Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule Pre-UTEP Press Conference

Opening Statement
“I am excited to be here for game week. Excited to see the students start classes on campus. Before we get started I want to wish all the local high schools all around the state good luck as they enter their seasons. We’re obviously excited to play. We’ve worked very hard. We’re excited to play a home game. We’re excited to play UTEP, Coach Walton is a winner. I’ve known him all the way back at East Texas Baptist. He’ll bring elite energy. He’ll bring a dynamic offense and an aggressive defense. They’ve got excellent players, so it’s going to be quite a challenge. We’re excited about it, excited about our team. I look forward to seeing everyone there starting with the legacy walk and all the way through the end of the game. We hope it’s a great day because we’ve worked very hard to get to this day.” 

On the kicking group overall
“We’re going to play them all. We have different roles for all of them. Big Ten play is four weeks away so I was hoping we’d be a little more dialed in on where they are. I feel like they’ve all competed enough, we’re going to give them all a chance. We’ll make some decisions probably three weeks down the line. They’re all doing really good things. That’s probably the one position where we’re still quite unsettled on, that’s kicker.” 

On Janiran Bonner’s rise and what he’s done to get to the top spot
“I think anytime you have a guy who is your starting slot-receiver, who was willing to be your starting fullback, there’s something special about that type of guy and their brain. He was an excellent high school receiver. He had an injury. As we tried to find roles for him because we like the way he plays football, it started to emerge. He was unable to keep that 225-228 weight so as he kept staying around 218, I said ‘hey let’s put him in the slot and see how physical he can be’. He’s just done excellent. We can be at 11 personnel and all of a sudden get him under center and have him be the fullback still. There's a lot of things you can do with a guy like Janiran (Bonner). At the end of the day he’s just a winner. He’s tough. He’s kind of emblematic of the type of guys I love to coach. Again, as we talk about positionless football, I think throughout the course of the year you’ll see him do a lot of things with the versatility he brings.” 

On the run game coming out of Fall Camp
“I feel good about it. But, we’re running against ourselves everyday. It’ll be really interesting to see when we play someone else. Handling different fronts. Now, Coach Clark’s defense is very similar to ours. 3-down, 4-down. 3-5 hybrid. All the same things that they do is what we do. So you have to be able to handle their pressure packages and the way that they attack you. They held opponents right around 4 yards a carry last year. It’ll be a challenge but I feel good about where we are.”

On his expectations for Dylan Raiola
“I’d rather lose the first game than the last game. So, we’re not going to ease into it. We’re going to play.” 

On what Dylan has showed them so far
“Dylan’s going to play. He’s going to play the plays. When we call drop back, he’s going to drop back, he’s going to go back there and take his drop, go through his progression. Just how we want him to play when he’s a junior, we’re going to start day one that way. We’re not easing into anything.”  

On Byle Hill and if he’s available
“Blye Hill came back from the knee and was doing really well. Sometimes you come back from an injury and it leads to another injury. He’s got some soreness in his hamstrings, so he’s available. We’ll have to see how this week goes. That was kind of an unfortunate remnant of this past week, just some tightness in his hamstrings. Nothing serious. He’s available, but I don’t know how much he actually will play. You’re looking at Ceyair Wright, you’re looking at all those guys – Amari Sanders, Jeremiah Charles, Larry Tarver Jr.”

On Henry Lutovsky’s status
“He’s back in the mix. I think he’d be available, kind of like Blye (Hill), on an emergency basis. He’s probably trending toward, sometime next week, being able to play a full game.”

On any other injury updates
“I’m not very good at that, sorry. I’m trying to think if there’s anybody else. Gunnar Gottula is injured right now. Gunnar’s got an ankle. He’s trending toward being able to play, I’d say probably next week. Brodie Tagaloa, hopefully two weeks from now. Tristan (Alvano) is kicking, he’s in the mix. We’ll make a decision probably Thursday or Friday for who’s going to kick.”

On Malachi Coleman’s status
“Malachi is healthy. He had a groin, so he’s just a little bit further down on the depth chart right now.”

On how this season is comparing to Baylor in 2019 so far
“The hard thing is, that was year three. The team in year two, they figured out how to win. They got to a bowl game, they won the bowl game. We haven’t made that step. We haven’t gotten to a bowl game or won a bowl game. Year three for me, they were reporting on the news that I was leaving and taking the Jets job. I was like ‘I’m not leaving here.’ I knew we were going to be good. I knew. Those guys, they were dialed in. I think we have the same level from our older guys of accountability. It’s just learning how to win. It was a 53-yarder from a walk-on kicker to send the game into overtime against TCU. We had the ball at 2nd-and-19 with a minute left on our own 1-yard line and Charlie Brewer took it 99 yards. We won four games in overtime or on the last possession. That’s the secret sauce of where we have to get to with this team. That’s why I’m not easing into it. I’m not going to sit there and say ‘hey, Dylan (Raiola), hand the ball 42 times, don’t throw it – oh, hey, go win the game for us.’ I’d rather coach the mistakes now, if there are mistakes, and then, when the time comes…”

On how this team has been staying in the moment
“They have their own saying, it’s not mine. They say ‘one better.’ I think they’ve done that. They try to get one better every day. I think Corey (Campbell) or someone did that, and they stick to it. Not everything is perfect. Again, there’s just a core group of veteran guys that make the thing go. Everyone who starts on defense, except maybe one guy, is a senior or could be a senior. There’s still some COVID years out there and some injuries. Pretty much everyone is a senior. When everyone asked last year, why is the defense so much further ahead than the offense? A lot of the guys on defense have played a ton. Now, what you’re seeing on offense, is you’re starting to see the guys weather the storm. They’re getting a little bit older now, so there’s that mix. They’ve done a good job.”

On how the offense’s growth could open up Coach Satterfield’s play book
“At the end of the day, to me, offensive football is about getting the ball in the hands of guys who can make plays and letting them make plays. I’ll just go back to the running backs. It’s really about, when we block it for four, we can’t just get four anymore. Four needs to become 12. Block it for four and it needs to go be 80. That’s the step that we have to see. We have big receivers, so we’re going to face a really aggressive defense. They’ll play man on us, so there’s going to have to be a lot of big body catches. Instead of trying to scheme up the perfect play, we’re just going to have to call plays and let the fellas go win. When you have guys you believe in, you have to let them go win. Satt (Marcus Satterfield) has got it all at his fingertips. The offense has worked really hard since the first week of June on these plays. We’re not going to go out there and reinvent the wheel. We’re not tricking anybody. We know what we’re doing, we’re going to go out there and do it and see what happens.”

On Jahmal Banks
“When he came in on his visit both he and Ms. Kristie (Martin), his mother, a lot of guys will tell you their goals and he was talking about nonprofit work and the things he wanted to do someday. I hear that a lot and he’s one of the first guys that I have actually seen anybody do it to the level that he does. He is here to help affect other people. There is not a day that I am not blown away by his impact on other people. He lives such a life of gratitude. He has had a really good effect on those guys and then his professionalism. Him and (Isaiah) Neyor have brought a tremendous sense of professionalism to an already good group. You're going to have Neyor playing at his third school, fourth or fifth year senior one play and then you are gonna have Jacory (Barney Jr.) playing his first college game on the next rep. It’s a fun time to be at Nebraska with these guys. What’s great about Jahmal’s voting is the guys on defense voted for him, the offensive line voted for him. He’s respected by everybody.”  

On Jahmal Banks’ non-profit work
“You should probably talk to him on the stuff he’s doing outside. He led our team in community service hours. We do the offseason points – he literally shattered what anybody else had ever done. I’m talking about three schools. The amount of stuff that he did in the offseason and that he does shattered anything anybody has ever done. Elliott Brown was right there with him, I just had not seen anybody do that. Normally you come in and you’re like, I am a one-year guy. I am going to buy into the culture but I want to put good stuff on the tape and get drafted. He came here to try to help change our culture and improve it. Jahmal was just the most amazing addition to that. It’s good when other transfer guys come in and maybe they are struggling with the things we ask of you, but they see him buying into it and the success he’s having and think ‘maybe I should try this.’ The impact of Jahmal Banks will be here for a while.” 

On how Dylan Raiola has navigated the attention
“I think like anybody else, there are probably things that he likes. You like when kids have your jersey and when kids come up to you. At the same time, I think he’s done a great job of always humbly working. He texted me every night last week asking ‘may I please be late to curfew’ and he’s still in the building. I came in this morning to get my old man workout in and there’s music in the cardio room and I’m like ‘who’s in here’ and he’s in there riding the bike at 6 a.m. He understands that to get all of that you have to have work. I remind him like this position, when you’re the quarterback at the University of Nebraska, you better be ready to ride the highs and lows. Your life better not be about what people think about you. It better not be that. I think he and his family have instilled that in him. And he’s a good teammate and he does what he can with the fellas to help get them ready as well.”

On what fans can expect on Saturday
“I think they are going to have to come and see it, come and watch. I don’t want to give too much away. We are going to play the way we play. We like to run it and throw it, not just run it. But we still want to run the football. The key tenets of football are what they are supposed to be. The biggest thing for me is we want to play complementary football. We want to win the turnover battle and be physical. We want to have a culture of execution that is not jumping up and making a one-handed catch. That’s the last phase of execution. We want to align and assign properly and we want to play with great energy and dominant contact and when the chance comes go and make a play. We have a lot of good players on our team, right now we talk about a couple of them because some of them have not established themselves out there yet but there is going to be opportunities. When you watch UTEP’s offense, at least based upon Austin P, they test every facet of your defense. They are going to play with great tempo so you are going to have to sub a lot of guys. They are going to attack you on the perimeter so your cover guys have to be really physical. They are going to take shots down the field. They are going to run the quarterback. Their tailback, Jevon Jackson, is an excellent football player with elite contact balance and he can make you miss. If you look at most games early in the year, games are won or lost in week one based upon tackling and based upon giving up big plays and missed assignments. If you watch the Georgia Tech game, bad snap, they have the ball on the 39-yard line and they throw a tunnel screen out. They make that tackle and it’s a long kick, if they miss that tackle he’s down in field goal range and they win the game. We are going to have to tackle really well. They brought over a lot of talent, a lot of skill, a lot of speed. Our fans will get to see our defense tested in ways we don’t get tested in the Big Ten. It’s going to go from a bunch to 5 by 0 to a double pass to tempo to inside zone. It’s really a great offense. They averaged 34.6 points a game last year and they only averaged 68 plays a game last year. There’s some games that are going to go fast and it will be a challenge. It will be good for our defense if we can handle it. I’m out there at practice and every other play is a redo right now because we are just not handling the amount of things that you do not really see when you go to a Big Ten game. It’s a wide open style that is fun to watch but not fun to play against.” 

On the depth at safety and Rahmir Stewart
“I didn’t bring him in. Derek’s (Branch) done a great job. Derek was a guy that we kept up last year. He’s a legacy player, he's just a smart, heavy, tough football player. He’s dependable and he does things right. He’s getting an opportunity right now to play on some special teams as well. Rahmir I held him out from the season. It’s really been his weight being where it’s supposed to be. To his credit he handled that and when he showed back up to camp he was in good shape and his weight was down. And he got an opportunity and played the way we know he’s capable of playing. We believe Rahmir is a really good football player. He is just going to have to cut loose a little bit. He’s in the mix to play on teams and he’ll just have to keep his weight down to about 205. When he’s at 205 he’s an excellent safety.”

On the experienced defense helping the up-tempo play
“The benefit of it is probably that a lot of those guys played Colorado last year. It was 13-7 and all of a sudden that blew up to 36-13. You realize if you’re playing the type of team that is going to play you with tempo and try to win on the perimeter and run tunnel screens, that can really hurt you. When you have older guys, you can warn them of things. So they don’t take it as ‘coach doesn’t believe in us, coach don’t worry’. You have to have humble confidence, you prepare for everything. Going back to the way Jake (Brown) and them attacked us at LA Tech, going back and watching the tempo of Colorado affect us late in the game. Going back and watching Coach Walton play Alabama two years ago, watching them play Tennessee a year ago, watching all their games last season. You can see the ways in which they hurt people and then veteran players should lock their jaws to get ready for those things.” 

On how to prepare for games with lots of new players and coaches
“We watch a bunch of film of a bunch of different people. But as much as anything, we always try to focus on ourselves, study the other team’s players, focus on ourselves and say ‘what do they have’. I think a big piece of it is going to be the tempo. It’s going to be the heat.” 

On how he’s hoping the guys will translate the closed scrimmages to Saturday
“Nothing should be different. You should not play differently when there’s people watching. If you play differently you were doing something wrong to begin with. When I was a young coach at University of Buffalo we got fired with two games left in the season. I remember my dad saying however you coach these two games is really who you are as a coach. And those words always made sense to me. If you start doing something differently because of a certain game then you weren’t doing enough to begin with. Our guys have worked very hard, they compete against each other. Prepare with tremendous respect for your opponent. But, when we go out there it’s about us. I want to see us ride the highs and lows of the game. That's the difference.” 

On UTEP’s Maurice Westmoreland
“Westmoreland is a pro. He’s a pro. He’s very versatile, great arm over, great ability to affect pass rushers. He can rattle his pass, shoulder shake, get tackles off balance. He’s not afraid to take the inside move, which is the hallmark of a really confident pass rusher. He’s got a really great motor. He can also drop into space. While he is sort of a known rusher, you also have to account for ‘what if he doesn’t come, you can’t put a back on him.’ He’s an excellent, excellent football player, one of the better guys we’ll see. Credit to their coaching staff, he probably could have gone to the portal and played anywhere, but he wanted to stay at UTEP and stay for them. It’s really good for us, there’s been a lot of questions by you guys, a lot of questions by us about our our tackles and tackle depth. They’re going to have a great challenge in week one. When it comes to playing a great pass rusher, it’s really the job of all 11 guys. You can’t run that triple release you saw on Instagram versus practice. You have to get open quickly because you’re beating the pass rush. The quarterback can’t pass on ones and get greedy and go to twos, he has to profit when he can. We have to get the ball out of our hands, we have to pass the ball, we have to run the ball, we have to chip. He’s an excellent passer, and if you go to the other side, Devin Goree is a really good player as well. They have two really good edge players, and again, Coach JJ Clark, they will zero you up, they will come after you, they will blitz you. You have to be able to handle the pressure and handle the blitz. Not one part of this coaching staff that we’re playing against doesn’t come in and try to win. Somebody who played D1, they’re just like ‘hey, let’s play it close to the vest.’ These guys, they’re coming to win. So it’s a great, great, great first test for us to handle someone that’s going to throw everything at you. A big part of that is Westmoreland and his ability to change the game.”

On when they will give out the Blackshirts
“Tomorrow. Today was a walk-through type of day.”

On starting at home this season
“For me it’s only been one year right so I mean you know, I know that I failed the team last year when we went to Minnesota preparing for the crowd noise. I didn’t think I did a good enough job. So we certainly, if you’ve been in the chemistry lab or something I’m sure you’ve heard the crowd noise pretty much everyday at some point because we’re preparing for when that time comes, but I’m really excited to be at home right. And you get off the bus right and there’s all your family and friends and fans that just to me I think it’s a four minute walk and it’s four minutes for us. Four minutes and seven seconds Dr. El (Susan Elza) said the time is, but to me it’s four minutes and seven seconds of gratitude. It’s four minutes for me and our players to recognize that playing at home is about way more than just us. Like Fan Day I just reminded our guys there might be kids at Fan Day that won’t ever get a chance to come to a game but they get a chance to come to Fan Day. If you walked around I don’t think you saw any of our guys with their phones out. I hope you didn’t see them on their phones. I saw them interacting with them. So one chance we get on gameday to interact with the fans and just be reminded that ‘hey we are a part of something bigger.’ And there’s a reason why we ran that stadium all summer. There’s a reason why we were running those sides. There’s a reason why the coaches even. I ran it once after that I said, ‘this will have to be a player led team because I can’t do this.’ There’s a reason why we did that because it’s bigger than just us. It’s bigger than just one guy. It’s about the team. It’s about the University. It’s about the state. It’s about everyone that comes to the games so I am excited to be at home. I am excited to have that lack of crowd noise but along with that comes a distraction. Am I gonna play a play and then wave to my mom or am I going to play the next play? There’s a lot of things here that you know with the older team they’ll get, and with some of the young guys we will have to keep refocusing them. We have to go like this every single game and get better. That’s why we are going to start playing the way we want at the end of the year at the beginning of the year. If it doesn’t look perfect early on we won’t flinch. We’re gonna do what we do and just try to get better every game so that at the end of the season we'll play our best game, the last game.” 

On Phalen Sanford’s chances of playing in the NFL
“Oh yeah I’ve paid attention to Phalen. I showed the team when he scooped and scored and ran the ball back. I showed the team because he is the epitome of what we are trying to build right. It doesn’t matter how you get there, it matters about what you do once you’re here. For all of our guys. I’m talking about the five star recruits that come to us, or the walk-ons. I want their best days to be ahead of them. And Phalen’s a winner. The same guy that started off last year with no scholarship and was going to pay his way until the last day we were able to get him something. I’m excited for him. If he makes it, great, if he doesn’t make it, hopefully they will put him on the practice squad. I talked to one of the coaches this year, and he just talked about what an unbelievable grinder. He’s the type of guy in that league, who's going to be healthy, that can play multiple positions, that can show up on game day. You know they always have a chance. If our team can see Phalen’s success, again, his legacy lives on. They (the players) are like ‘hey I need to do this this and this’, whether it’s Omar (Brown), Quinton (Newsome) or Phalen, I’ll be obviously watching all those guys and so hopefully they have a great year and help themselves next year.”

On the second unit playing like backups
“I think some of them understand ‘okay here’s what I need to do’ really I feel like, we feel like we’re three deep on the D-line of guys who can go in. I think there’s about nine, maybe 10 guys who are prepared to play. In fairness, I think you know there’s probably four linebackers and three jacks we’d put in the game right now, maybe five. Actually in the secondary, we’ve been challenging some guys. If you’re here on scholarship and you’re a DB and you’re not starting on special teams, you have to really look at yourself and say ‘why? I’m fast, I’m explosive.’ I’ve seen some of those guys really improve this week. We’ve really challenged them. Our season will go based on our depth. We should have good depth, we just have to keep coaching it.”

On what coaches will be up in the box
“We are still kind of working through a little bit of that. I only say that to say the iPads, every time we’ve done it, we love it. We have it every day at practice too. There is still some stuff remaining to be seen, but Marcus (Satterfield) will definitely be in the box. I think Garret (McGuire) will probably be with him. Coach (Jamar) Mozee being with Garret with the receivers and wideouts has allowed us to put Mozee down. So Jamar down and Garret up. I think it will be like that. And then some of the QCs (quality controls) and analysts and I think most of the ‘position coaches’ on defense will be down. Most of the QCs and analysts will be up. Because we have the ability now to right after the drive go look at an iPad, we don’t need quite as many experienced eyes, at least on defense, up top. We want more guys down on the field. Again, versus this up-tempo offense, managing the substitutions is going to be a big deal. Tony (White) will be down. Satt (Marcus Satterfield) will be up. Ed (Foley) and Josh (Martin) will both be down. Mainly analysts will be up and Garret (McGuire), Satt (Marcus Satterfield) and (Aaron) Coeling.” 

On how they get footage to the iPads
“It’s an independent company on game day that runs it through DV Sport so that both sides get it. There’s an independent company that shuts off the headset mic at 15 seconds so there’s never any gamesmanship. We are getting a different feed and it’s not even our camera, it's a separate camera that’s getting us the video. In the box it’s real time. The play hits, it’s wired in, they get the play right away. On the sidelines, it goes to a cart and then when you’re over, you go to the offense, come over and sit down and they bring over the 8 iPads. You have a total of 18 iPads that you can use between up and down stairs and 23 headsets.”