate the starter to be. So what are the things that, not only is he comfortable with, ‘hey he’s doing this pretty well.’ And then what are some of the plays that we kind of fell into, like ‘hey, these are good plays for us, what are the plays that come off of that.’ And at the same time, having to simplify a great deal with a bunch of freshman receivers now going to be playing. So, it’s kind of this unique, we’re down to third and fourth-string tailback, to start the year at least, we’re down to some young wideouts and also a new quarterback, ‘hey what do they all do well.’ We have enough good players to win with, so just trying to find what they do well. But I thought Heinrich (Haarberg) had a really good week last week, he was still a little beat up from that game, that was a hard-fought game. He went out there and battled each day at practice last week, so did Jeff (Sims), so I think we have a good feel as a team, like ‘what do those guys do well.’”
On running back Emmett Johnson’s fumble and progress in his position
“Emmett can play for us, I think Emmett’s a good player. We ran a counter with him and he knifed up the field, he got six or eight yards. I think he shows quickness and toughness and burst, excellent protection, and can catch the football. We just have to protect the football, he has to protect the football. Obviously his was on an exchange, it wasn’t a pure fumble, so going back to what Sam just talked about, ‘hey Heinrich wasn’t taking a lot of routes with Emmett for a couple weeks.’ Right now just getting them synced up together on some of those plays, but Emmett can really help us.”
On a points-per-game threshold identified to win games in the Big Ten
“I never think about that. Like just so you guys know me, like we were playing Illinois, and I was like ‘hey they’re not gonna move the ball against us today, I don’t care if we run the ball every play and punt,’ like that’s just what you get when coaching. It’s 25 mile-an-hour wind, could be a batted ball, we’re going to play that way. I want to score one more than the other team. That might be old school and kind of boring nowadays but it will result in good things in the long run."
On the narrative that the Big Ten West is down this year and if he has a reaction
“I have none. This is my first time going through it. Big Ten West will be gone next year anyways. I was a young coach - I don’t want you guys to think I’m always just coach-speak - I was a young head coach at Temple. I sat down at a table out the retreat with all the American conference coaches. George O'Leary, who I really looked up to, was there. UCF was rolling at the time and he was going to become the AD. I was like ‘yeah Coach we play - and I forget what year it was - Penn State but then we got Cincinnati’ and he was like ‘Matty, Matty just play them one at a time.’ And you hear that. But the teams that I thought were going to be really good that year actually were pretty down and the teams that I thought were going to be down that year were really pretty good. I think we face good teams each week. It’s a battle each week. I just think there is always the narrative out there, people watch the Iowa-Wisconsin game and say it’s a bad football game or it’s an ugly football game. I think it’s a beautiful defensive football game. I see a lot of teams that scored a lot of points early in the season in games this week and not score quite as many points as the year gets on. People catch up and it gets a little colder. Iowa is on its way to having another great year. People are making a big deal about how many points they score. It’s one more than their opponent in most games. I don’t know anything about the Big Ten West other than I’m facing each one each year and after the year I’ll probably have a better feel for kind of who everyone is and then we’ll shuffle it up and we’ll be going to the West Coast. I’ll do my best to figure that out.”
On what kind of lift Luke Reimer gives the team
“Luke is one of the voices. Even before the last game, I texted him on the day of the game, like ‘hey, bro, I wish you were with us.’ I feel so awful about what happened to him. He got MRSA in his arm and just got an infection. He was like ‘Hey, I already sent a message to the guys. They’re ready, Coach.’ He’s a voice that the guys listen to. When he speaks, I think it goes a long way. As a player, he’s really going to help us. He’s excellent off the ball and this is a team – Northwestern – that can spin it and they can also run it. They have athletic quarterbacks. We’ll need Luke’s athleticism out there.”
On the freshmen wide receivers
“Malachi (Coleman) is a starter. He’ll start. The great thing about Malchi is that he didn’t have much time to think about it. Unfortunately, Marcus (Washington) went down and Malachi had to go out there and play. He played well. He’s got things that he does differently that we have to adjust to. The things that he loves to do, we have to factor some of that in. Jaylen Lloyd is going to play a ton. Jaidyn Doss is still kind of in the middle. When you’re a freshman receiver and you don’t practice for five, six, seven weeks, that’s difficult. The other guys practiced. But Jaylen is ready to go, Malachi is ready to go. What I saw from them last week, Sean (Callahan), was that they showed up last week. They knew it was time to play. Saw Kwinten Ives, he showed up and said ‘hey, it’s time to play.’ Jaidyn showed up too. I’m just not sure exactly where Jaidyn will fall on this whole thing. The great thing about the last game is that I think Alex Bullock has figured out that he’s a really good player. 4th and 3, he makes an unbelievable catch. He makes a great catch on the slant. He’s got long speed, and then Ty Hahn made a big play for us. I think Heinrich (Haarberg) is developing a real rapport with those guys as well.”
On how he leans on the o-line and how he thought they played the first few games
“I think our offensive line has gotten better and better and better. I think they are one of the groups – I’m going to speak for them – that are really scarred by the things that are said about them out there, and they hear it. They probably were hearing it too much and not having a lot of fun playing. I think that they, in the last two weeks, have kind of gotten past that a little bit. When you run the ball for 200 yards a game, no matter how you get it, you don’t do that if guys aren’t playing well. If tight ends aren’t blocking, if guys aren’t running. I think the biggest thing that I’ve seen improvement in is our pass protection. We’re getting better and better and better. We’re not here to throw the ball 45 times a game, but we’re getting better in those regards. I like our offensive line. The amount of things that they see, the amount of things people throw at us because we don’t throw it a ton – they blitz us. They are unsung heroes to me.”
On how much he’s had to tell the o-line to not worry about PFF grades
“If you go back and look at anything I’ve said when I was in the NFL, I talked about that being the number one thing that affects players in the National Football League, is those grades. Because people listen to them. I would just say that if I went and graded our o-line and Donny (Donovan Raiola) went and graded our o-line, and Sat (Marcus Satterfield) graded our o-line, we would all come out sometime with different scores. I’m not going to listen to other people. I mean that with the greatest deal of respect. I don’t look at the grades of other teams. I don’t say ‘let’s go after this guy, he’s a 64.’ It’s just one more cottage industry built up around the sport, you know what I’m saying? And they’ve done a good job. We use PFF for video and stuff, it’s amazing what they do in terms of ‘show me every pass thrown to the left quadrant on third and seven.’ I’m like a geek on that stuff. But in terms of the scores, the qualitative data, I’m not going to pay attention to that. Again, don’t we just want our players to go out there and fight to play? I’m always going to defend my players and my coaches. I struggle with the fact that these players are here to get Nebraska football over the hump, because it hasn’t been over the hump. These coaches are here. When I go in for my heart exam and my doctor tells me I have calcium, I don’t yell at the heart doctor. I don’t yell at the guy trying to fix the problem, so why would anyone say anything bad about the kids that are out there playing and trying to get us back to a bowl game? Why would anyone say anything about the coaches that are trying? That’s crazy to me. I see the impact it has on young people, it’s devastating to them. Most of my job is about ‘hey, guys, ignore the noise. Ignore it. Ignore what people are saying about you.’ I’m having to do that a little bit in recruiting, sometimes too. Recruits hear everyone talk about ‘we’re not good at this and we’re not good at that.’ It’s the job. It’s challenging. I relish this. I’m not complaining about it. Everyone has a job to do. I’m proud of our players. I say this so that they hear it. A PFF score does not determine who they are. Ethan Piper is out there playing with a broken hand. He’s pass protecting #4 from Illinois, who is going to be a first-round draft pick, with a broken hand. And we won the game. I’d hug the guy, not grade him.”
On why there’s disparity between his and other coaches’ grades
“It’s one thing to say ‘he’s supposed to down block and he did and he gets a minus for that’, but it’s hard to move people in football. They’re on scholarship too. It’s all just subjective. It’s a moving target. It’s just subjective. If I don’t trust myself enough to do it all the time, I know what I kind of see. ‘Hey, Donny, we want this here. Hey, Sat, we want this here.’ If I can’t do it, I’m certainly not going to listen to anybody else. I live this. I don’t do anything else but this and occasionally, a girls volleyball game with my daughters. This is all I do. It’s just really subjective, and again, it makes for great theater. I just want our players walking in this building worrying about going 1-0 and about what their teammates think. At the same time, I want us to go out there and have an unbelievable crowd on Saturday that’s proud of the way we play. You just can’t live your life on Twitter.”
On going out recruiting during the bye week
“People were unbelievable to us. Everywhere I go people are A) seem to be grateful that we are working hard to get the program back on track and in the right direction. You feel that everywhere. Went to a game in Omaha, went to one in western Iowa and then I went out to Ainsworth and I mean I went out to Ainsworth in a windbreaker and it was 34 degrees so I went to a western store there and the gentleman owns the store and obviously a Husker fan and comes to the games every week and helped me get fitted for a nice parka and hat and went to the game and saw Ainsworth play Boyd County and people are everywhere and little kids are coming up and they’re fired up. I’m glad we won the Illinois game before we went out on the road. A lot of people were pretty fired up about that game but even if we hadn’t, it always goes back to me talking about going to Tekamah, going to Ainsworth, going to the places I’ve been, how much people care and how much we want to do a good job for them. But there was a really, really, unbelievably positive vibe out there.”
On the possibility of committed high school seniors engaging with other schools
“First of all I have this thing, you never get mad because you have to recruit somebody. I didn’t just take this job. I think you guys have probably had other opportunities and looked at other jobs. I only want people to come here if they really want to be here because I know what we are going to demand of them, but I also know what we are going to pour into them. I want people to come here eyes wide open so you have to understand that sometimes you fall into two tiers. There’s guys that we’re like we’ll wait until signing day for. We’re going to battle for you until the very end and as numbers get crunched, there’s some guys that we’re like, if you want to look around then just move on from us, so when it comes to players that we know can really help us, then they have to do their due diligence. Because when they come here, I want them locked in here, I want them here for the long haul and I want them here for the right reasons. We aren’t second to anybody and we aren’t backing down from anybody in recruiting. Recruiting is a lot different now, there’s a lot of different things tied to it, but when it comes down to where our player wants to go, I have no problem. When players have called me and said, ‘Hey Coach I am going to visit this game or go visit this school,’ I say, ‘Have a great time. Have a good time.’ If they are thinking about, sometimes it goes a little further than that, we have to make decisions. The thing that is going to be harder for us is, not hard, but a lot of our seniors, a lot of our guys that have a COVID year are having really good experiences. Rahmir Johnson the other day, if he can he is going to come back for his sixth year. Like a guy that when I got here, people didn’t even know if he was going to stick around for this year, he wants to come back for his sixth year. We treat players really well. We care greatly about them and we also push them. A lot of guys aren’t going to want to leave the program. Marcus Washington said, ‘Coach, is there any way I can get an extra year?’ I said, ‘Man you were dying to get out of here and now you don’t want to leave.’ I love Marcus Washington. We’ll have to figure some things out roster-wise as we move forward. Some guys will want to move on and some guys will want to stay, that’s a really good thing but yeah we’re not afraid to recruit.”
On how he’s seen the 1-0 every week mentality grow
“I hear them say it. I see the way that they work. We work in a way that sometimes I can see them be like, ‘Hey Coach how do we sustain this?’ early on and now I can see them be like, ‘We can sustain this.’ I will try to do a good job, and as the year goes on, I’ll cut back. I’m not foolish but I see them understanding that it’s about us, it’s not about the opposing team. It’s about us and the way we play. We expect that the team we play is going to play well. We know Northwestern’s going to play well. We know Northwestern after a bye week is going to have things we haven’t seen on offense, defense and special teams so we have to be prepared for everything. So I just think their work ethic and the amount of time they spend in here, their willingness to move positions, like Chief Borders being willing to move from jack to d-line, out of blind faith when I say, ‘Hey I think this would be a good move for you.’ When guys start doing those things because it just shows faith in the process and but I just think in the way they practice and their attention to detail, I’m excited to see them get in here tonight and what they’re like tonight because I think they’re very very locked in which I am expectant they will be.”
On the Sunday practice after Michigan
“So the issue in the Michigan game was not effort, to me. To me. The issue in the Michigan game was what I’m battling in the program, I’m not afraid to say it out loud. When things go well for us early, I know we are going to play well. When things don’t go well for us early, I’m kind of anxious to see how we respond. They make those TV shows and they send them to me to see if it’s all okay. They made one for Illinois, I haven’t wanted to put it out yet and I don’t know if they will or won’t. But in that pregame speech, it’s kind of funny, I said, ‘hey I know you’ll fight if we’re up 14-nothing, but how are you going to fight if we’re down 14-nothing. How are you going to fight if the ball is on the one-yard line, not knowing that eight minutes later the ball would be on the one-yard line.’ That play to me was a pivotal, pivotal turning point in this team’s growth and development. That they were just in the moment, instead of feeling sad that they just drove the ball down, they went out there and they just played. It wasn’t effort, as much as it was like, ‘what’s next. Play the next play. Just keep playing.’ And that’s what I’m talking about, like don’t worry about what happens at the end of the year, don’t worry about what people are saying about you, don’t worry about the score, just play football. You’re a Cornhusker, play football. That’s easier said than done, though. This is the process. But once we figure this out, we’re going to be a good team, and we’re going to be a good team for a while. Some teams that everybody talked a lot about, I see them in the middle of adversity, I see them crack a little on Saturday. We just got a lot of our adversity early in the year, we responded to it. What I want to see is us now for six games embrace adversity. Like Northwestern takes the opening kickoff back this week, how are we going to respond? We have success early, how are we going to respond, so that’s going to be the next step. It was fun just to put the ball down, I realize with this team I have to do that more often. I forget some of these guys didn’t play their senior year, COVID, all those things. They just need to play football a little bit, like Heinrich (Haarberg) just needs to play football, everything can’t be a seven-on-seven drill. They just got to play, and the more they play, the more I see their personalities come out. So that’s me adapting to this team, we were chanting with the crowd on Saturday, the crowd was chanting, ‘Go Big Red,’ and our guys on defense were throwing the bones, and I hate that, I hate that, because I’m like ‘watch the game.’ But I told the team, if you’re going to play well, if the crowd gets you going, I’ll adapt. I’ll be a little more new school, so I’m adapting with this team and learning their rhythms because they work hard. And if you work hard for me, I’ll try to be a little bit cooler.”
On growth during the bye week
“Some young players that are redshirted, we were able to get them way more reps. Some guys moved positions. ‘I know you’re a d-lineman, but I want to play you at guard for three days.’ Hopefully, they all understand that it’s because we think they’re good players and we want to get them on the field. We were able to move some guys around. We were able to do some of the things we talked about for the guys who are playing, and we were able to get some young guys in there. As we come down the stretch here, we’re worried about this week but we have some guys, maybe we get (Marques) Buford back, maybe we get DeShon (Singleton) back, getting De’Andre Barnes and getting Rahmir Stewart - getting them ready to play so that, as we have injuries, we have another crop of guys ready to go. It was a really pivotal week for us.”
On getting Billy Kemp IV the ball more
“We just have to. I think that was a focus for us last week. Billy is a dynamic player, and we have to get him involved more. When it’s third down they can kind of tell and they double him and bracket him. We have to get him involved more in normal downs. We have to continue to get Thomas (Fidone II) the ball more. Get (Joshua) Fleeks involved. We have enough players to win with. It’s just sometimes when you go through what you go through you kind of try to just go 1-0 this week. Now you get to the bye week and you sit down and say, ‘hey who do we need to get involved.’ I think those guys have done a good job of that. If I leave them alone they would have probably gotten that ball more. These first six weeks, I wanted to build a run-game that we could run the ball with. I wanted to build a run-defense off of last year, being 108th until now. I think the second half of the season we have to continue to do those two things. We’ve got to get better at third-down defense. We’ve got to get better at third-down offense. We have to throw the ball better. We have to play better pass-defense. Those are all things we examined over the bye week. But Billy is a big piece of that.”
On if he was sitting on Coach Satterfield offensively in terms of what he was able to call
“Yeah we aren’t going to play with tempo. That is just not us yet. At some point. As we continue to develop. And maybe it will be this week. Right now - like after you have eight turnovers in the first two games and you have a good defense you’re going to say, ‘hey let’s not beat ourselves up.’ We’ve won three of our last four. I sit on everybody. That’s what I’m saying. Complain about me. Don’t complain about the coaches. Ed (Foley) wants to run a fake punt every week. He wants to block every point. Ed wants to do that. (Coach Marcus Satterfield) Sat wants to throw the ball down the field every play. Garret (McGuire) wants to drop back and throw it 50 times. Tony (White) is going to go zero blitz every play. My job is to manage a team. Again, I let my coaches coach. I don’t want to make it sound like I’m sitting here going through every call but I set the tone for what we do. If we have a lead we are going to run the football and choke the game out. That is just what we are going to do. You know what will happen when we get good - and maybe we are good now maybe not I’m not saying - when we figure this whole thing out we are going to have a bunch of games when we have a lead in the fourth quarter and we run for 100 yards. Everyone is going to leave happy. I won’t be up for the Broyles award, no one is going to call me a guru. (Coach Marcus Satterfield) Sat might not be up for the Broyles award but we’ll win games. We just want to win.”
On the defensive lineman that changed positions
“I don’t want to say that yet. He might get upset. It’s one of the freshman. He literally just came to my office to say, ‘hey what am I doing today.’ For me I don’t like to suppose things. So I always say, ‘hey, can you give me some plays over here so I can just see it.’ Jeremiah Charles wideout, wideout, wideout. And then they were like, ‘hey can you just give us some reps at corner too?’ And now all of the sudden we watch him at corner and think he’s going to be a dynamic corner. (Tommi) Hill you know. Do you know how much (Coach Satterfield) Sat and Garret (McGuire) were upset when Tommi Hill went to full-time corner. You talk about offense or defense. I have to make those decisions. Tommi moved to full-time wideout and was just going to play third-down corner for us. DeShon (Singleton) went down and Tommi was gone in a flash. We go defense first with the personnel. I like to just see guys at different positions. And then figure out, ‘hey when we get to bowl practice where am I going to put this guy?’ Then in bowl practice you kind of get it and then when we get into the spring it helps guys because they know their future in the program."