Rhule Talks Offensive Line, Practice Mindset

Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule met with the media to preview Nebraska’s matchup against Indiana on Saturday. He discussed the offensive line unit and the run game. 

“It was good, one thing about the run game is we look at Anthony's (Colandrea) part in the run game,” he said. “We're going to make people defend our quarterback and it opens up the passing game. Quarterback draw with a RPO, zone reads we are going to do all of that. They did it with Tim Tebow, they did it with Cam Newton, we have Anthony. We certainly don’t want him to get hurt, we got to let him play. We see him as part of the run game, there are going to be some games where we are morphing away from the traditional runs. You have to cover these guys out here and if you cover those guys out here, our quarterback is going to run it against you. Some of those are scrambles, some people twist us. To me, it was a year ago that we spent a ton of time twisting, bumping off twists, now we man the twists and let him get outside. His one run was a 51-yard run. I like the way that Gunnar (Gottula) played inside. Gunnar is just such an unsung hero, not many guys can play four positions on the offensive line as well as he does. Tree (Babalade) has been playing well when you can get him into the game. We felt against Sidney Stewart and some of the edges that Maryland has. Sidney Stewart is a good player. The week before it was more of an athletic spin, we knew Sidney Stewart and those guys were going to come out and condense the pocket, speed the power. Tree, 330-pounds, gave us the edge that we liked. Played with Paul (Mubenga), played with Tree, play with all of those guys, feel like we have six guys who are starters. Then we got the second group in and it was really fun to see Sam (Sledge), Gibson (Pyle) continue to ascend for us and he is doing a really nice job, Preston Taumua is ascending for us. Hayden Ainsworth, the true freshman, got his first real action, got his first penalty, got his first block. Hayden should be a senior in high school, we think he is going to be a great talent, good to get those guys in as well.”

Rhule also spoke on the importance of players respecting practice and the fundamentals. 

“Yeah, I don’t know if guys have to like practice, I think they have to respect it,” he said. “They have to understand that there’s not a play – some of those plays that hit last game – there’s not a play that hit that we didn’t practice. When you're trying to build a program with young players, you're trying to develop their skills and techniques through practice. I think you get, we have had nine straight weeks of football, nine straight weeks of football now you want deliberate practice. You want guys understanding you still have to be technique sound we still have to. If we didn’t tackle the backs all the time in this past game, they create a lot of space. They’re going to throw an RPO out there to Nick Marsh or Charlie Becker and we're going to have to tackle right, so you have to practice those things. But to me it’s also just the deliberate nature of, hey this is what they do. Our offensive line is going to have to practice all of their pash rushes. We’re going to have to practice versus their cover two, three weak end. So if we don’t practice those things It’s about being very deliberate. Doesn't mean you have to like it all right but it just means that you have to respect it and we have a team they don’t always practice but they do respect it and I think it’s working out for a lot of guys. We have a lot of guys playing their best football, like (Williams) Nwaneri is becoming a really, really good player, (Vincent) Shavers played his best game, those guys respect practice. They don’t love practice, maybe, but they go out and respect it. (Andrew) Marshall’s as good a corner as there is. I think Donovan Jones is playing his tail off. Just continuing to double down on the process of practice.” 

He also talked about strategy when blocking punts.

“Our rules are different than the NFL,” he said. “In the NFL, they can’t go down till that ball is kicked. So now what you have is a lot of people holding up and then you try to rush and then because everyone has to go backwards right you incorporate the center into your protection. What’s happened in college, because you can go down the field, people want to release as many people as possible. You can kind of have shields and you used to be able to jump over the shield and now you have these kids from other countries who can roll. So, what you find is you have a shield over here. Maybe people try to come off the back side edge but you have to have really fast people to do it. Quinn (Clark) got one against Bowling Green. Congratulations to Bowling Green. I know they had a big win this past week. I was fired up for them. We think Quinn got a piece of one, I don’t know. I said Quinn did you get it he said I think so against Michigan State but it’s coming off that backside edge. This past week they kind of did the same thing, the special teams coordinator comes from the Urban Meyer family which I had been with, so I just kind of knew those protections. The first one, we manipulated the protection and we went inside and it took a lot of guys like Jasin Shiggs – Shiggs is a great special teams player for us right so he did his job and these guys all did their job and Jeremiah (Charles) came free got the ball, didn’t get the ball. For me to go after a punt on 4th and five doesn’t happen very often, it has to be, like I knew we were gonna get there. Great job by Brett (Maher) and Nick (Humphrey). We think he got the ball but whatever, it didn’t go our way. So we showed that then we came off the backside edge and blocked one. Basically now what people are saying is to get coverage there, basically leaving one guy unblocked and always having it always be the weakside guy and saying hey we have to hurry up and rush. It’s been one of our issues in our punting. Everyone is like, well why is Archie (Wilson) not punting the ball far enough well he’s rushing because we're trying to get so many people out, which was kind of the philosophy last year. We’ve kind of worked backwards a little bit maybe and been like, hey let’s protect a little bit more. We still aren’t perfect at it but I thought we saw some really big punts last week that got the ball down one to the ten, one made a great tackle on. I don’t know if I’m answering your question, it’s really the difference between college and pro and then what college used to be and what it’s kind of become now and again not being able to jump over the shield has really changed. We blocked a lot of punts at Temple. We just took like two NFL players and put them in the a-gaps and we just ran at you and tried to knock you back into the punter. We did it four punts a game we did one. Now we're just trying to go after them and then Jacory (Barney Jr.) has a great punt return, 22-yarder that he’s about that far away. Jacory was also a guy we weren’t sure if he was going to be able to play and then just like I said to you guys, knowing him he woke up Saturday morning and he was like, I’m ready to go.” 

The Huskers will take on the No. 7 Indiana Hoosiers this Saturday, Oct. 10. Kickoff is set for 11 a.m. (CT) and the game will be televised on FOX and can be heard across the Huskers Radio Network.