Nebraska's Matt Rhule speaks at Big Ten Media Day. Courtesy of the Big Ten Conference.
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00:00This coach is Nebraska's Matt Rule.
00:04Rule enters his second season as head coach of the Huskers,
00:07who opened the 2024 campaign on August 31st against UTEP.
00:13Coach Rule, welcome.
00:14We'll begin with your opening statement.
00:19Good afternoon.
00:19Thank you on behalf of our team.
00:21I appreciate everyone covering us.
00:23Thank you to Commissioner Petiti
00:25and the entire Big Ten staff.
00:27Welcome to the four new teams,
00:30especially UCLA, who I spent some time as a student at.
00:33So UCLA is always near and dear to my heart.
00:36So welcome.
00:38Very, very proud to represent the University of Nebraska.
00:41We brought three of our best student athletes here,
00:45Ty Robinson, Isaac Gifford, and Ben Scott.
00:48If you'll just allow me for a second,
00:50you know, we brought them.
00:53They're all college graduates, over 94 starts,
00:56working on their master's degrees.
00:58But if anything else, in a day and age in college football,
01:01where everyone's always talking about who's transferring out,
01:05talking about recruiting,
01:07these guys and a couple others made the decision
01:10to come back and not go to the NFL, but play another year.
01:13So I'm so grateful to them.
01:15I think what we'll see in this new era of college football
01:17is the teams that can stay together
01:19and have veteran staffs, veteran teams,
01:21are gonna be really good.
01:22And I think they've given us a chance
01:23to have a really good team this year.
01:25So grateful to them.
01:27It's been an exciting time for us.
01:28It's a great time to be a Husker.
01:30Troy Dannen coming in and taking over,
01:32I think it's really brought a positive energy
01:35to the athletic department.
01:36Five Big Ten championships this year
01:39in the athletic department.
01:40Multiple athletes representing us in the Olympics.
01:44I finished 22nd in the all sports standings.
01:47And so now it's our time to do our part.
01:50We think we have a really good team.
01:51And we think that we're a team
01:52that people are gonna have to deal with this year.
01:55And I've liked the way that they've worked.
01:57We finished the semester with a 3.241 accumulated GPA,
02:01the highest in school history.
02:03The guys are getting it done in the weight room.
02:05They're getting it done in the classroom.
02:07Now we've gotta get it done on Saturdays.
02:09So with that, I'll take your questions.
02:12Coach, we got first row on your right side.
02:20Coach, Lane Herrington, Stateline Power Five.
02:21How you doing today?
02:22Good, how are you?
02:23I'm all right.
02:24Well, let's talk about last season.
02:25It's no mystery.
02:27Nebraska at the Big Ten with 16 interceptions.
02:30However, it's year two.
02:31How do you see the offense evolving
02:33under Scott Satterfield?
02:35And now that you have players like Dylan Rayl
02:37and on roster?
02:38Yeah, you know, I thought last year,
02:41we played three quarterbacks.
02:43I think when you go back and look at a lot of things
02:45that happened, a lot of guys did do a lot of good things.
02:48You know, it's obviously overshadowed
02:50with numbers, like you said.
02:52But, you know, Marcus is a coach that I trust
02:54and believe in.
02:55We brought in Glenn Thomas to be the quarterbacks coach
02:58who we have a lot of history, the three of us together.
03:00And we have a lot of skill.
03:03One of the things that happened to us last year
03:05is, you know, a bunch of our receivers
03:06we were counting on early got hurt.
03:08Two of our tailbacks got hurt.
03:09A couple of linemen got hurt.
03:11And in the midst of that adversity,
03:12I'm always looking for like, hey, how do we get better?
03:14And we put the Jalen Lloyds in,
03:17the Malachi Coleman's, young players.
03:19And by the end of the year,
03:20Jalen and Malachi were good players.
03:22So now we enter year two and those guys are a year older.
03:25Instead of red shirting, they now know what to expect.
03:28We have depth at receiver.
03:29We have depth in the running back room.
03:31We went out and recruited some really good players.
03:34We brought some guys into the portal,
03:35like Isaiah Nayor and Jamal Banks.
03:38So we have a deep receiver room
03:40and we have a deep running back room.
03:42We have a veteran offensive line
03:44and we have three quarterbacks that we know can play.
03:46And so I expect us, I expect us to be great on defense
03:51and I expect us to make a real jump on offense.
03:54Last row on your right side.
03:55Hey coach, Trey Redfield with NCV News and Kearney
03:58all the way here in the back.
03:59Wanted to ask about John Butler.
04:01How does his hire help take this defensive back group
04:04to new heights in your second year here in Nebraska?
04:07Well, you know, John's a guy I've known a long time.
04:10And I think anytime that you can hire someone on your staff
04:13as a position coach, who's been a coordinator,
04:17they come in with another set of eyes.
04:19I've had a chance to coach against John.
04:21When I was at Temple, he was at Penn State.
04:23Obviously in the NFL, he was in Buffalo.
04:25You know, I mean, just think about in recruiting
04:27for those guys who want to go to the NFL
04:29and they're talking to us, you know,
04:30I've been in those draft rooms,
04:31but John's coached Micah Hyde.
04:34You know, he's coached Jordan Poyer.
04:35He's coached top five secondaries.
04:38And so, you know, it was unfortunate
04:41we had to change that late in the year,
04:43but we wouldn't have gotten John earlier.
04:44He was at a point where he was ready
04:46to get back in and start coaching.
04:48It just kind of so happened that I was on vacation
04:50at the beach about two towns away from where he was.
04:52So it was all pretty fortuitous.
04:55We sat down and Tony White's one of the best coaches
04:58in college football.
04:59He's an amazing defensive coordinator.
05:01Terrence Knighton is an amazing defensive line coach.
05:03Rob Dvoracek, excellent young linebacker coach.
05:06I think John will bring some experience,
05:09a second set of eyes,
05:10and a guy that the players can trust will make them better.
05:13Fifth row on your left side.
05:16Hi coach, Abby Harris, Go Big Red cast.
05:18After completing your first season in the Big 10,
05:21what advice do you wish you would have received?
05:27Well, one of the things about being at Nebraska,
05:29you know, you do get a lot of advice.
05:31I mean, you know, coach Osborne's there all the time
05:33to help, coach Solich is there to help.
05:35You know, coach Osborne tried to warn me about the weather.
05:38He tried to warn me about the wind and I heard it,
05:42but it was until it was like 30 miles an hour in my face
05:45that I was like, oh, coach Osborne wasn't lying.
05:48I think the biggest thing I regret from last year
05:51was, you know, when you're in pro football,
05:54it's kind of, you know, it's kind of quiet
05:56and there aren't bands and things like that.
05:58The crowd isn't, and we started our first two games
06:01last year on the road in hostile environments.
06:04Minnesota, you know, they did a great job.
06:06They had a gold out for their first game.
06:08And so just getting readjusted to the crowd noise
06:10and the passion of the fans in the Big Ten,
06:13the atmospheres we're gonna have to go into,
06:17we have to be better on the road.
06:18And so I wish I would have taken that,
06:20I would have taken that to heart and gotten that advice,
06:23but I am so blessed.
06:24I mean, I get to coach college football and some days
06:27I've got George Darlington, legendary secondary coach.
06:31I mean, I might have Tommy Frazier or Eric Crouch.
06:34I might have coach Osborne there.
06:35I might have coach Solich there.
06:36Like it's a football coach's dream.
06:41First row on your right side.
06:45Kenneth Berry, Touchdown Detangents.
06:46Coach, with all your experience coming from,
06:49I mean, you go back to the Big 12 and Baylor.
06:52Defensively, how excited are you knowing
06:56you got all these former Pac-12 schools coming in
06:58and they run a lot of up-tempo
06:59and obviously the Big Ten, smash-mouth football.
07:04How excited are you to kind of take on that challenge?
07:08And when it comes to just the team,
07:10how do you feel like they're kind of really leaning
07:13into your message and do you feel like it's similar
07:16to when you kind of had that big breakout season at Baylor?
07:19Yeah, I think you can tell when a team is ready
07:21to make the turn in their body language,
07:24in the way that they walk around the building.
07:26It's just confidence.
07:28For young people nowadays,
07:30there's nothing more than confidence.
07:31There's such a fear of failure
07:33because everything's evaluated.
07:35And I think when I walk through our locker rooms
07:38and I walk through our weight rooms
07:39and I walk out in the field, I see a confident team.
07:42I see a team that understands that games
07:44are gonna come down to the final seconds
07:46and the narrative about close losses,
07:49we're gonna turn that into close wins.
07:52In terms of the teams coming in from the West Coast,
07:54I mean, I don't wanna speak for them.
07:56I do know that travel and weather
07:59are gonna be real things in this new Big Ten.
08:03Having to play and then travel maybe five or six hours
08:06and then play again the next week,
08:07those are all things that the best minds
08:09will find the best solutions to.
08:11And so we're trying to model everything out as we go.
08:14You might play one week and it might be 85 degrees
08:17and you might play the next week up in Madison, Wisconsin,
08:19and it might be really, really, really cold.
08:21And so all of us have our own challenges.
08:24I'm kind of focused on ours, but I do know this.
08:26Deshaun Foster was a player when I was a GA.
08:29Lincoln Riley's one of my great friends in coaching.
08:31I've coached against him multiple times.
08:33I have a lot of respect for the University of Washington.
08:36I think Dan Lanning's a great coach.
08:38So I think it's only made the conference better.
08:40On your right side here, first row.
08:43Heather Denich with ESPN.
08:45I hear this confidence from you,
08:47but also coming at a time when you do have to go to USC
08:50and you're going to play Coach Foster.
08:53How do you balance that challenge
08:55of being on the brink of something good
08:57with the timing of these teams coming into the league
09:00and the Big Ten just quite frankly
09:02being so much more difficult to win?
09:05Yeah, I think it's a great question.
09:08I laugh with Troy sometimes.
09:09If Haven Fields, our sport administrator,
09:12would have said, hey, I want to add USC and UCLA
09:14to the non-con, I'd have thrown a fit.
09:17Like, I'm not playing those guys.
09:19Well, here they are.
09:20So I think when you look at the Big Ten
09:25playing nine conference games,
09:28more importantly, playing five road conference games.
09:31Not every conference plays five roads.
09:33Most of them, some of them, some of the nine teams,
09:35the 18 leagues, they play four road games.
09:37And sometimes one's like a neutral site,
09:39so they play three where you have to go
09:40into someone else's stadium.
09:42In the Big Ten, we have to go into someone else's stadium
09:44in our league five times and duke it out.
09:47So, but I think we'll have a lot of access
09:49to the college football playoff.
09:50And I think four teams from this league
09:53should get in every year because this is the best league.
09:56This is the NFL of college football in my mind.
09:58It stretches from coast to coast,
10:00different time zones, different weather.
10:02That's not to diminish any other league.
10:03The SEC is amazing.
10:05These other leagues are great,
10:06but the challenge in the Big Ten
10:07is gonna be really difficult.
10:09Travel, weather, and great teams.
10:11For us, we think every game's a big game
10:14because we're playing in it.
10:15And we want, you didn't come to Nebraska
10:18because you wanted to play an FCS slate.
10:21You came here because you want the challenge of,
10:22I mean, we get to go to the Coliseum and play football.
10:25How lucky are we?
10:26And so that's why you come to Nebraska.
10:28That's why in recruiting,
10:29like competitiveness is like my number one trait
10:32because I want guys who want to prove it on the field.
10:35Not anywhere else.
10:36On your left side, coach.
10:38Coach Caleb Bradham, Sports Philanthropy Network.
10:42Four numbers, 3.241.
10:46You were the first coach to come up
10:48and talk about the high marks academically of your team.
10:52I want to give you a moment to talk
10:54about the importance of education.
10:57And I want to applaud you
10:59for being the first coach to mention that.
11:03That's very kind.
11:04I'm sure all my colleagues are very proud of,
11:07very proud of all the things
11:08that they've done academically as well.
11:12You know, I'm the son of a high school teacher.
11:15My dad's a teacher and minister.
11:17My mother gave her life to working with women.
11:19You know, we lived in New York City
11:21and football has brought me so much.
11:23You know, football brought me a bachelor's degree.
11:25It brought me a master's degree.
11:27I was on my way to my PhD
11:30and then got lucky enough to get a coaching job.
11:32And this is my passion.
11:34We're proud of the players.
11:36We have 20 graduates heading into the season.
11:37We'll have 10 more in December.
11:39So when we go to our bowl game,
11:40we'll have 30 college graduates on our team.
11:43And so at the end of the day, you know, we all want to win,
11:46but if you don't have a purpose
11:48that states that we want to raise great men,
11:50that we want our players, you know,
11:52I want our players someday to look back and say,
11:53my life is better because I played
11:55at the University of Nebraska
11:57and I played for those coaches.
11:58And I can think of no better way
11:59of doing that than education.
12:02Follow closely by community service and giving back.
12:05So we're going to try to win on the football field and off.
12:08We've got one final question on the back right.
12:12Hi coach, Kylan Mills with the Big Ten Network.
12:14Great to see you.
12:15Something you've said is that it's a priority this season
12:18to address the turnover margin minus 17 last year.
12:22It's been an issue that's plagued this program
12:24beyond just that.
12:25Just curious as you look ahead to fall camp,
12:27how do you try to address that?
12:28And where do you start in trying to shift those numbers?
12:32Yeah, you know, it's a blemish, you know,
12:37it's nothing I've ever done before.
12:39It'd be minus 17, right?
12:41And so, and that's, we gave the ball away 31 times.
12:44We only took it away 14.
12:45So both sides have owners,
12:46but to give the ball away 31 times
12:49and our season would have been different
12:50had that not happened.
12:52The great news is, is then when you look back at a season
12:55where you were almost, we were five and seven
12:57and with two games left,
12:58that we were still in the math to like,
13:00to get to Indianapolis.
13:02And you have something that outrageous.
13:04You understand that, hey, if we just fix one or two things,
13:07we can be a really good team.
13:08We don't have to do an overhaul.
13:09We don't have to fire a bunch of coaches.
13:10We don't have to change the offense and defense.
13:13We really just have to win the turnover battle.
13:15And so I think anytime you want to seek change,
13:18the first thing you need is buy-in.
13:20I think by the end of the year,
13:21our players truly understood that, man,
13:24we have to protect the football
13:25and we have to take it away.
13:27We've practiced it.
13:29The thing that I've tried to do is,
13:30I want to be a lifelong learner.
13:31I mean, I'm in Texas this past week at coaching clinics
13:35and I'm sitting listening to coaches talk,
13:37high school coaches, college coaches,
13:38about the way they're doing things
13:39because we have to find a way
13:42to go from minus 17 to plus seven.
13:46We have to find a way to get that done.
13:47And so we're going to practice it.
13:49We're going to coach it.
13:50We're going to allocate playing time
13:52based upon who protects the ball,
13:54but also who takes it away.
13:55And, but I think the buy-in came from our players early on.
13:58They recognized we need to do this
14:00because we have a really good football team.
14:02And you know what?
14:03If you turn the ball over three times,
14:04you're probably going to have a close loss.
14:06The close losses at Nebraska are not an affliction.
14:10It's, you know, we don't need to get out of voodoo doll.
14:12We need to hold the ball properly and knock it out,
14:14make one more catch, have a little bit more confidence
14:16and go make one more play and win a couple of games.
14:18And all of a sudden we'll be talking in a different tone.
14:21Coach Rule, thank you so much for your time.
14:23Thank you. Go Big Red.