Rhule Discusses Game One, Looks Ahead to Bowling Green

Nebraska football Head Coach Matt Rhule met with the media ahead of NU’s game against Bowling Green on Saturday, Sept. 12. He opened his press conference recapping the Ohio contest and looking forward to Saturday.

“I’ll say a couple words about the last game, then kind of move on to Bowling Green,” he said. “Again, thank you to everyone who came to the game. It was obviously probably one of the hottest, if not the hottest, game I’ve certainly ever been a part of. For people to sit that long, to sit through it, just a great deal of appreciation on our end. I have a lot of respect for Ohio. I think that’s an excellent program, really well coached football team. That was needed for us to have sort of some early adversity and learn to overcome it. Hopefully, we’ve learned that previously to this, but have a chance to display it. Happy about the fact that our guys went out and outscored them 42-8, but with all that being said, you know, we have some areas that showed up in that game that weren’t good enough. Certainly the penalties in the first half. If you want to look at our scoring, it basically mirrors along with our penalty chart. To have two in the third quarter, none in the fourth, we improved our focus, but there is no excuse for that. It can’t happen. Defensively, giving up big plays. I thought we did a good job of shutting down the run game, but allowed the quarterback to get out in some of the pass rush situations, and some of the zone reads and crucial downs. Guys not taking the quarterback, not taking the football, also cannot happen, so we have a lot to improve upon. Special teams wise, while they didn’t hurt us, they didn’t really help us. We have good players, we expect them to make plays on special teams when given an opportunity. But Archie (Wilson) did a great job getting the one punt off where they had a free rusher coming at him, and it was good for us to get some of those things on tape. But we have obviously a lot of work to do, like most college football teams. So I’m pleased with our team, the way they battled, the way they hung in there, pleased with a lot of the players, some of their individual accomplishments, within the scheme. Pleased with our ability to handle adversity, but I think we saw what we can be, and also what we don’t want to do. Try to put together a full 60-minute game this week. Excited to have a night game. I think there’s nothing quite like Memorial Stadium at night. I know Bowling Green, Coach (Eddie) George, I consider Eddie a friend. One of my lifelong friends, a guy who was in my wedding, was his strength coach at Tennessee State, I know what Coach George did there. A tough, physical team, played a battle last week. Quarterback was excellent, (Jay) Kastantin. Got a diverse run game, excellent run game. They’ll challenge you, great blocking tight ends, receiving tight ends. Defensively, they played really well in the last game. Pringle, their linebacker, I think he had 13, 14 tackles, so it’ll be a great challenge and test for us this week to improve on the things we’re not doing well, and also focus on an excellent opponent. Our attention is moving forward, the guys are coming in, cause it’s Labor Day, coming in at 1:30, we’ll get our work done today and start trying to become a better football team this week.”

Rhule spoke on the tackling and defensive performance against Ohio.

“I thought it was good, it wasn’t great, it was good,” he said. “The first play the ball got away from us. We move onto this week versus this run game. It has to improve, we didn’t have a ton of missed tackles. I didn’t like our tackling on the quarterback. Bowling Green’s quarterback (Kastantin), he's also a mover as well. We’ll have to take great angles and try to keep him in the pocket, while continuing to improve assaulting the pocket as well.”

Rhule also discussed quarterback Anthony Colandrea’s debut.

“I thought Anthony (Colandrea) was excellent in the game, the backed up throw was his biggest throw you can make in a game,” he said. “He ran the football, on some of the runs that is needed. Came out, called a couple deep plays, took the checkdown. One was to Jacory (Barney), he got a 12 to 13 yard gain, kept the chains moving. One was to Mekhi (Nelson), which he scored on. I thought he showed a lot of maturity, he’s my type of quarterback. I like the way he plays, I also like his ability to adjust in the game and will have to continue to do that.”

He talked about where he’d most like to see improvements from week one to week two.

“Penalties and tackling show up – penalties, tackling and the kicking game. For us, we’ve identified things, hey, we need to get better at this, better at that. that first week one opponent, you don’t really know what the other team is going to throw at you, they don’t really know what you’re going to throw at them. So sometimes, there’s like a schematic rhythm of getting in the game and being like, hey, they’ve attacked us like this. But, I think the biggest thing is – I didn’t hate the tackling – but I want to get to the point where it's a suffocating defense. We gave up too many big plays to the running, quarterback just dropping back to throw it and then rushing. I know we’ll continue to improve that. And then the penalties. We have officials at every practice, we have officials at every scrimmage. We haven’t had those penalties called yet in the game, they happened but they’re unacceptable. There’s no excuse for them. Now, some penalties are good penalties, you’re playing football. But you can’t have pre-snap penalties, and things like that. You can’t have missed assignments that lead to explosive plays, and so, I’m hoping, with a weekend, everyone kind of takes a step, starting today in meetings.”

Nebraska will take on the Bowling Green Falcons on Saturday, Sept. 12 at 6 p.m. (CT) at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln. The game will be televised on FS1 and can be heard across the Huskers Radio Network.