Fall Camp Video & Report: August 23

Nebraska football Head Coach Matt Rhule members of the media following the team’s fall camp practice on Friday. 

Rhule spoke on the response and improvement from players and coaches during the last week of camp.

“I said that last week that’s right where we are supposed to be,” he said. “I don’t think we can say we are a really good team until we prove it. I liked the way we worked this week. This was a challenging week. Week three is the highest volume week, this was week four, sometimes people can start to let up. I didn’t see any let up this week. We will see how the mock game goes tomorrow. On Monday, I didn’t have the veterans guys practice, I had them coach. I had the young guys practice, really we are just trying to collect a couple young guys to prove that they are ready to go if we need them. If an Amari Sanders comes through and makes the team that much better. We know Jacory (Barney) in that mix obviously Dylan’s (Raiola) in that mix. Just trying to challenge some of those younger guys, the Amari Sanders, the Caleb Bennings, those guys, especially on defense. Where we have a veteran defense to come through and I think we are seeing that progress happen. We’ll need another great week of elite, elite preparation. It’s a challenge this week, even as you watch UTEP personnel. You might be watching an Eastern Kentucky player then you’re watching a UTEP player, then you’re watching an Austin Peay player you might be watching a player from Florida state as you prepare, personnel-wise. And then as you’re watching Austin Peay's film you’re trying to extrapolate it back to the players they have, so there’s a lot of work to be done. And that’s the maturity, but I mean I walked up to MJ Sherman and said “what do you think”? And he knew everything. He said ‘hey I know (Isaiah) Wright is going from the left side and Austins Peay’s going to play the right side there.’ He studied it and they have good players and you need to study them and that’s what they’re doing so I think we are headed in the right direction. 

Rhule touched on Heinrich Haarberg’s potential as a backup quarterback.

“Yeah. I think that remains to be seen,” he said. “I probably don’t want to give too much out there to everybody. I think in fairness to Heinrich, I just have so much respect for him as a competitor. He can go out and do anything. Look at Coach (Scott) Frost. He was one of the great quarterbacks in college football history and then went on and played safety in the National Football League and Heinrich reminds me so much of that. Heinrich to me could be a great safety, probably he’d be a great tailback, wide out, tight end, and so we have the opportunity to use him when needed. At the same time I don’t want to lose my number two quarterback, so there’s a fine line there. We are not going to play this year out of fear. We’re not going to play like, what if this goes wrong? I know sometimes that’s the way people think, that’s the way sometimes I think. But we made a decision that we are going to attack, that we’re going to go all in on this team and attack with everything we have and Heinrich is a part of that so we’re going to use him.”

Rhule talked about takeaways he got from fall camp. 
“There was never a practice I was disappointed in. There was never a practice where I was like ‘man we just don’t get it.’ It’s actually quite the opposite. We did a nine-on-seven on Tuesday and on Wednesday I came out there was no nine-on-seven. As I walked out, I looked at Donny (Donovan Raiola) and he’s like ‘did you watch the nine-on-seven’ and I was like ‘yeah, I said I haven’t seen us play like that in awhile.’ It’s just words if we don’t play that way next Saturday. Let me say that – I’m the first person that’s like that. You know practice doesn’t mean you’re going to win a game, practice gives you an opportunity to compete to win the game. You have to play well on gameday. There’s never been a lull in terms of that. We’ve had a very few distractions and very few issues. You know, we’ve had a couple which you’re going to have on a team. Very few distractions, by and large, other than Teddy’s (Prochazka) injury and Roger’s (Gradney) injury we’ve come out of this thing pretty healthy.” 

The Huskers will host a fan day Saturday, Aug. 24, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., located inside the Hawks Championship Center. Fans will have the opportunity to get autographs, meet players and buy merchandise from the Huskers Fan Shop.