Tad Stryker: Walking the Talk

Will Matt Rhule and his staff act in concert to enforce a ‘body blows’ identity at Nebraska?

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Can the last two decades of Nebraska football be attributed to a serious case of mistaken identity?

Not completely, but NU’s lack of identity has been the biggest contributor to a deteriorating foundation. If you’re starting over, setting your bearings on a new identity is the place to start a real rebuild.

Matt Rhule has quickly diagnosed the root problem, and has swiftly moved to dig out the indecisiveness that has held the program hostage for so long. He’s putting his focus exactly where he said he would — on winning at the line of scrimmage. Rhule is moving toward a “body blows” offensive mentality that will not fix every problem, but should take Nebraska a long way in the right direction, if implemented properly.

This idea is not a new one. Check out this quote:

“It’s going to take a lot of hard work and dedication from a lot of people, but there’s a formula that worked here for a long time. Times have changed a little, but some of those same things can make this work again.”

That’s from Scott Frost’s introductory press conference in December 2017. Cautionary tale: Words are a good start, but deeds matter more.

Frost pointed to toughness, physical style of play, dedication, work ethic and pursuit of excellence as hallmarks of Nebraska, and pledged, “That’s what this place is going to stand for as long as I’m here.” So we’ve heard this sort of thing before without seeing much progress.

Rhule sounded somewhat like that in a recent interview with Adam Carriker. Rhule, who admired Tom Osborne from afar, sounds like he’s more committed to “the formula that worked here for a long time” than was Frost, who lived Osborne’s system every day for three years. But as my grandfather used to remind me, “Saying and doing are two different things.”

Here’s hoping that as Rhule digs around in the crumbling remains of what came before, he’ll find and surgically remove Frost’s reassuring assertion that his offensive scheme would be simple and effective enough to enable mediocre offensive lines to thrive. Yeah, Frost had me fooled with that one.

There’s simply no substitute for good blocking up front. Here’s another quote.

“We want to be a team that’s just so big and so physical (regardless of the elements) that our offensive linemen will just wear on you, and, eventually, it wears you down.” That one’s from Rhule.

Blue-collar Husker fans, wipe the tears of joy from your eyes, stand up and take notice, and get ready to hold Rhule to it. Sounds to me like a power running identity may return to Lincoln. Maybe not the Derek Brown/Calvin Jones/Lawrence Phillips/Ahman Green brand, but at least the Roy Helu/Rex Burkhead/Ameer Abdullah brand. Regardless, no better words could have been spoken. Will the deeds follow?

So what does someone like highly touted wideout Malachi Coleman, who could have chosen to play at almost any college he wanted, know about Husker I-backs of a generation ago? Probably not much. Yet he signed with the Big Red, presumably with the knowledge that Rhule favors a tough running game. Will Rhule’s coaching staff all buy into the “body blows” concept? Will they work in concert with each other, with the understanding that the running game sets up the passing game, and not vice versa? Will they get buy-in from their players?

That didn’t always happen over the past few years. Frost was either unable to firmly decide what he wanted his football program to look like, or unable to communicate that effectively to his assistant coaches, or both. For one thing, it never made sense to have Frost and Greg Austin disagree on something as important as their fundamental style of blocking. And can someone explain the hiring of Mark Whipple and Donovan Raiola in the same month? Talk about a lack of identity. No wonder Husker offensive linemen looked so tentative the last several years.

Admittedly, I was astounded that Rhule decided to retain Raiola as o-line coach, but he made it clear he agrees with Raiola’s ideas about the fundamental style of blocking (“I want to be able to line up and run iso, line up and run duo, knock people off the ball.”) That leads me to believe the offensive scheme will be fairly simple in 2023, and that it will look more like Rhule’s Temple teams than his Baylor teams, at least initially. I am skeptical that the offensive linemen Rhule inherits can make a big jump in fewer than nine months, but that remains to be seen.

By the way, if you’re wondering if NU’s receivers will have anything to do besides blocking, Rhule’s Temple teams averaged more than 30 passes per game in his three years as head coach, although by Year Three, the Owls had become significantly more run-oriented.

One thing’s for sure, though. There should be no position group on the entire team that will have an simpler transition from the Frost/Joseph era to the Rhule era than the offensive line. The optimist looks at the situation and says, “If Raiola installed nothing but a foundation last year, maybe the walls and roof will go up in 2023.” The skeptic scratches his head and mutters, “Did Rhule really mean it when he said he thinks we’ll have a good offensive line next year”? The truth — hopefully much affected by the new regime’s off-season of strength and conditioning training — probably lies somewhere in the middle.

The Nebraska brand, one that much of the nation still remembers, is built around a physical running game. Regardless of how things go in Year One (and almost certainly it won’t be a smooth operation), a power football identity must unmistakably emerge.

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