How Matt Rhule’s Nebraska staff hires fit his M.O.

LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska soccer rolled out two extra new assistants Thursday for public introduction, tight ends coach Bob Wager and huge receivers coach Garret McGuire.

Trainer and pupil. However who’s who?

At first look, it appears to be like clear. Wager, 52, involves Lincoln with 26 years of head teaching expertise, together with the previous 17 seasons at Arlington Martin in Texas, the place he received 69 % of his video games and certified for the state playoffs yearly.

McGuire is 24, the youngest full-time coach within the FBS. One in all his gamers, switch wideout Josh Fleeks, performed highschool soccer with McGuire in Cedar Hill, Texas, and at Baylor beneath Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule in 2018 and ’19. Casey Thompson, the Huskers’ returning starter at quarterback, is 4 months older than McGuire.

However appears to be like don’t inform your entire story.

“Garret doesn’t want any searching for, I guarantee you,” Wager mentioned.

McGuire, the son of Texas Tech coach Joey McGuire, may get mistaken for a pupil within the Texas highschool hallways when he’s out recruiting this spring. However he’s obtained teaching chops, in accordance with those that’ve hung out round him.

“I’ve had a possibility to look at him develop up and never solely be an impressive teammate and participant at the highschool degree,” Wager mentioned, “however a extremely, actually sharp, pushed, younger coach that’s going to be wildly profitable right here and sooner or later.”

To not recommend that Wager will take cues from McGuire, who assisted with the Carolina Panthers for Rhule through the previous two seasons. However the veteran coach, in his first school job, shouldn’t be above studying from anybody, he mentioned.

“No query,” Wager mentioned, “there will probably be a fantastic studying curve for me.”

Different observations from assembly with Wager and McGuire:

• Wager serves as maybe the perfect illustration on Rhule’s employees of a coach who’s within the enterprise to impression the lives of his gamers.

We’ve heard from Rhule repeatedly that the easiest way for coaches to keep away from dysfunction at the moment in school soccer is to construct robust bonds with gamers. With the temptation ever-present to switch, gamers must really feel connections. Rhule has begun to implement the framework at Nebraska to unify the Huskers off the sphere as a lot as on it.

It’s a mode that seems a stable match for Wager, a self-described “character-development man.”

“On the finish of the day, if all we train them is obstructing and tackling, I believe we’ve offered them quick,” Wager mentioned. “I need to train them find out how to be dad. I need to train them find out how to be husband. I need to train them find out how to be a fantastic teammate and a fantastic worker.

“Our conferences will at all times begin with that — human growth earlier than participant growth.”

He talked little Thursday about Nebraska’s personnel at tight finish, even when requested.

“My early ideas are, it’s all about constructing relationships with these guys proper now,” Wager mentioned. “You’ll be able to’t have guidelines with out relationships.”

• Wager won’t go away his previous behind.

In his first month at Nebraska, Wager spent a lot of his time in Texas to see recruits. Two members of the Huskers’ 2023 class, tight finish Ismael Smith Flores and huge receiver Jeremiah Charles, performed for Wager in 2022 at Martin Excessive.

He’ll keep a connection to his work at the highschool degree by means of them. And by persevering with to attach with Texas highschool coaches.

“I put in quite a lot of years as their peer,” Wager mentioned. “And I’m nonetheless their peer. Guys, I’m at all times going to be a highschool soccer coach. I simply occur to be teaching on the College of Nebraska.”

Wager mentioned he was impressed partly to take this job by the success of Joey McGuire, who went from Cedar Hill Excessive Faculty to Baylor with Rhule in 2017 to affiliate head coach for the Bears to Tech as the top coach in 2022.

Amongst Rhule’s first recruiting stops when he began at Baylor, the coach went with Joey McGuire to go to Wager at Martin. They’ve all come full circle within the six years since.

• Excuse Garret McGuire for not understanding fairly what to do but with all of his new workplace area.

As he continues “ingesting out of the hearth hose somewhat bit,” McGuire mentioned, he invited the receivers in to see him Thursday with enticements of Honey Buns and Pop Tarts. Six gamers confirmed up.

“Simply sit there and hang around with me as I’m watching tape and all that,” McGuire mentioned.

He was recognized to be well liked by teammates in his time at Baylor from 2017 to 2020.

McGuire mentioned he started to organize for his profession as a coach whereas within the second grade. He slept in his dad’s workplace earlier than turning the age of 10.

“I spent 18 years with the perfect coach I do know,” he mentioned. “We have been beneath the identical roof.”

Garret calls Joey virtually every day, he mentioned, asking for recommendation. Joey tells Garret to get to know his gamers and their households. So Garett’s working at it, He supplied an previous saying Thursday, which he attributed to Nick Saban, to elucidate his deliberate interactions with Nebraska gamers as a younger coach:

“They don’t care how a lot you already know till they know the way a lot you care.”

• McGuire suits the Rhule blueprint.

He was born in 1999.

“I’m a ’90s child,” McGuire mentioned. “I rely.”

His first reminiscences of Nebraska soccer contain the 2009 Large 12 Championship Sport, when Texas and QB Colt McCoy escaped in opposition to the Huskers and Ndamukong Suh in Arlington.

Highschool soccer coaches are his heroes, McGuire mentioned. However he considers his dad, understandably, and Rhule as essentially the most influential figures in his teaching rise.

Garret met the brand new Nebraska coach when Rhule employed Joey McGuire in Waco. Rhule and the elder McGuire got here by means of Cedar Hill, south of Dallas, on a recruiting journey and stopped on the McGuire home.

“I stayed up all night time simply attempting to satisfy this man, I’d heard a lot about him,” Garret mentioned.

When he obtained to Baylor, he grasped Rhule’s method of teaching.

“We now have a course of,” McGuire mentioned, “and I imagine in our course of, as a result of I used to be part of it. I noticed it work. You’ll see us say, ‘Belief the method, OOU (One Of Us), all that stuff. However the whole lot I do, the best way I discuss, stroll, act, that’s coach Rhule’s DNA, in actuality.”

(Photograph: Dylan Widger / USA At present)