Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule met with members of the media to preview Friday’s game at Illinois. Rhule discussed the last couple of practices in preparation for this Friday’s game and the importance of bringing your own energy to road games.
“They’ve been great,” Rhule said. “We’ve really practiced, they’ve shown up and they’ve been energized and ready to go. We practice tonight, we walked on Monday and I thought that was very focused. We practiced yesterday, thought it was probably one of our better practices. So we’ll see how the night goes and tomorrow morning, but they’ve responded so far.”
He also spoke on the future of the Nebraska football team, specifically highlighting the young receivers on the team.
“Our young receivers are going to be good,” he said. “I know everyone’s kind of like, well how come you can’t get them to play right now? That’s tough, but they’re going to be really talented. They’re really talented. They’re going to be really good and I think they’re going to help like I expect Jaylen (Lloyd) to play this week finally now. Our young D-line, Ty Robinson, was in there with me. Yesterday, we were talking and he was just talking about the process and the way we do things. Practicing on Sunday, practicing on Wednesday and was just saying how good he thought our young D-line would be going through this for two or three years. Those guys are talented people we haven't seen, we haven’t seen all of them yet. You’ve seen Sua (Lefotu) a little bit, Riley (Va -Poppel), Vincinent Carroll-Jackson will probably travel for us this week. There’s a lot of guys in those rooms that I think are outstanding prospects.”
Rhule mentioned the importance of bringing your own energy to every game, especially a road game.
“Coach Andy Reid when I was at Temple he was in Philadelphia,” Rhule said. “I know his family really well and Coach would always say to his team, which would then matriculate to me, ‘and all great teams do three things, they eliminate distractions, they create their own energy, they fear nothing and attack everything.’ Creating our own energy is something we try to do at practice, and we simulate that. Even going to La Tech in the rain delay, trying to create your own energy. When you’re having a tough ball game, like last week, you have to try to create your own energy. We created a lot of energy Sunday night, no one was watching. We created a lot of energy yesterday morning and we’ll have to do that Friday night. It’ll be great to be on the road.”
Kickoff between the Huskers and the Fighting Illini in Urbana-Champaign, Ill., is set for 7 p.m. (CT) with live television coverage from FS1. The game can also be heard through the Huskers Radio Network.