Matt Rhule experienced the lingering power of the Nebraska brand during his three-year run as the head coach at Baylor, when assistants bearing the school logo would gain entry to some of the top programs and best prospects in Texas nearly a generation after the program’s last breath of national relevance.
“The Nebraska ‘N’ means something,” Rhule told USA TODAY Sports. “It means something across the world.”
For a self-described “developmental coach” known for his building and rebuilding projects at Temple and with the Bears, Rhule’s decision to become the Cornhuskers’ next coach represents a dramatic leap into one of the most high-pressure, well-resourced positions in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
Multiple attempts at replicating the program’s decades-long run as college football royalty have yielded increasingly bigger misfires, none more painful than the recent four-plus seasons under former coach Scott Frost. The school’s search for Frost’s replacement zeroed in on Rhule, who was fired in October by the Carolina Panthers less than midway through his third season.
Now, for the first time as a college head coach, Rhule has taken the reins of a program with three coveted assets: an extensive support system, a rich history and immense expectations. After the bitter disappointment of the five-season Frost era, these expectations have roared back to life in the past six months.
There’s still extensive work to be done. There’s a uniquely awful bowl drought. There are multiple rungs to climb on the Big Ten ladder before even approaching the heights of Michigan, Ohio State and Penn State. There is an easy argument for the Cornhuskers exiting the 2022 season at their lowest point in more than 60 years.
This will be a steep challenge, even for a coach with a recent history of turnarounds. But the payoff for bringing the fallen powerhouse back to prominence would be even more extreme.
“It’s one thing to get a place somewhere it’s never been,” Rhule said. “It’s another to go somewhere that’s been there and know it has the potential to get back.”
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Starting from the bottom of the Big Ten
No fact can sum up the program’s recent plunge better than this: Nebraska will head into this season as the only Power Five program to have not reached at least one bowl game since 2016.
In that respect, the Rhule era with the Cornhuskers echoes the early stages of his tenures at Temple and Baylor. While Temple had reached the postseason in two of the previous four seasons before Rhule was hired in 2013, that represented the program’s first taste of sustained success in more than 30 years. The Owls’ roster was also impacted by a third coaching change in a four-year span.
At Baylor, Rhule took over a program devastated by the sexual-abuse scandal that occurred under former coach Art Briles; the roster had dipped to only 45 scholarship players when he arrived in the winter of 2016.
Unsurprisingly, both teams struggled out of the gate: Temple won two games in 2014 and Baylor just once in 2017.
“At Temple and Baylor, we didn’t win the first year but I always felt those were our best coaching jobs,” Rhule said.
The Owls then won six games in 2014 and 10 games in each of the next two seasons, playing for the American conference championship in 2015 and winning the league a year later. Baylor jumped to seven wins in Rhule’s second season and then went 11-3 in 2019, losing the Big 12 championship game to Oklahoma in overtime and falling to Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
Each program has also experienced staying power past the end of Rhule’s tenures. Temple reached the postseason in each of the following three seasons. Baylor is 20-16 in coach Dave Aranda’s three years, with one conference championship.
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That these previous stops saw the Owls and Bears climb from the bottom to the top of the conference standings in a three-season span is the source of Rhule’s greatest appeal.
But it’s also raised the question of whether the Cornhuskers’ 2023 season will follow the same script, and whether Nebraska, unlike Temple and Baylor, would be willing to accept an additional step back − one that would represent the latest in a line of new lows − to propel an eventual return to major-bowl contention.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in a short amount of time already,” said Rhule. “What that means in terms of wins and losses, though, I can’t predict that. For me, even if I say, ‘Hey, we’re going to go 10-2,’ I always say to myself, which two games are you admitting right know that you’re going to lose? I just kind of say that I’m going to control what I’m going to control.”
Taking time to “explain the why”
The marriage between Rhule and Nebraska is rooted in shared principles of how to build and maintain a consistently successful program − what Rhule called “the power of alignment.”
In a Big Ten that has largely shifted away from the power-running style that defined the conference for decades, Nebraska’s physical approach could make the Cornhuskers unique. For example, as Nebraska attempts to turn back the clock, conference rival Wisconsin is putting aside decades of offensive tradition in favor of Air Raid principles under new coach Luke Fickell. The Cornhuskers haven’t finished in the top five of the Big Ten in yards gained and allowed per carry in the same season since 2013.
“We practice old-school,” Rhule said. “We practice a long time. We’re physical. We practice the old-school way. It might be out of vogue in some places. But here, it’s really, really, really important.
“I think the fans, the fan base here in Nebraska, they want that program. They want a physical program. They want a tough program, a disciplined program. When people want what you want, it makes things go a lot easier.”
As he embarked on this latest rebuilding project, Rhule looked back at his tenures at Temple and Baylor to inform his first months at Nebraska — evaluating what went right, what went wrong, and what could be fixed to help speed up the learning curve with the Cornhuskers.
“The biggest thing for me is I’m taking way more time to explain the ‘why’ to the guys, you know, and really understanding that these guys may be asked to do things they’ve never done before,” he said. “It’s very hard to do that sometimes, to change. So I’m explaining to everyone so they understand why they’re doing certain things.”
There is one major difference heading into his Nebraska debut, however.
Despite years of mismanagement and misfires, Nebraska has accumulated blue-chip recruits at every position group. That includes important newcomers such as Georgia Tech transfer quarterback Jeff Sims, who emerged as the new starter after a solid spring. While depth issues persist even after significant offseason turnover, positions such as tight end are short on experience but boast potentially unmatched talent: sophomores Arik Gilbert, who transferred from Georgia, and Thomas Fidone were the top-ranked tight ends in the 2019 and 2020 recruiting classes, respectively.
Within the program, the overall state of the roster has led to tempered optimism that the 2023 team can snap the Cornhuskers’ bowl drought and experience a much faster start compared to Rhule’s first steps with the Bears and Owls.
“I don’t sit there and say, ‘Hey, we have to win this many games, we have to win that many games,’ but it’s not that I’m not putting elite pressure on myself and on the staff,” Rhule said. “It’s just that I’m trying to get way more granular. ‘Hey, we have to protect the ball. Hey, we have to go to class. Hey, we have to play really hard.’
“I always feel like I have to show results. But I believe teams will win when they’re ready to win. I just try to focus really hard on the things that cause winning. I’ve gotten better at that as I’ve gone. I think we’re very targeted.”
Planting the Nebraska flag back in Texas
Several hundred miles to the west, Colorado and new coach Deion Sanders are in the midst of an eye-opening, never-before-seen roster makeover that has left the Buffaloes with fewer than 30 scholarship players left from last season.
While more extreme than most, Nebraska’s offseason efforts under Rhule have been tame in comparison. The Cornhuskers have added 11 transfers from the Power Five, three from two-time defending national champion Georgia, and brought in 28 traditional prospects during the two signing periods.
That many of these additions comes from Texas speaks to Rhule’s reputation among the state’s tough-to-crack brotherhood of high school coaches. While not greeted warmly upon his arrival at Baylor − he was essentially seen as a carpetbagger from the Northeast with no local connections − Rhule quickly became one of the most trusted coaches in the state.
In a poll conducted by Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine in the summer of 2019 asking over 250 participants which of the 12 FBS head coaches in the state they trusted the most, Rhule drew 21.5% of the vote, exceeding the combined total of the head coaches at Texas, Texas A&M and Texas Tech.
This appeal paid off in the 2023 class. Rhule and his staff signed six players from Texas, matching the program’s combined haul of signees out of the state during the previous four cycles. The last time the Cornhuskers inked six recruits out of Texas was in 2011, heading into Nebraska’s first year as members of the Big Ten. Three of the six known verbal commitments in the Cornhuskers’ in-process 2024 class are from Texas.
Staff additions speak to the overwhelming emphasis placed on maximizing relationships and connections in this talent-rich state.
In addition to bringing along several on-field and support staffers from his time at Baylor, Rhule hired former Baylor quarterback Garrett McGuire, the son of Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire, as the Cornhuskers’ wide receivers coach. To coach the tight ends, Nebraska hired Bob Wager, formerly the highly successful and respected coach at Arlington’s Martin High School.
Rhule’s chief of staff is Dr. Susan Elza, previously the director of athletics for the University Interscholastic League, the Texas high school governing body over all inter-school activities and the largest organization of its kind in the world.
After years of recruiting swings and misses in the state, Nebraska has made a deep recommitment to making Texas one of the program’s key hubs for unearthing the quick-twitch, often-overlooked athletes that sparked Baylor’s rapid transformation.
“We went right back to the well,” Rhule said. “I think if we can be great in Nebraska and great in Texas, we’ll find a lot of other players in a lot of other places.”
What to expect from Nebraska in 2023 (and beyond)
One thing Nebraska should do well in Rhule’s debut season is run the football behind “a big, powerful offensive line,” he said, and a crowded backfield that has already seen one possible transfer in promising second-year running back Ajay Allen. The Cornhuskers are projected to return last year’s leading rusher, Anthony Grant, and will have the use of a healthy Gabe Ervin, who in 2021 became the first true freshman back to start a season opener in the program’s modern era.
While in need of polishing as a passer, Sims will also play a significant role in the running game after gaining 1,155 yards on 4.2 yards per carry across three seasons with the Yellow Jackets.
“I think our ability to run the football and get downhill is probably our greatest strength,” Rhule said. “In terms of situational football and things, we have a long way to go. But there are some key ingredients that will help us get started.”
Defensively, Nebraska’s 3-3-5 scheme under new coordinator Tony White is at the vanguard of what’s loosely described as “postionless defense,” which stresses the need for hybrid defenders capable of stepping in across several positions − edge rushers who can play in space, linebackers who can run in coverage and defensive backs capable of stepping up in run support, for example.
In the short term, the 2023 season will provide a sneak peek at the program’s blueprint: Nebraska wants to blend physicality and a mean streak with schemes that stress athleticism and the ability to contribute in multiple roles.
But the biggest source of optimism in the Cornhuskers’ future stems from Rhule’s own history. At Temple and Baylor, he transformed lesser programs into physically imposing teams capable of offsetting almost any talent gap. In both cases, the Owls and Bears rocketed from the lows of his debut season to match or exceed the highest points in program history.
Now, at Nebraska, Rhule plans on using the same approach − only with the added depth of resources he’s never experienced on the college level.
“I really, really believe that there’s the ability to do something really special here,” he said.
