Butler Discusses Physicality, Defensive Line

Nebraska football defensive coordinator John Butler met with members of the media following the team’s practice on Tuesday.

He discussed tackling and the physicality of the defense. 

“From a physicality standpoint, that’s just something that we have to keep working at every day,” he said. “I think we’ve had, maybe this is our second true, full-padded practice. We’ve had a couple practices in uppers – I’ve said this before but football is such a unique game that you can practice all offseason, lift, train weights, but the contact aspect of this game and how it’s being limited by NCAA rules and even when you’re in the NFL, you can only have so many contact days. You have to maximize those. We’re working a lot of thud and strong thud tackles now. Eventually, we’ll get to some live on the ground stuff. You have to have that balance of maximizing the physicality of your whole team and our defense, but at the same time, keeping everybody healthy. It’s a work in progress.”

He spoke on how many players he wants to rotate into games. 

“I think as many good players as you have,” he said. “The defensive line rotates – we try to rotate as many people as we can. I don’t think there’s a set number, but I think you’d like to be three deep at corner and two deep at each safety position. Kind of have a rotational aspect of your d-line. I don’t have a number in my head as far as a whole number, but you’ve obviously got to have backups and then backups to those backups. In today’s practice, we repped a lot of those younger players, trying to get them up to speed and get them up to the standard. Depth is huge, but as far as a number, I can’t really give you that.”

Butler talked about the front line and the players replacing Ty Robinson and Nash Hutmacher.

“I think our d-line is heading in the right direction," he said. “Terry (Bradden) is doing a great job of getting those guys ready. Obviously, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that Nash and Ty are one type of player and the guys we have are their own style and they have their own strengths. That’s our job as coaches, is to maximize their value based on their skill set within our scheme. We’re young there, but I’m encouraged by how those guys are developing. They made some impact plays out there today, both in the run game and in the pass game. This is a process and development program, so everybody is going to keep getting better every single day, the d-line specifically. We all know, to be good on defense, you have to have a good d-line, so that’s what we’re going to keep working toward.”

Fans can purchase single-game or 3-game mini plan tickets at huskers.com/tickets. The 3-game mini plan includes the USC game, a choice between the Michigan State, Northwestern and Iowa matchups and a choice between the games against Akron and Houston Christian. 

NU will open its season against the Cincinnati Bearcats on Thursday, August 28 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo. The game, which starts at 8 p.m. (CT), will be televised on ESPN and can be heard across the Huskers Radio Network. The Huskers’ first home game is set for Saturday, Sept. 6 against the Akron Zips. That contest will kick off at 6:30 p.m. (CT) and can be seen on the Big Ten Network and heard across the Huskers Radio Network.