Matt Rhule to stay at Nebraska

[lo country]

The one ounce of grace I will give Rhule is that he tried to "do it right," by the kids and the state and the culture. He tried to double down and keep the Frost kids in the program and pour into development as much as possible. He tried to honor the "word" the program gave those kids and not leave them out hanging in the wind. I respect that, and, at the time, I think for a guy who is a huge "development," guy, that was the way to go. Let us not forget the Deion route that we all were blasting when so many of the previous recruits were sent packing and the entire world was raising eyebrows at that method. Complete opposite of the way Rhule handled it. As much as I would prefer the wins that may have come from that type of plan, I would rather us be able to hold our heads up proud that we didn't do a bunch of kids dirty. You add to that the MASSIVE cluster that NIL has been even over the past 18 months. Nebraska, in a true Nebraska way, tried to play a smart, conservative, "middle ground," game in that arena. Honestly, that is who we are as a program and state, so, I won't even fault them too much for that.

I will not Monday morning quarterback the way he has directed this program thus far and I will not expect him to be perfect in all decisions all the time. This was an albatross of a turn around needed and thousands of decisions needed made, so I'll allow some grace for a few misses here and there. That said, we are seemingly at another crossroads with him. I think we have some glaring coaching holes and we need dudes and we need to get the dudes into the program straight away. The early returns on NIL go big or go home are showing it for exactly what it is, and we need to go big if we want to be big. It is not the time in the evolution of college football that any boxes get left unchecked. Conservative won't make anybody happy, leave every card you have on the table and pray it's enough to allow you to be one of the schools that gets over this hump. Honestly, we are in a lot better position than a lot of huge programs as we sit right now, gotta seize it. Rhule has shown he is willing to course correct, we are a couple of course corrects and dollar bills away now.

Good stuff. I like Rhule’s approach. We needed to establish a culture. Needed to get a foundation established. I like the idea of identifying and developing talent. But I also see the need for “pay to play”. I’ll use DL as an example ( although total D ranks 27th and total O currently sits at 40). We have a lot of young guys. If we are married to the 3-3-5 spend whatever it takes to get another 2-3 Ty’s…. With the portal and money we should be able to fund/find some “comparable talent. Then develop the guys we’ve recruited. Posted something in another thread, but that $30-40 million investments pay themselves back with a cascade of events making it to the playoffs. Win the Natty and you’re reimbursed the next year. It’s like marriage. For better or worse this is what it is.

Regarding course corrects our O has now produced 4 of the last 5 games with less than 300 yards total offense. That sucks. D gets a ton of heat, but statistics show the O is not doing their part. Read an article from SI, that said part of the offensive woes are Dana is still using Satts playbook. As other posters have alluded, this O isn’t Dana’s…if not all Satts old one a hybrid for sure. Going away from the run before they stop us is problematic. Knowing Dylan’s strong suit is not longer throws, but we open a drive with one is problematic. Calling horizontal passes with a D that is attacking down hill with no fear of a vertical passing game is problematic. I say as I was all in on Dana sucks, but if it’s not his scheme he’s running that is a glaring problem. Still unsure if he’s the solution or part of the problem, but these are so off season issues that MUST be addressed.

 

[Husker_In_WI]

Good stuff. I like Rhule’s approach. We needed to establish a culture. Needed to get a foundation established. I like the idea of identifying and developing talent. But I also see the need for “pay to play”. I’ll use DL as an example ( although total D ranks 27th and total O currently sits at 40). We have a lot of young guys. If we are married to the 3-3-5 spend whatever it takes to get another 2-3 Ty’s…. With the portal and money we should be able to fund/find some “comparable talent. Then develop the guys we’ve recruited. Posted something in another thread, but that $30-40 million investments pay themselves back with a cascade of events making it to the playoffs. Win the Natty and you’re reimbursed the next year. It’s like marriage. For better or worse this is what it is.

Regarding course corrects our O has now produced 4 of the last 5 games with less than 300 yards total offense. That sucks. D gets a ton of heat, but statistics show the O is not doing their part. Read an article from SI, that said part of the offensive woes are Dana is still using Satts playbook. As other posters have alluded, this O isn’t Dana’s…if not all Satts old one a hybrid for sure. Going away from the run before they stop us is problematic. Knowing Dylan’s strong suit is not longer throws, but we open a drive with one is problematic. Calling horizontal passes with a D that is attacking down hill with no fear of a vertical passing game is problematic. I say as I was all in on Dana sucks, but if it’s not his scheme he’s running that is a glaring problem. Still unsure if he’s the solution or part of the problem, but these are so off season issues that MUST be addressed.

Play sequencing matters, so I think there's some truth to this. But we also ran the ball 40 times compared to 22 passes, and the drive where we ran the ball 3 straight times was a 3 and out. Both of our TD drives started with a pass. The offense has not been good enough, but I don't think it's as simple as not being committed enough to running the ball.

 

[Mavric]

Play sequencing matters, so I think there's some truth to this. But we also ran the ball 40 times compared to 22 passes, and the drive where we ran the ball 3 straight times was a 3 and out. Both of our TD drives started with a pass. The offense has not been good enough, but I don't think it's as simple as not being committed enough to running the ball.

It was 22 rushes and 16 passes before Raiola got hurt. Which still isn't bad. But the overly-conservative play calling after Raiola was out skewed the final stats. Plus, as I pointed out earlier, we almost always threw on first down. Which, when it wasn't working, was putting the offense behind the chains. So even when we ran on second down we were not putting the offense in a great position to succeed.

 

[Husker_In_WI]

It was 16 rushes and 22 passes before Raiola got hurt. Which still isn't bad. But the overly-conservative play calling after Raiola was out skewed the final stats. Plus, as I pointed out earlier, we almost always threw on first down. Which, when it wasn't working, was putting the offense behind the chains. So even when we ran on second down we were not putting the offense in a great position to succeed.

Where are you getting the 22 passes before Raiola got hurt? He only threw 15, plus the sack I guess. He had 2 other rush attempts, but at least one of them was a called run and not a scramble. So sure, we weren't as run-heavy when Raiola was in there. But I'm not seeing a 16/22 Run/Pass split either.

1st and 10 passing with Raiola: 6/10 for 62 yards, 1 sack. One of those completions was for 0 yards, so pretty much the same as an incompletion. So that is a 50/50 shot of staring at a 2nd and 10.

1st and 10 runs: 6/34, with a couple caveats. This is excluding a carry for no gain that had a Lutovsky hold, and also excludes the subsequent 1st and 20 4-yard run. It also includes a meaningless 9 yarder on 1st and 10 right before halftime, and a first and goal from the just inside the 10.

Our first three 1st down runs got 8 total yards, and the 4th was stuffed with a holding penalty on top of that. We did break through (the 5th carry was the 10 yard TD), and Holgorsen is absolutely too quick to say the runs aren't working while insisting that they low percentage fades are worth continuing to try. But all of our sets of downs that ended with a punt of 4th down stop included a 0-yard or negative run. I don't blame Holgorsen for throwing on first down, just too many of the fades - which he considers a called run, but reasonable people can disagree there.

 

[Mavric]

Where are you getting the 22 passes before Raiola got hurt? He only threw 15, plus the sack I guess. He had 2 other rush attempts, but at least one of them was a called run and not a scramble. So sure, we weren't as run-heavy when Raiola was in there. But I'm not seeing a 16/22 Run/Pass split either.

1st and 10 passing with Raiola: 6/10 for 62 yards, 1 sack. One of those completions was for 0 yards, so pretty much the same as an incompletion. So that is a 50/50 shot of staring at a 2nd and 10.

1st and 10 runs: 6/34, with a couple caveats. This is excluding a carry for no gain that had a Lutovsky hold, and also excludes the subsequent 1st and 20 4-yard run. It also includes a meaningless 9 yarder on 1st and 10 right before halftime, and a first and goal from the just inside the 10.

Our first three 1st down runs got 8 total yards, and the 4th was stuffed with a holding penalty on top of that. We did break through (the 5th carry was the 10 yard TD), and Holgorsen is absolutely too quick to say the runs aren't working while insisting that they low percentage fades are worth continuing to try. But all of our sets of downs that ended with a punt of 4th down stop included a 0-yard or negative run. I don't blame Holgorsen for throwing on first down, just too many of the fades - which he considers a called run, but reasonable people can disagree there.

My bad. I had those reversed. It should have been 22 rushes and 16 passes. Bad typo.

 

[Husker_In_WI]

My bad. I had those reversed. It should have been 22 rushes and 16 passes. Bad typo.

Ah, got it - and to your point, 5 of the 10 first down passes getting 0 yards is worse than I recalled. Holgorsen would say several of those were "called runs," but he could very well call a run without pass options tacked on. Or at least different ones.

 

[chamrocck]

Recruiting and portal. This is where Rhule must now excel. He obviously is social media savvy, has put guys in the league, and seems to have the energy and passion for this new CFB world.

Our current recruiting ranking is dismal. Is this because we are going to go bonkers in the portal? I’ll say it again, if you can’t recruit in the top 20 then don’t expect to win anything of significance.

 

[Guy Chamberlin]

We have several good young underclassmen on both sides of the ball, and the defense seems to be gelling.

Question is: who jumps ship? I get it if you're not seeing the field, but we need to retain the guys who want to build on this season. That's Rhule's biggest test, and he's up against agents and competing schools saying you'll never win at Nebraska. Which is why these big stage losses really kill us.

 

[Hilltop]

We have several good young underclassmen on both sides of the ball, and the defense seems to be gelling.

Question is: who jumps ship? I get it if you're not seeing the field, but we need to retain the guys who want to build on this season. That's Rhule's biggest test, and he's up against agents and competing schools saying you'll never win at Nebraska. Which is why these big stage losses really kill us.

Agree - we played against a few of our old team members this year.

 

[PasstheDamnBallGuy]

Obviously you want to beat the good teams and we have not beat a ton of good teams yet under Rhule, but this I find the cutoff being ranked top 25 at the time of playing a bit arbitrary.