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Pete Thamel, ESPN
LINCOLN, Neb. — With an elk’s head mounted on the wall and the Farm Service Credit of America luncheon on the calendar, Elks Lodge #1790 in Ainsworth, Nebraska, seems like an unusual place for a blueprint for the revival of Nebraska football to reveal itself.
Forget restoring the championship glory of Tom Osborne, winning the Big Ten West or, heck, even figuring out a way to get past Minnesota in the opener. To resuscitate the Nebraska football program from a generational low point, new coach Matt Rhule first had to win the offseason one handshake and selfie at a time.
A few months ago, Rhule flew into Ainsworth, which is the home of the state’s top high school player, blue chip tight end Carter Nelson. Eating options are limited in the town of 2,000, so Rhule and a few staffers knocked on the door of the Elks and were greeted with the news that a private baby shower was unfolding inside.
Midwestern hospitality soon collided with the realization the new Cornhuskers coach stood at the door, and Rhule and his assistants lunched with the family, took pictures and got to know the folks who’d driven in from Iowa and the Dakotas.
“Everywhere we go we try to go, we sit down somewhere and we have lunch and have dinner and meet all the people in the towns,” Rhule told ESPN in his office recently. “Because when you go across Nebraska, it really hits you, these people are counting on us, counting on us to win and bring the program back to the level that’s been.”
Nebraska’s $74 million bet on Rhule is that the master college rebuilder can lead the dual comeback of both his own career and Nebraska’s floundering football program. In the wake of Rhule’s firing from the NFL’s Carolina Panthers in the middle of the 2022 season after amassing an 11-27 record, he’s tasked with both restoring his own reputation as one of college football’s most promising coaches and Nebraska’s relevance on the national landscape.
“Going through the fire in Carolina was a purifying fire that melts away all the impurities, all the hubris, all the worrying about stuff that doesn’t matter,” Rhule said. “I learned very much to worry about what matters. I have a focus and a desire in me. I watched what my kids had to go through in Carolina, and we’re not going to let ’em go through that here.”
So far, a vibe of optimism echoes through the Nebraska’s football offices, through both bonding and building. Rhule organizes pickleball games on makeshift courts in the stadium concourse adjacent to the football offices and sweats out doubles matches with assistant coaches. Over the sound of the balls popping off the concrete and Rhule’s trash talk is the din from Nebraska’s new — and long overdue — $165 million facility that’s so big it includes an escalator.
Players see a hyper-focus on situational football. Rhule sees a roster that doesn’t need an overhaul. And the administrators appreciate Rhule’s open personality, winning over the populous one Elks lunch and fullback camp at a time.
So what can happen if one of college football’s most notable architects builds back one of the sport’s proudest brands to the best version of itself?
“We can absolutely be a national power,” Rhule said. “I think we can be relevant in the [new world], as the College Football Playoff goes to 12 teams.”
MATT RHULE APPRECIATES that his task at Nebraska doesn’t require a hazmat suit.
At Temple, the Owls were just a decade removed from being thrown out of the Big East and he took over in 2013 as they upgraded to the rugged American Athletic Conference. At Baylor, he was tasked in 2017 with taking over a program after the university’s mishandling of sexual assault cases under coach Art Briles and president Ken Starr.
At Nebraska, the vast majority of the Cornhuskers’ plight has been on the field, with the defining drama coming from losing.
The Nebraska fan base is amid a six-year bowl drought, the program’s worst stretch since the early 1960s. How bad has it been in recent years? The only Power 5 programs with a lower win percentage than Nebraska since 2017 are Arizona, Vanderbilt, Rutgers and Kansas, per ESPN Stats & Information.
After taking Temple from generations of futility to the school’s first league title since 1967 and resuscitating Baylor from the depths of scandal to the Sugar Bowl in just three seasons, Rhule has a vision for both he and Nebraska rebuilding together.
“I want to tackle at practice, I want to run the ball and I want to play defense,” Rhule said. “I want to use a fullback. All these things that I did (at past jobs) is what the people here in the state want.”
There’s plenty of true believers in Rhule the rebuilder. Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades is so confident in Rhule’s ability to restore glory at Nebraska that he’s teased him: “You’ve gone soft. This isn’t a rebuild. It’s a walk in the park.”
The defining talent Rhule showed in those rebuilds is his consistent ability to instill belief in fans, players and the administration. So far, across the state of nearly two million residents with no professional teams, belief has emerged.
The adrenaline shots of optimism percolated all offseason. Rhule has brought back former coach Frank Solich, courted a relationship with Osborne and made traditionalists swoon by starting a local fullback camp for prospects. He’s eaten at the local haunts like LeadBelly, taken every picture and decorated his apartment a mile from campus with an oversized framed album cover art from Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album, a gift from former NFL executive Mike Lombardi.
“We had to go find some guy who grew up in New York City to be an authentic Nebraskan,” Athletic director Trev Alberts said with a chuckle. “This place needs to get back to being Nebraska, which at its best has a general unity and sense of purpose surrounding the program.”
Soon after taking the job, Rhule spoke to Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins, one of his former stars at Temple, who delivered a message that resonated: “I believe in you no matter what you do, but you really are special with guys who are 18 to 22. This is what you’re supposed to be doing, don’t ever change.”
RHULE’S TASK FOR Nebraska can be laid out simply — take a brand that last dominated in the Blockbuster Video era and make it relevant for the TikTok generation. The Cornhuskers won or shared three national titles in the 1990s and had consistent success under Bo Pelini from 2008 to 2013.
The time under Pelini was sandwiched by the misplaced Bill Callahan, the overmatched Mike Riley and the persistent on-field shortcomings of Scott Frost, the former Huskers star who, like Rhule, was hailed as a savior after winning his first offseason.
Rhule inherits a program that competed but couldn’t figure out a way to win. Across 2021 and 2022, Nebraska endured a stretch losing seven games in a row by single digits. That’s the longest single-digit losing streak in the AP poll era.
The competitive advantage of hiring Rhule to rebuild is that he’s proved he can do it.
Former Temple players point to losing a game at the Kibbie Dome in Moscow, Idaho, as an unlikely place for Nebraska football fans to look for inspiration. When Rhule’s players at Temple look back on their 2016 AAC championship, the distinct turning point came in late September 2013.
When Rhule’s first Temple team lost to Fordham on a Hail Mary pass, Rhule ran the younger players on the roster through relentless two-and-a-half hour practices during a bye-week, setting the tone for the future of the program.
After flying cross country to play at Idaho, Rhule lined up the team to run gassers in pregame, an uncommon and essentially counter-productive coaching tactic. But a decade later, the physical nature of those practices and the number of pregame Kibbie Dome gassers have grown like fish tales. They are the stories, Rhule jokes, that get told whenever he attends his former players’ weddings.
“In my mind, there was a level of toughness that you knew, nobody did what you were doing,” said Rob Dvoracek, a former Temple player and now Nebraska’s linebacker coach. “Your mindset was like, ‘We’re going to be tougher than everyone else.'”
Temple lost that game in Idaho on its way to a 2-10 season in 2013, but it closed the year with an authoritative 41-21 road win at Memphis. The Owls went 6-6 in 2014 and went on to play for the AAC title in 2015 before winning it in 2016. Still, Rhule and his staff look back at the 2-10 season as their best coaching job.
“We have to make sure that we establish the way that we want to do things,” Rhule said. “This is how we’re going to practice. Some people might call that culture, some people might call that process, whatever it is. It’s like, ‘Hey, let’s establish this so that as the talent gets better, it grows up, develops, or we bring players in, there’s a standard for how we’re going to do things.'”
WHEN BAYLOR HIRED Rhule in December 2016, he found out the school had just one player committed for the upcoming recruiting class. It ended up being Jalen Pitre, a defensive back who the Baylor coaching staff jokingly referred to as the “Lone Survivor.”
“At one point, we had four scholarship offensive linemen, so we moved both of our tight ends,” Rhule said. “We played Oklahoma, and our starting center and our left tackle had been tight ends the year before.”
The turning point for Rhule’s tenure at Baylor — a similar inflection point to the Kibbie Dome gassers — came amid an 8-game losing streak in 2017.
The Monday after a 59-16 loss at Oklahoma State, Rhule faced some tough realities: The early buy-in was minimal and players bristled at the rigorous practices and scheme shifts he brought on.
Rhule had to fight a distinct mentality: “Why are we having to do this if the other way works?”
Rhule’s pitch that Monday after the OSU blowout was simple — spread and tempo would win games and help him secure a lengthy contract. Playing and practicing his way would prepare Baylor’s players for the NFL, the same way he saw 11 of his Temple players and recruits drafted from 2016 through 2019.
Rhule’s father, Denny, told him that he’d rebuild Baylor “one relationship at a time.” So he bought $500 worth of Popeyes for the team every Monday, set the tone with more rugged practices and lived up to his promise after that OSU blowout that those who stuck around would be there for revenge on the Cowboys.
“In my opinion, what made Matt special is that he preached process all of the time and focused very little on outcome,” Rhoades said.
The players bought in, embraced the grind and slowed the tempo. The next season, Baylor beat the Cowboys, 35-31, in Waco. The following year, it romped through Stillwater with a 45-27 blowout on the way to the Big 12 championship game and Sugar Bowl.
And that’s what makes Rhoades so confident in the outcome at Nebraska: “I think he’ll do what he did at Temple and at Baylor. I have no doubt.”
COLLEGE FOOTBALL LORE is filled with predictable spring tropes — the new strength coach beefing up the team, the more aggressive coordinator juicing up the scheme and, of course, the superior detail of the new head coach.
What differs with Rhule’s arrival at Nebraska — and the resounding belief in the dual rebuilds of program and career — is the credibility earned from his past revivals at Temple and Baylor. His ability to instill the belief that defined his tenures at Temple and Baylor has clearly emerged in Lincoln, creating a vision of what the collision of coach and program on the comeback will look like.
It starts with the offseason workouts. Players dress the same, the weights are all stacked in a certain way and each water bottle is positioned intentionally as players go through workouts under strength coach Corey Campbell.
“They can’t be to the left of you,” redshirt sophomore tailback Gabe Ervin Jr. said. “They can’t be in front of you, they can’t be behind you. They got to be a certain way and that’s the right way, to the right side of you.”
Since 2018, Nebraska is 7-25 in games decided by eight points or fewer, with fourth-quarter fades and special team meltdowns the most common culprits during former coach Frost’s 16-31 tenure. He famously termed the issues the “same movie,” and to reclaim past glories, Rhule needs to write a new script.
Rhule is adamant this job isn’t a tear down: “I’ve got to give Scott [Frost] and Mickey [Joseph] a lot of credit, there’s good players.”
Thirteen starters return from from a team that Rhule says was “outclassed” in talent in “very few games” last year.
That’s why the office of new special teams coach Ed Foley, a longtime Rhule confidant, is a bustling new hub. It’s a place where Foley said six players popped by on a recent day to get feedback on how they can contribute on teams. Rhule sells a path to the NFL, and special teams is a huge part of that.
“There’s definitely been enough talent here since I’ve been here,” said star senior cornerback Quinton Newsome. “It’s always little things.”
The difference Ervin sees comes with an intense focus on situational football so “we don’t beat ourselves,” with so much more time spent on it than under the prior regime it feels like “that’s what we do in practice more than anything.”
Rhule says he stole an idea from joint practices with the Patriots — one day in the spring he just ripped up the practice plan and did impromptu situational football for the entire practice. Think sandlot style, as he’d just invent a score, down and distance over and over.
Ervin gives the example of the level of situational football detail by revealing a set of verbal codes the players have learned, like yelling “BLUE BLUE BLUE” to take a knee in-bounds after a first down to keep the clock moving.
“We’re figuring out ways to be prepared in moments that we weren’t prepared for before,” Ervin said. “We did know what we were doing last year, but not to the fullest and we weren’t really prepared for those moments. I feel like this year we’re going to be able to capitalize in those moments more because we’re going to be simply more prepared.”
That preparation includes a targeted approach to make the Huskers a more physical program through a focus on weights instead of agility, eating better and such an emphasis on rehab the new facility has 10,000 square feet just dedicated to recovery space. Bigger, stronger and more physical players win close games in the fourth quarter.
“Hey guys, we’re going to do mat drills instead of just doing agility drills,” Rhule said. “And this is why in practice we’re going to go good on good. Why is there an emphasis on lifting, this emphasis on rehab, this emphasis on eating? So that we can be a physical, dominant team in the fourth quarter and late in the season.”
Rhule also has put an emphasis on the best players hitting each other in practice and even allowed the quarterbacks to be hit in the spring game to not leave anything to chance once the season starts.
There’s a method to it all, honed by Rhule’s 128 games of experience as a head coach.
“When you get to those moments in the fourth quarter, I don’t want our blood pressure to go up,” Rhule said. “I want us to get those moments and we have done this so much that we’re comfortable.”
ABOVE RHULE’S DESK is a bottle of champagne sent by Bill Belichick congratulating him on his new start.
Belichick’s Dom Perignon is a reminder that there’s a robust history for second acts among fired coaches, with Belichick the prime NFL example and both Pete Carroll and Nick Saban the generationally successful reminders in college football.
“I’m so confident in what I believe in,” Rhule said. “I’ve seen it work, I’ve seen it not work. I’ve seen the highs, the lows. If I learned one thing in Carolina it was do what you think is right and don’t ever acquiesce to something that you don’t think is right.”
Through all the scars and lessons, the core ability to connect remains. During a grueling mat drill this winter, Rhule approached Ervin as he struggled through the drill with a pep talk that doubles as a metaphor for a tired program.
“I was dying tired when he said something that clicked in my brain, like I’m going to get through this, I got to be that dog.” Ervin said, before unintentionally articulating the wish of every Cornhusker fan.
He pushed through to the other side, and became one of many offseason believers: “Matt Rhule takes you somewhere where you don’t think you can go.”
Need more proof?
Remember when Rhule and his staff crashed the baby shower? On Wednesday, the player they were in town to see, Carter Nelson of Ainsworth, committed to the Huskers. At Elks Lodge #1790, they’d seen this coming the whole time.