Bleav in Nebraska: Matt Rhule Pre-Purdue Presser

Kaleb Henry adds commentary to Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule's Monday press conference. The Huskers are at Purdue Saturday.

Matt Rhule's Monday Presser Ahead of Purdue / HuskerMax

Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule met with the media Monday.

Kaleb Henry adds commentary to Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule's Monday press conference. The Huskers are at Purdue Saturday, with kickoff set for 11 a.m. CDT on Peacock.

Listen to the full episode above, with some occasional commentary, and subscribe to the HuskerMax YouTube page.

You can also listen to the episode on Spotify, linked below.

Read what Rhule had to say below. Other notes and coverage from the media availability can be found here.

On injury updates

“Turner (Corcoran) has a significant hamstring, so he’ll be out for a while. Tommi (Hill) is day to day based on his pain threshold with the plantar fasciitis. Jimari (Butler) is going to play, he was the one that was out before.”

On Ceyair Wright

“I thought he played really well. He forced a fumble, he had tight coverage on the one he had the pass interference called on, tight coverage on the sideline. He played with energy and physicality. He played really well.” 

On Gunnar Gottula

“I thought he played really well. Unfortunately time got away from us and that affected us, but even that was a twist move. We needed a little bit more help there. I thought Gunnar (Gottula) came in and filled in well.”   

On themes in Illinois’ game style

“They have a lot after contact. I believe at halftime they had 31 yards rushing. It was really in the second half because I remember addressing that. We predicted it, they were going to go tempo, no huddle. They’re going to run our PO. They adjusted as the game went on and they found more runs. They ran some crack tosses, they ran some different things. At the end of the day, we didn’t get off the blocks and win third downs. You can only run the ball when you’re converting third downs because if you run the ball you’re going to be on third downs. They were in a third and manageable. They didn’t get the third, they got the fourth down. We’re not tackling at the level that you’ve seen us tackle at. We’re not getting off blocks and we weren’t at the level we’ve shown before. That’s something we need to improve this week.” 

On the man to man coverage

“DeShon (Singleton) got fooled on the one where the guy kept going from tight end to offensive line. They followed the rule. I think they announced it. They announced it to me. He needed to know that, but he got fooled on that. The rest of them at the end of the day, the touchdown that they threw was the same play that we threw on fourth and three. We just don’t cover the tight end and then the next time we get picked on the wide end coming out of the fullback position. We’re just going to have to be more disciplined. That sounds like coach speak, but it’s really where we are right now. As these games get tight and our team gets a little tight and they start doing uncharacteristic things, that’s my job, I have to find a way to get us over the hump.”  

On the pass rush in the Illinois game

“I don’t think anything was good enough in that game. The thing that was disappointing was that we had some good rushes and the quarterback gets up inside and we had some miscommunications. Again, a lot of errors that I haven’t seen us make since last year at Michigan. It showed up for the first time. I could sit here and go through every little thing with you, but the one theme I have is that none of it was good enough. We still had a chance to win the game. That shows the progress our guys have made, that all those mistakes like giving up a touchdown on the first drive just shows that we still had a chance at winning the football game. It really just wasn’t good enough.”

On teams pressuring the offense

“I’d blitz (Dylan Raiola). We were winning versus man. We put four wide outs on with the thought process of can their fourth corner cover Jacory (Barney Jr.) or Jaylen (Lloyd) and they started playing a lot of zone. You just saw Dylan (Raiola) going up and down the field on them in zone because they’re a man team. At the end of the game, they went back to zone and they went back to pressure. It’s kind of what we said last week. Their defense is five one on ones and they bring the linebacker and our back has to block the linebacker. The disappointing thing was obviously overtime. It wasn’t nearly good enough. It was a debacle. At the end of the day, it’s just a misassignment. It’s not like we’re not good. That’s my message to our guys. They blitz a linebacker up the middle and the tailback doesn’t pick it up. You can’t win these games doing that. You can’t win these games false starting. People are going to pressure us, just like on defense, we’re going to have to be more disciplined on what we’re doing on offense. It’s not like we’re doing something different than what we were doing the first three games. We know what we’re doing. We were just a little too tight. We had to settle down and make one more new play. Illinois played loose and they made a couple plays that won the game for them.” 

On Dylan Raiola versus the Illinois coverage

“He crushed it. I thought Dylan was excellent. He got fooled on the first one. They went to zone and he didn’t see it and he looked at the man side and he could see the safety. He was great at it and seeing it.  We had two interceptions, both we’re balls on our hands. We had that chance, you catch that ball and you go up two scores. I thought Dylan saw the ball well. We still have to work on protecting the football. We put two balls on the ground, that can’t happen. We got on them. There’s a lot of things he’s working on. His preparation is allowing him to see what is happening in gametime.” 

On Illinois’ long punt return

“We knew it right then. On the left hash, we’re playing the ball to the left. The gunner and everyone is running to the left, then the ball goes to the right. It was just a bad punt. A long punt, you kind of outkick the coverage, kick it to the right side of the field so the guys are running then they have to turn and chase. I thought the guys gave effort to get over there, but it’s even the big kickoff returns we’ve had. We kick the ball, deep kickoff to the left side. We’re trying to pin them, so our coverage is all like that. When we kick the ball in the middle, it opens up a lot for those guys. It’s the same thing on punts. It’s like everything else in the game. It’s not terrible, it’s just all kind of like this. You get in these Big Ten games and I told our guys, our narrative as a team has to be completely focused on this week. You start thinking about all these other things, and you have a game like this. Illinois, you could feel Illinois’ passion for that game. They’d been waiting for that game for a long time, since we went there last year. I thought our guys played hard, I have no issue with that stuff. It’s just a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes, and I put that on me as the head coach. Some coaches say ‘it’s all on me,’ but when that happens, I’m always like, these are typically things that happen in year two. You have a couple of games, and all of a sudden you have this game where you come back down. You teach the guys, you have to attack every game the same way in terms of your energy and effort and staying locked into the game. I have to find a way to get our team to, when the game gets tight, to not get tight, but enjoy the battle and enjoy the competition. It just felt really tight out there in the second half, except for some guys. Dylan (Raiola) doesn’t feel tight. He’s out there, saying ‘let’s go play.’ Some of the young guys don’t, but I think some of the older guys are and they start doing uncharacteristic things as opposed to playing someone man. I say that to say, we have a good team, they just have to play well. That sounds so simple, yet that’s kind of where we are.”

On who’s stepped up

“I think Jimari (Butler) has that. The hard thing with Jimari is that he’s been limited. He didn’t play two weeks ago and he was limited this week. I think we have a lot of leadership. We have such good character and we have such good effort and we have such good leadership, we just have to play a little bit better. I played for Coach (Joe) Paterno, and games like this, he’d be like ‘everybody settle down, we just have to make one more play.’ That’s kind of how that game felt, the ball was in our hands, but they made a play. It’s fourth down stop, and they make a play. On our sideline this week, we can’t worry about the officials or a call we feel goes against us. We can’t worry about Tony (White) and Satt (Marcus Satterfield) and Ed (Foley) trying to make the perfect call. Our guys just have to go out and play. We just have to play loose.”

On how the team gets over the hump

“It’s the chicken and the egg. How do you learn to win if you’ve never really won? Our guys are winners, and that’s the biggest thing for me. Our guys do winning things. I just want them to be themselves in these moments and stop worrying about all this other stuff, and just go out and compete. Illinois came here to compete. Illinois wanted to beat us, and we wanted to beat Colorado. You start getting into these games, and it’s the disease of, they’re going to be this record going into this game. I’ve tried hard to get them to not listen to that. They don’t listen to me, necessarily, because they’re 18-22 and they have their own brains. I love them and I believe in them, but that doesn’t get you anywhere. Just go compete against this team and play as well as we can. Hopefully this was a good wakeup call, and again, I have to own the fact that our team went out there and didn’t execute in crucial situations. I have to own that.”

On the kicking unit

“It’s very hard to make decisions when you’re making decisions based on percentages. The ball on the 21-yard line should be a 95% field goal made. The game shouldn’t have come down to that play. I’ll say that for John (Hohl). He’s going out there and he’s filling in. He’s going to be an excellent kicker. This is a lot. To go from not kicking, to all of a sudden kicking the game-winner at Memorial Stadium with the whole world watching, that’s a lot. To not get the perfect snap and the perfect hold, both those guys weren’t with us, even during spring football, really. Aidan (Flege) got here at some point, but you guys get what I’m saying, they’re recent. I appreciate them going out there. That being said, you’re on the team. You’re a Nebraska Cornhusker. We have to make these plays. We just have to go out and make one more play, whether that’s that snap or that kick or, if you go back and look at some of the routes open in overtime, we’re wide open. We just make one more block or block our guy. It’s tough, but that’s my job and I have to make the right decision. I chose to kick it in that scenario, and it didn’t go in. So I have to own that.”

On the snaps and holds

“It’s not a great snap. We’d like to snap the ball with the perfect amount of rotation so that when we snap it, we don’t have to spin it, we can put the ball down. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for the ball in the hand so that the kicker doesn’t even have to see the ball come here and get put down here. We’re looking for the ball on the hand, come down, laces out. That’s what we try to master for that craft. It’s not perfect. I don’t want to put it on any one guy. That ball has to go through the pipes. If you want to win these types of games, that ball has to go through the pipes. Again, we also have to make more plays. If we have a 17-10 lead going into halftime, if we have a 24-17 lead, we can’t let them convert. 3rd and 9, we can’t let them run a quarterback draw and then throw the ball to an o-lineman. That’s not Nebraska defense, and our guys will just play a little better, hopefully.”

On Tristan Alvano

“It wasn’t getting any better. It’s hard because it’s not really diagnosable. The thought process was just to shut him down. Last week, as of Wednesday, he didn’t feel great on Tuesday. Shut him down last week for however many weeks it takes, then try to start to build him up. We’re going to be in a lot of games like this, you’d like to have excellent field goal kicking. We did that with Tristan to get him healthy again and hoping that John (Hohl) can respond from this. This will be an opportunity for him, really for the rest of his life, to be proud of his response. I trust that he’ll respond well. This is difficult, but like I said, the game didn’t come down to just that.”

On if he’s doing anything different with his kickers

“We hired Brett Maher. He’s on staff. Brett’s coaching for us. Working with those guys. We have a mindset coach. They make a highlight video of themselves each week for visualization. We are working through all of those things. There’s a process for young players to become a great player. Sometimes you have to go through some of these hurdles on your way to become a great player. Really for our whole team, we went through this disappointing game and we have to emerge on the other side.  I saw some of the other guys walking with their heads down today. There’s no time for that. We have to get ready for Purdue. We have to learn from it and move on. We’re kind of still in the learning how to win phase. That’s each person learning how to win their phase. I hate that we are still in the learning how to win phase. That’s not what I want. It’s not an excuse like, ‘Hey guys bear with us.’ It’s the Big Ten. Everyone is going to want to show up every week and the games are going to come down to the wire. On Saturday, I watched USC at Michigan. Games are going to come down to the wire. Everyone’s going to want to compete.”

On how often Brett Maher is here

“He’s here for the meetings and practices.” 

On what he liked about the defense

“I think we did some good things. I think Ceyair (Wright) came out and made some good plays. It just wasn’t what we expected. In the first half, I thought they settled down after that first drive. Tommi (Hill) is trying to go. He can’t go. He comes out. He plays another series. I thought we kind of settled down. The thing that’s hurting us a little bit is that even when we’re stopping them, it’s long drives. It’s time of possession. It’s flipping the field. We’re strong with the ball at our 10, 15 yard line. We’d like to defer. We’d like to kick off. We’d like to make you go three and get to go on a good field position and play tilted on the field. I think Coach (Kirk) Ferentz has showed everyone how to do this in this league. If we are giving up an eight play or 10 play drive, when we can just make a play and get off the field. I think overall, I don’t think any of us are really satisfied with Friday night.” 

On what he’s seen from the guys after the game

“We just finished stuff just now. So there hasn’t been a lot. A lot of guys were around yesterday. I met with some guys one on one. I just finished my team meeting and my review of the game. I think we get a lot of ownership from those guys. The biggest question as a coach is, ‘Can you tell me how we lost?’ Like how did we lose? Well, we couldn’t get off the field on third down. We gave up all these yards after contact. The question is ‘Why? Where did this come from?’ That’s the secret sauce of fixing these things. To me, that comes from a lot of intimate personal conversations with players and coaches and that’s something that will continue throughout the week. I’ve tried to hit on two of them. Number one, every game is going to be like this. We better get comfortable with battles. Every game is going to be like this and we got suckered a little bit early this year where we are going into halftime 28-0 and it’s like, ‘Oh we are a great team now.’ All very secure that we’ve tried to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna play better teams.’ So sometimes you have to just realize that we have to get really comfortable with playing with four minutes left in the fourth quarter. That’s been the message all along. Sam (McKewon), you asked me something and we do have to run the ball at a really high level and run the ball better, wear the other team down a little more. Even when we are throwing it. We have to find a way to run the ball better.” 

On the carries overall

“I would’ve liked to have more carries. This was a game for me where I thought it was going to be 20 carries for Dante (Dowdell). I felt that he was going to be the hammer in this game. There’s really no way to trick that defense. You’re going to have to run the ball between tackles and there would be body blow runs, then you hopefully split one. I would have liked to see them get more involved in the offense, but it kind of became a throw game, and we were having success throwing the ball. There’s just a way to win every game. You get in those games, like I said we put four lines of the field they’re playing cover too. Just go attack it and I know we went down and scored but just as we move forward there might be games that if saas long as we win, I don’t care if we don’t run the ball once. I think we move forward and have players that can help us. We need to utilize.” 

On Micah Mazzccua

“He could potentially help us. We haven’t practiced yet. I haven’t seen him take a snap there so I don’t know. (Henery) Lutovsky’s played tackle, (Tyler) Knaak is back this week. Micah’s played tackle in the past. Gunnar (Gottula) played well. So we have a lot of things, but we have a lot of work to do. We have practice again this evening. Tomorrow is full pad practice. We will see where we are at.” 

On if Micah Mazzccua is back

“He can play in the game. He was on the field goal team. I don’t know yet, we will see how practice goes. Like I said, Micah has been working through some things, I think he’s made some progress. If he’s available we will play him.”

On how the team will plan on the road

“I think it’ll be another battle. I hope we play well on the road. There’s nothing quite like getting in a hotel and it just being us. It’s a hostile territory. The great thing about us is that we know our fans will travel. It’s not like going somewhere and you don’t see any red. We’ll certainly have our fans there. I hope our guys are looking forward to it. We had a great game with them last year. Hudson Card is an excellent quarterback, (Devin) McCabe is a tremendous tailback. They have Reggie Love also. They ran the ball for 250 yards last game. Their linebacker is as good of a linebacker, as good of a player you can have in the Big Ten. He leads the Big Ten in sacks. He had some big hits last year. Again, it’s the same defense in many ways. It will be a lot of the same challenges that we tried to fix last week and see if we can do it this week. 

On how the offense can use Purdue’s previous games

“Both teams have running quarterbacks and Oregon is getting zone reads. Things that we did with Heinrich (Haarberg) would maybe carry over. We’re gameplanning, we’ll look and see what fits, what doesn’t, what we can do. I think when you have a running quarterback, it really alters the way in which you do things. Dylan (Raiola) can do maybe a third and one.” 

On if practice has changed this week compared to last

“No, we’ve practiced hard. We’ve practiced hard. We weren’t the more physical team. How do I feel about it? You can probably guess. How do our players feel about it? They’re not happy about it. There’s the ebbs and flows of the season, the ebbs and flows of watching players grow, the ebbs and flows of watching a team. Like I said, I’m proud of the way they came in today and the ownership that they had. It’s not funny, because none of this is funny. You rip a ball out early in the game and for the second week in a row, the first guy in is tackling a ball and trying to rip the ball out. That’s not who we were last year. Last year, we came in and we tried to strike you and hit you. The second guy might rip the ball out. We have guys that I know can really respond, and they’re going to have to, because these guys run outside zone as well as any team we’ll face this year and we’ll have a lot to get done.”

On Riley Van Poppel and other redshirts

“I had him put his helmet on in the middle of the game. I said ‘get your helmet.’ As I watched the tape, it wasn’t necessarily that. It was really some other areas, some other fits at linebacker. If someone is going to help us win, we’re going to play them. It’s only if they’re not going to help us that we’re going to redshirt them. For me, this isn’t like a ‘oh my gosh, what happened, let’s blow up everything, let’s change practice.’ To me, we faced a team that was really focused and determined and we still had a chance to win it. We had to make one more play. Let’s get back to the basics of what we aren’t doing well and work on those this week. Riley is a good player, Sua (Lefotu) is back now, which I’ve been waiting for. I’m excited about that. We’ll have to see. I do that with a lot of the guys. I’m keeping an eye on some of them. (Willis) McGahee is at three games, we’re going to try to give him a chance to do some things this week. Last year, when you watched us play defense, guys made a lot of plays. I just would like to see us make a few more plays while doing our job first. That’s why Ceyair (Wright), everyone noticed him. He came in and made plays. I am kind of challenging the staff, let’s play a few more players, let’s get more guys in. Let’s see who can make a play on the ball, let’s get V9 (Vincent Shavers Jr.). We’ll see how that plays out throughout the week.”

On the double pass and involving Heinrich Haarberg

“That’s the same play we ran at Minnesota last year. We threw a touchdown. We just have to have it up. I was good with it. I said, ‘If you guys want to call it today, call it’ and Satt (Marcus Satterfield) called it. It’s when you’re hoping to hit the home run, but we got a 15-20 yard game. As I look at our team, my job is to look and see which players aren’t being utilized enough. I’d say Heinrich is one of those that we’re maybe not utilizing enough. He had a couple plays, he was in on a short yardage play, he had that play. If he can help us more – I’m glad we got (Thomas) Fidone involved more this game – but to me, Heinrich is another guy who can help us. That was just a play we had in and Satt (Marcus Satterfield) pulled the trigger on it.”

On Brett Maher’s role

“Brett’s just kind of consulted for Ed (Foley) for a while. Brett, his life has shifted right before the first game. Ed would kind of use him as a sounding board, show him some video. We have our specials camp, we had five or six NFL kickers and we’d use them as a sounding board. With the new rule, we went to Troy (Dannen) and all those guys and asked if we could add him to the staff. He’s been with us since training camp and going into the first game.”

On going for it on fourth down and trusting his players

“I’ll listen to any person if they put the time in. I tell my players all the time, never take advice from someone you wouldn’t trade places with. I also say, never take criticism from someone you wouldn’t take advice from. I’ll listen to anyone if they put the time in. Rahmir (Johnson) came to me last week and was like ‘we’re running this and they’re making us shuffle, but (Christian) McCaffery, when he runs it, they just turn and go.” Rahmir had done the work. He asked why we were doing it like this, and we changed it. There’s two ways to do it. It’s not like we were wrong, but when players have an opinion, if they’ve put the work in, I’ll listen. At the end of the day, if it’s fourth and two, fourth and one, if you go back in that game, a lot of our third and ones had become fourth and ones. We hadn’t really won a lot of those short yardage things. That was just kind of the thought process. When Dylan (Raiola) threw the touchdown to (Isaiah) Neyor, so we have an idea what we’re talking about with this kid, he goes ‘coach, I’m sorry, that was so stupid. I was trying to throw it away. I should’ve thrown it away.’ It’s not the result I’m looking for, it’s the process. It’s the championship caliber preparation and the championship caliber habits. The hardest thing is championship caliber expectations when you get to the fourth quarter. Go make the plays to win the game. In the fifth quarter, go make the plays to win the game. Unfortunately, we had to make one more play.”

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