(AP) LINCOLN, Neb. — Matt Rhule was not doing well a year ago. Five games into the season, he was fired by the Carolina Panthers due to a variety of personnel and injury concerns that he was going to leave training camp for.
Like he has in past interviews with the media since moving to Lincoln about nine months ago, he exuded optimism six days before his first game as Nebraska’s coach.
He declared on Friday that he was “really having the time of my life.” Thus, this is the happiest I’ve felt in a very, very long time. Now my family is here. My wife, my girls, and my family are all pleased, and my son is doing well. I truly like this time.
The 48-year-old Rhule’s life has been somewhat hectic since Nebraska made him one of their headline signings for the 2022–2023 coaching cycle.
In order to get a sense of the state’s enthusiasm for football and cultivate connections with high school coaches, Rhule and his staff have traveled to towns and cities throughout the state. He signed a class of recruits ranked sixth overall in the conference and top in the Big Ten West. Twenty years after Frank Solich’s contentious firing, he even had a part in reuniting the Husker family.
“He’s done everything right so far,” said 86-year-old Tom Osborne, who coached the Huskers to three national titles in his Hall of Fame career and stopped by Rhule’s office this week to wish him good luck.
The Huskers are undoubtedly prepared for their Thursday opening against Minnesota, according to Rhule.
“I have no doubt that we will play with intensity. We will undoubtedly be a physically strong team. I’m sure we won’t lose our cool if things don’t go according to plan right away. We won’t celebrate if everything proceeds smoothly ahead of schedule, Rhule declared. “And I’m sure we’ll enjoy ourselves together.”
It has been a long since the Huskers have had much fun. 2016 was their most recent winning season. During their four plus seasons under Scott Frost and their little over half season under interim coach Mickey Joseph, they never won more than five games, or three in conference play.
Rhule remarked, “I don’t want to say anything bad about the people who came here before me.” “I believe Mickey did a fantastic job. They just haven’t won, in my opinion. You wonder, “Man, are we ever going to win?” when you don’t win.
Rhule said he has been impressed by the team’s resiliency in making the change from the way things were done in the past to adopting the culture of accountability he and his staff have sought to put in place.
Rhule admitted that in the past programs he revamped at Baylor and Temple, his first team typically did not have much success while developing younger players. He frequently states that he wants to create a strong foundation so that the program will endure. However, he also wants the players from Nebraska who are almost done with their college careers to succeed.
“Their care for the program is so strong that I feel a tremendous obligation,” he said. “We have to find a way to help these guys win. I don’t know if they’re beaten down as much as I would say they want this so badly and they haven’t been able to get it.”
Rhule said “caring but not coddling” is his program’s mantra, and fifth-year linebacker Luke Reimer said it strikes the right balance.
“Especially for the old guys, there’s all this change and we don’t know what to do with it,” he said. “But they’ve done a great job acclimating those old guys like, ‘Hey, we know this is what you’ve done in the past, but this is what we’re doing now.’ It’s a get-on-board or get-out type of deal.”
Even though Rhule won only 11 games in two-plus seasons with the Panthers, he said he doesn’t regret the experience. He brought back to the college game some new ideas on how to teach schemes and incorporated them into routines that worked well for him at Temple and Baylor, where his final season included an 11-3 record and a Sugar Bowl loss.
“I think my time in the NFL really prepared me to do this better, right?” he said. “The (players) playing for our staff or being recruited by our staff, they’re probably better prepared for things at the next level than maybe before.”
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