Nebraska
10 Reasons to Doubt Matt Rhule is the Guy Nebraska Football Needs
Read 10 Reasons to Believe Matt Rhule is the Guy Nebraska Needs
With two seasons in the books, Nebraskans have gotten a read on their Big Apple-born coach. We’ve examined why there are reasons to believe. Now let’s examine the other side of the coin and allow a little doubt to creep in.
1. He sometimes says one thing and does another
Rhule has paid lip service to being different and veering away from the style of offense most teams roll out. “We’re going to be more old school, get in the huddle, control the clock, pound the football… win special teams and let the elements help us.” But anyone who watched the Huskers this year saw the offense quickly pivot to being conventional 2024 fare, giving up on the run game quickly and allowing defenses to tee off against a true freshman quarterback. The less said about Special Teams, the better.
Rhule has also called having a mobile quarterback “vital.” That was reflected in his transfer addition of Jeff Sims in 2023. But his quarterback recruiting since then has said otherwise. Daniel Kaelin, Dylan Raiola, and newly signed TJ Lateef are all considered pocket passers, as was Ohio State transfer Kyle McCord, who was all set to come to Nebraska until the Raiola news broke.
A consistent philosophy is necessary to steer a blue-blooded program like Nebraska. Just ask Mike Riley.
2. He’s made questionable assistant hires
When the team you’re poaching a coach from isn’t sad to see them go, you may have made a bad hire. Rhule also took flak for hiring fresh-faced Garret McGuire, son of his former colleague, Joey McGuire. Rhule defended his choice on Will Compton’s Bussin’ with the Boys, essentially saying “look at my track record and trust me.” But McGuire’s unit underachieved in 2024 and he’s now in Lubbock as a result. That’s to say nothing of his choice in Bob Wager, the Texas high school coach no doubt brought on to get a foot in the Lone Star state’s deep pipeline of talent. But Wager resigned after a DUI arrest before ever coaching a game. And Husker fans are still curious if Ed Foley will have a job by the time the New Year’s ball drops.
3. He still can’t solve the Huskers’ one-score woes
As much as Rhule downplays the Huskers being snake-bitten or cursed, at this point, you have to wonder at least a little bit, right? Like his predecessor, Rhule has a horrid record in one score games. The Huskers can hold onto a tight lead, as they did against Northwestern in 2023 and Rutgers in ’24, but to have the ball in their hands with the game on the line? Forget about it. Nebraska won one – one! – of their last 33 contests when tied or losing by a score on their final possession. The lone win? 2019 against Northwestern. It defies all realms of possibility.
4. He can’t seem to fix the turnover issues either
They had the second worst turnover margin in FBS last season. After a promising start to 2024, they finished the regular season –0.1. It’s an improvement, yes, but if two years in you’re still finishing in the negatives, it makes you wonder if they’re actually capable of getting it in order. Chief among John Butler’s to-do list is finding players who can take the ball away.
5. His offenses have historically been dreadful
An injury-riddled offense ranked near last in FBS last season. The hope was that a 5-star quarterback, exciting new receivers, and an offensive line among the most seasoned in all of football would be able to put together a much-improved product in 2024. But the Huskers finished ranked 97th in scoring, 94th in yards per game and 106th in yards per play. They don’t do anything particularly well and they routinely flounder in the red zone. As Sam McKewon pointed out, 10 teams have had scoring defenses ranked in the top 20 each of the last two seasons. Nebraska is the only one among them with a losing record. That speaks to an offense that isn’t holding up its end of the bargain.
Until Wisconsin, Nebraska had not won a game under Rhule in which they gave up more than 14 points. Ask Carolina fans if that sounds familiar.
This year there was no denying that Raiola and his receivers regressed as the season went on. Bret Bielema and his Fighting Illini showed teams the way to befuddle Satterfield. But if Illinois could figure out the blueprint in September, why couldn’t the Huskers pivot in October? Dana Holgorsen’s turn as offensive coordinator has been encouraging thus far and it’ll need to ramp up even more in 2025 if that Huskers want to better their record.
6. Special Teams have not been any better
Special teams under Scott Frost were so awful that fans publicly lobbied to give analyst Bill Busch the coordinator job, which Frost acquiesced to in 2022. But there’s been little to no improvement since his departure. Under Rhule, the Huskers have repeatedly struggled with missed kicks, botched snaps, and gotten absolutely nothing out of the return game. Simply put: the third phase of the game has cost them wins.
7. His awful stint with the Panthers
Speaking of Carolina, Panthers fans still have Rhule stuck in their craw. Why? Ask them and they’ll tell you he coached QBs poorly, fielded ugly, ineffective offenses, and never turned around a losing culture. While many say Carolina is a difficult job, largely because of their controversial owner, some Husker alumni haven’t given him a pass for his time in Charlotte.
8. Anointing Jeff Sims the starter
Whether this was Satt or Rhule, Sims played arguably the worst we’ve seen any QB at NU play since true freshman Beau Davis was thrust into the role halfway through Texas Tech in 2004. Ask Florida State how fast things can go south when you pick the wrong guy to pilot your offense. Rhule could have stressed open competition and potentially kept Casey Thompson in the fold, the only quarterback to defeat Iowa since Tommy Armstrong, but he instead handed the reins to Sims, who unearthed new ways of turning the football over.
Nebraska was one average offense away from a winning season in 2023 and a lot of momentum in Rhule’s first season. Anointing Sims was costly.
9. Does he truly understand the Big Ten?
The Big Ten is a beast. It humbled Bo and Frost alike. It’s humbling Rhule right now. This ain’t the Big 12. You have to play defense and you have to run and, above all, you have to have players that consistently execute. He pays lip service to all, but the results say otherwise. Nebraska has often been thwarted by teams with worse recruiting rankings but better fundamentals. Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois all tackle better, block better, and play their assignments better. Until Rhule changes that, he’ll continue to lose to them.
10. He is what his record says he is
Rhule said it himself when he pointed out that they’re a 5-7 team until the record shows otherwise. Now he and his program are 11-13. No matter the outcome in New York, he’ll still have a losing record going into the all-important Year Three. The only other coach to have a losing record after two seasons in the last 60 years was Scott Frost.
Rhule has a track record for turning programs around. That takes time. But at the end of the day, between stints in college and Carolina, he’s won 69 of 152 games as a head coach. As the Huskers struggle to close out games, that gives you pause.
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Stay up to date on all things Huskers by bookmarking Nebraska Cornhuskers On SI, subscribing to HuskerMax on YouTube, and visiting HuskerMax.com daily.
Emma Bullerman is spending her summer riding around in fields with her dad, and she’s thrilled about it. It’s not just for fun, either — she’s interning for the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and working alongside her father to conserve Nebraska grasslands.
“Prairie Plains has literally been in my life since I was born. I guess you could say I’m a bit of a grasslands nepo baby,” Bullerman said. “My dad is the restoration director, so even as a kid I would be out helping him in the field.”
Today, Emma is taking a more active role in aiding her dad’s work to restore native prairies.
“A lot of my summer will be in the truck with him driving across Nebraska to collect the native grassland seeds that we put into our restoration sites,” she said. “Basically, I’m just learning the ropes of everything that goes into grassland restoration.”
As a teen, Bullerman thought she wanted to do anything but follow her dad’s footsteps. Eventually, a few stalled paths helped her rediscover her love for her hometown.
“In high school and coming into college, I really thought I wanted to leave Nebraska and do something totally different from my dad,” she said. “I tried a few other directions, but pretty quickly could tell that I wasn’t passionate about them. I took a semester off, and then my boss at Prairie Plains reached out about helping with social media.”
It didn’t take long for Bullerman to catch the bug for conservation work and switch her major to fisheries and wildlife, the same degree program her father graduated from in 1995. In fact, she is a fourth-generation Husker with strong ties to ag and food science. Her grandfather is Dr. Lloyd Bullerman, a former a professor of food science, microbiology and food safety at the university, and her aunt studied food science at NU as well.
Getting back to Prairie Plains in her early college years helped Bullerman realize that she, too, had a calling toward this field.
“Being out in the field with my dad one day, I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I’ve been looking for. This is what I want to do.’ Finding my way back has been really, really beautiful.”
Working with her dad, she’s is feeling better than ever about her direction, her hometown and her future in Nebraska.
“Doing this work and studying at UNL has given me a whole new perspective on the state,” she said. “I used to be someone who was like, ‘I want to get out of here after I graduate.’ Restoring prairies and traveling all over Nebraska has helped me see that it’s so beautiful here, I just didn’t take the time to see it before.”
The future of data centers in Nebraska took center stage at a North Omaha town hall Thursday evening.
The event was hosted by State Sens. Terrell McKinney and Ashlei Spivey, who alongside Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh sponsored a bill in the Nebraska Legislature that looked to help regulate data centers.
Parts of their bill were adopted and passed in LB1010, which requires reports on annual power usage, water usage and ownership.
“Having this passed in a package showed a lot of bipartisan work,” Spivey told a crowd of attendees at Nelson Mandela Elementary School.
The proposed regulations were shaped in part by Bold Nebraska, an advocacy group focused on eminent domain and clean energy. Jane Kleeb, chair of the Nebraska Democratic Party and founder of Bold Nebraska, said before the bill passed there were “zero laws on the books” to address a boom in data centers.
“If one is coming into the community, we wanted to make sure that there were some basic transparency things in place,” Kleeb said.
Political discussions around data centers heated up in recent months following reporting by the Flatwater Free Press that showed Google is considering a data center in Nebraska that could require more than three times the amount of power the entire city of Lincoln uses at peak demand in the summer.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed another bill, LB1261, that allows private developers to build and own power plants to serve a large industrial customer, including data centers. That bill was proposed by the governor’s office and celebrated by Gov. Jim Pillen.
“Our state is once again taking a bold and strategic step – one that will create an environment that attracts business and multibillion dollar investment, while legally preserving Nebraska’s unique and consumer-friendly public power model,” Pillen said at the time.
At Thursday’s town hall, McKinney called LB1261 “the bogeyman bill.”
“It’s a bill that the governor pushed through the legislature to allow for data centers to create their own power,” McKinney said. “It’s a bill that I stood on the floor and said this is going to harm our communities.”
LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Hundreds of people are without power in southeast Nebraska after a severe storm passed through Thursday morning.
The Lincoln Electric System outage map showed 115 customers without power across the city at 11:36 a.m.
Norris Public Power District’s outage map also shows 45 customers affected by the storm. As of 11:36 a.m., there were nine active outages.
According to the Nebraska Public Power District outage map, 657 customers were affected by the storm. Most of the affected customers were near Plattsmouth in southeast Nebraska. As of 11:37 a.m., 27 customers remain without power.
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