Football Video & Report: Sept. 18

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule met with the media to preview Saturday’s game against Michigan. He discussed DeShon Singleton and his contributions to the team.

“DeShon has done a great job,” he said. “He’s playing elite football. He’s significantly improved his tackling. He’s always been a good tackler, but he moved to the middle of the field compared to where he was in the boundaries. When you’re in the middle of the field and you come downhill, you have 300, 400 yards you have to work. During fall camp, I showed him some of those things from last year that he can improve upon. He plays man-to-man. He’ll play three in the slot. Some people try to get speed on the safeties and he’s done a great job of that. He’s a good athlete. Great leader. Tremendous leader. Great story of him getting here. I’m glad he got the extra year because of the junior college in junction. I thought it was wrong when he didn’t get the year back for his play, but there’s other reasons I guess. I’m happy he got it, I’m happy it worked out.” 

Rhule spoke on the quality of special teams in the Big Ten and what he’s thought of NU’s special teams unit so far.

“I think when you’re playing in the weather that we’re playing in – cold games late in the year, wind games in our stadium – the ability to flip the field and all that matters,” he said. “Early in the season, teams are scoring 50, 60, 70 points. As the year goes in, the games trend down as the weather impacts it. The ability to punt the ball down and make somebody drive the length of the field or the ability to get a good return and flip the field, I think, are important. We’ve played well so far. There’s some areas we have to be better at. Kicking the ball off, opponents’ starting field position, is a key one. Our opponent has an elite kickoff return team, a really good kickoff return team. That’ll be a really good story to watch. We haven’t punted in a couple games, so we’ll have to see how far we’ve come along with that if we call on Archie (Wilson). We haven’t kicked a field goal in quite some time. We’ve been practicing, we’ve been working. Those guys are doing a great job. Ek (Mike Ekeler) has done a great job. Brett Maher, who went into the Hall of Fame last week here, has done a great job. We’ll just have to play it out. Any one play isn’t going to win or lose the game. So we’re just taking the approach of ‘let’s throw everything we have at them’.”

He also talked about Glenn Thomas’ work with Dylan Raiola and TJ Lateef.

“Glenn is a process guy,” he said. “Some guys are like ‘yeah, that worked out, so you’re fine.’ No, Glenn is like ‘this is the step, this is the read, this is the footwork, this is the carriage of the ball.’ He’s just going to wear you out with it. I’ve had him at three different stops and I just think he’s excellent in terms of drilling and demanding what he wants and not letting positive outcomes detract from that. I think that’s exactly what young quarterbacks need. They need to do everything right and not worry about whether it worked or not. Just do everything right so it becomes a habit. I think he and Dana (Holgorsen) are a great combination. You have Dana, who comes from more of the air raid world. We’re not air raid, but he comes from that world of finding space, letting it rip. Then you have Glenn, who comes from the world of the National Football League of 22-word play calls and 16 checks. When Dana got here, for him to say ‘I want to keep these guys, I want to keep Glenn,’ – most guys wouldn’t do that. It’s what makes Dana so special. To want the staff to stick together because he liked the way that they worked. I remember him telling me, ‘I need what Glenn has. I need that methodical, disciplined, relentless approach to it. I need all those ideas of how to do things like an NFL team. I’ll bring the mindset that I have that’s scored a lot of points for a lot of years.’ I think it’s been a really good marriage.”

Kickoff between the Huskers and the Wolverines at Memorial Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 20, is set for 2:30 p.m. (CT) and will be televised on CBS. The game can also be heard across the Huskers Radio Network.