Coach Matt Rhule Press Conference Quotes

Nebraska Football Signing Day Press Conference
Head Coach Matt Rhule
Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022

Opening statement
"First of all, thanks everyone for being here. It's great to have you here. I am really pleased with today. It has really only been 24 hours since I stood up there and talked to you guys. A lot has happened and a lot has gotten done. I am very grateful to everyone who has allowed us to get to this moment. I want to thank Trev Alberts and his team. They went out of their way to help us get this done. I want to thanks events, Keith, Taylor, Brittany, Joni and all the people that were here before and have done a great job of streamlining this process. All the coaches that I have brought in have worked really, really hard. I am grateful for them. I finally want to thank our coaches' wives. In a short amount of time when people are trying to figure out if they want to send their kids here, when they don't have much of a relationship with us and they're trying to figure out who we are, my wife and the wives of assistants coming from everywhere throughout the country, flying in and getting to know people and making sure that they know that what we say is real and that we want to have a family feel. We want this to be a family not just a football team. I am very grateful for them. Tours are awesome. Our academics, compliance and life skills staffs are second to none with what they do. I think people believe in what can happen here."

On what the biggest challenge was these last few weeks
"I think it is a little bit of everything to be quite honest. There is a lot of details and things to get organized. The way I want official visits is probably different then what they had. Making last minute changes to get it the way I think it should be. I thought people bent over backwards. I think one of the key things for us is to really show off Lincoln. Getting them out into the community is open. There were a lot of details that had to be worked out that our people worked really hard at. I think the biggest thing is relationships. They don't really know us, so how can you get to know someone over 24 days enough that they are willing to spend the next four years of their life here with you. That was really probably the biggest challenge. We were really honest and direct with people. Some kids it was right for and some it wasn't. In the end, I think we got enough guys that really believe in what we believe in."

On why there was a big focus on in-state guys
"I think you always start at home. The key to long-term success is for every fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh-graders in the state of Nebraska to grow up dreaming of playing out here. They have to see other kids just like them, do that. As I went through this process of evaluating this job if I would be a good fit here, I got to know these players. I watched them. I wanted the local kids to stay here and play here at Nebraska. We got a lot of them and a couple we didn't get, but the ones that we got came for the right reasons. They want to be here. We can't take everybody, but the ones we got are definitely good enough, and they are going to fight for their university."

On how he worked to instill the idea of elementary kids wanting to play here
"Win and do it the right way. I was talking to one of the top 2024 recruits in the country. He is down in Texas and everyone has a lock to go to one of the schools in Texas. We are having a conversation, and he goes 'Coach, you don't remember me? I came and saw five games of yours when I was in eight grade. And this player the played for you was my cousin.' So to me, the best thing I can do and our staff can do is every player that comes here and plays for us, leaves and says, 'You know what, that was awesome. I developed.' They will go back to their towns, and they'll tell people that what we are saying is true and right. That's the best resume we have. That's our book of business. Every high school coach says they want their guys to come play for our staff because we do things the right way. That and win. You grow up and your best memories are coming up here and watching big games. The way you win though is handling it day-to-day. We will get there. It's important to me that kids know that's a possibility. We aren't going to play games. We are going to give guys scholarships when they're good enough, and we are going to get them here and coach them."

On how important it was to get a lot of talented athletes here
"I came into it number one saying to myself that the mistake a lot of guys make when they take over a new job is to feel like they have to rush out and get a bunch of guys. I was like don't do that. I didn't realize the overwhelming response. Some of these guys that are committed to us I have known since seventh or eighth grade. They say they want to come back with me. I didn't take that into account. Last time I was doing this, there was a limit to how many NLIs you could send out and scholarships you could give. That's not true anymore. I'm not one of those guys that says I need three of these and four of these. People ask me all the time how many more I have. Guys are going to come and change their position. We love to change guys' positions if it's going to help them play in the NFL. I just try to take the best players. Obviously you need a minimum of certain things. I'm not saying that, but I'm not beholden to that. I like to think creatively. Having Evan Cooper on our staff makes me think creatively. We try to take the best players possible. In terms of the defense, I'm not saying we are going to run the 3-3-5 defense. I'm not saying we are going to run this defense. What I loved about Tony (White) is that he is creative. We had a top ten defense at Temple and we were 4-3. We went to Baylor and we went to the 3-3-5. Forgive me if my numbers are off slightly, but you get the gist. We got to Carolina and switched from year one to year two because Brian Burns was really good and then we kind of changed who we are. We aren't going to bring in 'This is our defense and you guys have to fit it.' We are going to get the best players possible. We felt like we needed speed on defense. That is what we tried to recruit."

On what he was looking for specifically in these kids
"I want guys who want to come here for the right reasons. I don't want guys who are coming here saying, 'How big is this NIL deal I'm going to get from these people'. I want kids that want to come here to get an education, win at football and have a chance to go and play in the NFL. Guys who want to come here and impact the community and make the University of Nebraska campus a better place because of their presence. That mindset is really important to me. I'll be honest; I was blown away with the maturity of a lot of they young men I've met through the recruiting process. The guys who were committed to the previous staff are grown. They have great families, and they love football. When I say that I'm a developmental coach, it just means that I want to help guys get better. To do that, you have to have players who want that and who want to come in every day and work and grind. That is all really important to me. If we have the core of our team like that, we will be hard to beat."

On what his thoughts are on the offensive line
"I will always be really blunt, but always respectful. I am kind of not bought in to the narrative I hear on the team and I hear from everywhere that the offensive line is the problem. We are going to have a good offensive line next year. I like the guys who are in that room already. I think we have to have an identity on offense of what we are going to do. When you are trying to figure out if you are a throw it or run team, you put those guys in hard positions. That's why when Marcus (Satterfield) came with me to Carolina I made him be the assistant offensive line coach. A lot of guys call plays because they are thinking about the quarterback only, and they are asking offensive lineman to do really difficult things. We are going to put those guys in a good position here. I am going to fight for those guys. I like those guys. We have tried to bring in some depth. We wanted to bring in a great young group that we can develop and watch them grow. The previous staff had done a nice job of identifying. I like the players, but we are also going to continue to look. I will never not take a talented offensive or defensive lineman. That's what wins games."

On the Nebraska signees
“When I first got the job, I called Brock Knutson, and I said ‘Hey I am Matt Rhule. I am the new head coach. I know this is kind of a shock. Where do you stand?’ And he said ‘Coach I am a Husker. I don’t care who the head coach is.’ I kind of laughed, hoping he would pet my ego a little bit and say he was dying to play for me or something but that just really hit me. This is how we are going to build this. With big, physical tough guys from this region. How much those guys loved Nebraska, how much it meant for them, to see that helmet, to come on these visits, it struck me. It really gave me a sense of purpose. This is important. But also, as I said going into this, the football is really good. The football is good in a lot of places. We found fast, dynamic athletes. And maybe there is a narrative that there is not speed. Well, we went and got one of the fastest players in the nation from right here and one of the best track athletes in the nation right here. We saw good football. The coaches were great. The people were great. But the biggest thing that hit me was how much those guys just really want to play football for the University of Nebraska, and they want to be part of a championship team here.”
 
On Jeff Sims
“Geoff Collins was the head coach at Georgia Tech. Geoff and I worked together at Albright College and then at Western Carolina years ago. Geoff replaced me as the head coach at Temple, so when I first went to Baylor, I went to visit them. I watched them practice. I go to the NFL, I have every Saturdays off to watch games. I have watched a ton of Georgia Tech games, and I fell in love with Jeff (Sims) as a player really early on. He is dynamic. He is athletic. He is smart. He is big. He has accuracy. He can throw from the pocket. So, when he became available when he went into the transfer portal, I was already sold on him. I even had people in the NFL say, ‘Hey you need to go get this guy.’ Everyone recognizes that he is an NFL talent. You get to know him. His personality is elite. He is a really good person about the right things. His former coaches, they loved him. So, it was easy if it worked out. We are grateful that he chose to come here.”
 
On past relationships assisting with signees from Pennsylvania and Texas  
“They had done a good job here. Dylan (Rogers) and Riley (Van Poppel) were already committed. So, they had done a good job in those places. For me, to go down and get Princewill (Umanmielen). I posted the picture of me eating at his mom’s restaurant which is a great restaurant in Austin, having the fufu and the egusi soup and all that. Well, I had done that four years ago recruiting Princely (Umanmielen), who then after I left, took a visit to Baylor. So, it is a wonderful family. So those are some of the connections. I was talking to Princewill when he was this big and now, he is this big. We have a lot of people in Texas that we care about that we know that they know how we do things. We will recruit Texas. Every year it will be an elite priority. And then obviously in the Northeast, you look back at the history of Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, they sent great players here. We have some connections in Philadelphia. We have some connections in Harrisburg and in New Jersey. We are going to try and take advantage of those.”
 
On retaining Donovan Raiola
“Donovan was trained by Harry Hiestand, who’s brother-in-law Pat Flaherty I worked for at the Giants as the assistant offensive line coach. When you get into offensive line play, there is like three base philosophies, and they are very different. It is like the difference between driving on the right side and the left side of the road. They are all great. I don’t want an offensive line coach that is over here. I deeply care about what the offensive line looks like. We interviewed several candidates, and we talked to several guys. To Donovan’s credit, I told him I would let him know, and he showed up every day to work. He worked. He kept being there. Half of life is just showing up. I kind of liked his vibe and his energy, but most importantly to me, he had been trained in the same system that I am trained in. And I want us to play that way. It was just a natural fit. He is a great guy, and I got a chance to meet his wife. Wonderful family. We are excited.”
 
On Rhule’s staff reflecting the culture
“We ask people in Pennsylvania and we ask people in Florida to send their kids to us. They were here this past weekend, and it was kind of cold, and it is a long way. I think they looked at Terrance Knighton and said ‘He just picked his family up and came here to follow Coach Rhule.’ And they looked at (Evan Cooper) and E.J. (Barthel) and all of these guys, and I think it sent a great message to them that if they believe in what Matt is doing that some of them would even leave NFL jobs to come work for him then I can trust him as well. When the staff is all said and done, I think we will probably have seven or eight former players of mine on the staff in different areas and that is really helpful to me because I think they are stars. It is going to be a young staff. I have had some people say to me ‘Why is the staff so young?’ One because I am old, and they make me feel younger. They make me look younger to the guys. More relevant in terms of what’s new and what’s not. But also, they have seen firsthand how the way that we do things effects lives. It effected their life, hopefully. And now they are going to pour into other people’s lives. There is not going to be any celebrity coaches. There are not going to be guys with different agendas. There isn’t going to be this coach saying this and this coach is saying this. We are all going to have one purpose. There is a vision. There is going to be a brand of football that we play, and they all believe it. Omar (Hales) is going to be a star on social media. Coach (Ed) Foley is going to go to different restaurants. They are all going to be themselves. I want them to all be different. But they better wake up every morning saying, ‘My number one priority is the guys on my team.’ Everyone spends too much time recruiting, and they don’t think enough about the guys on their own team. But those guys on our team is our job. That is the guys that I have. I am lucky to have them. I am really grateful that Trev (Alberts) has allowed me to hire who I want to hire. I want to add something about Donovan (Raiola) if I may because I think it needs to be said. I have never ever in my life asked all the guys at their position about their coach and not have one guy say they don’t love him. Even a young man that went into the portal that I have known since I recruited him at Baylor said, ‘I will stand on the table for that man.’ So that meant a lot to me coming from the players even a guy that is leaving saying I believe in him. I think just great guys and people that you want to send your kids to play for.”
 
On Rhule’s social media presence
“Social media for me is this, I don’t read it because it is not super flattering when you are the head coach all of the time, so I don’t read it, but I communicate from it, and I pay attention to the players on it. I get to know the players as recruits even when they are sophomores. I see what they are about. But I can also send a message about who we are. That we are going to be an old school program with a new school look. We are going to do things the modern way but retain old school values. It has been fun. My mom calls me every day asking me to explain what this emoji means and what this emoji means and that has kind of taken on a life of its own. I have recruits asking me if I can say this, so if recruits are asking me to do it, I will do it. It has been fun, and I want to show off Lincoln. I have been going around taking pictures when I can because this is a cool town and the more people that get here, the more they will know that. You guys know that, but it is part of my job to show that.”
 
On Ed Foley
“Anytime you have a guy that has been a head coach it helps. Anytime you have a guy that has put his son through college even though Charlie (Foley) didn’t play football, that age it helps. I think any time you have a guy that has coached the offensive line and the tight ends, even though they are not doing that, it helps. When I left Temple, he stayed. He was an elite special teams coordinator for them. I think at one point that year they scored like five different ways on special teams. Players play for him, and he came to the NFL with me. We learned some different things there. Special teams are really different in the NFL then they are in college. But there are some things we will carry forward. I believe for us special teams can win us two games a year. Ed will handle that. I will be honest with you it is not really my wheelhouse. Like I have done it before, but I like to go down with the offensive and defensive line. I know it is going to be done right. I can oversee the head coach part of it, but Ed is elite.”
 
On transfer quarterbacks versus high school quarterbacks
“I didn’t come in and say ‘Boy I really want a transfer quarterback.’ When Jeff became available, I said ‘I want Jeff.’ I think there are really good quarterbacks. I think that is a healthy room. There is a lot of good quarterbacks in that room. I have watched practice tape on some. I have to get around them, but there is a lot of good players, and the best player will play with me. Scholarship, walk-on, freshman, senior, none of that matters to me. In terms of recruiting, my history at Temple four years as the head coach, PJ Walker was my quarterback all four years. He started game five of his freshman year. You get to Baylor, Charlie Brewer goes in game four or five of his freshman year, and he starts three years, and we are in the Sugar Bowl. I am used to playing a freshman and letting them ride, so we are going to continue to recruit quarterbacks in this class. I don’t know what will happen. We will recruit quarterbacks in the future. It is just kind of the new way of the world where you never know if guys are going to leave or not. You are going to have to recruit. In terms of freshman quarterbacks, I always look for guys that have it. I know that sounds crazy. If you feel them when they play, if they are accurate, if they are tough, in college football, if they can pick up first downs on their feet, if the team follows them, if they are winners, we should bring them on. So, to me, the more winners the better. There was a time when you recruited a ton of quarterbacks, and they would sometimes go play other positions and be NFL players. Now guys transfer before that happens. I am just trying to find winners.”
 
On the structure of the coaching staff
“Marcus (Satterfield) will coach the quarterbacks which he wanted to do from the very beginning, and we kind of started down a different path of it. But, I thought he did a good job last year with Spencer (Rattler), and he has done it for me before so that is very natural for us. And then we are going to make some other hires here in the coming weeks. Nothing to report specifically on those guys, but we will get it done before we start the second recruiting period in January.”
 
On conversations with the current players  
“Number one that there is a lot of pride in their university and a lot of guys that want to win. Just a lot of conversations like ‘Hey how are things set up and what can we do to help you guys do it a way that you guys think will be better?’ In terms of anything else beyond that, really watching some guys and evaluating them. Then after that, I just want to start with a blank slate in January and just say ‘I don’t care what you have done, just show me what you can do moving forward’. That can be and should be freeing for everybody where they can just show up and play. One of the hardest things about taking these jobs is all of these kids that I am recruiting right now, their parents they know me and sent them to play for me. All of the guys that are on the team, sometimes they are like ‘Where do I stand with Coach?’ Every player that is on this team is my guy, and I am going to coach them all of the same. So, I am anxious to get to know them in the spring semester. But we had some really productive conversations and guys shared a lot with me and I think we can really improve the team quickly with those guys.”

On if he talked with Casey Thompson 
“Yeah I talked to Casey (Thompson). He’s an impressive man. Obviously, I don’t share what I say to guys and conversations that we have. He played a lot of football. I’m looking forward to him getting healthy and moving forward.”
 
On his opinion of guys coming back from the transfer portal
“I don’t have a stance. I think every football player is different. To me it’s like anything in life. Anytime someone says they are done with something and walk away from something, you kind of leave it in other peoples’ fate. It all depends on the history. I try to come to this place because the kids didn’t know me when they put themselves in the portal. I would certainly talk to anyone about coming back because they just hadn’t been with me here before. There are some guys that should go into the portal everywhere. If they aren’t going to play and they want to play, I certainly understand that. I think I only talked to two or three of the guys that went into the portal, but some guys that called me and said they wanted to come back, I’d said that I think it’s best if you do move on. I think it’s important to find out what the dynamics are and what the academics and behavior has been like since they’ve been here. Moving forward, I think we will just take each one on an individual basis. To me, when you make a blanket statement you kind of have to follow it. Everybody is on their own journey in life, and my job is to help them. If it’s not here, help them get somewhere else.”

On why he gravitates toward offensive and defensive line 
“I just think that the team that can control the line of scrimmage, whether it's running the ball and stopping the run or the ability to protect the quarterback and affect the quarterback, those teams win. Great quarterbacks usually are what makes teams, don't get me wrong, but a lot of that comes down to recruiting. I believe that you can develop guys up front on both sides of the ball. I care about all the players you know, and I'll go over and watch the defensive backs, but I certainly can't sit there and talk to them about their backpedal and elite level. I can talk about offensive line and defensive line play, and I can talk about linebacker play. So, I let my coaches coach, but I like to just kind of be around those guys. To me, it's just when you have a great offensive line and defensive line, and they're the right guys, the whole vibe in the locker room is different. You have kind of that rugged team that you want. And part of it for me is, I don't think the ways that we won at Temple will help us win here. I don't think the ways that we won at Baylor will help us win here. I need to figure out how to win here. And the same core philosophies of it are there, but I've been outside and felt the wind a couple of times. I walked out on the field yesterday when the ice was – when the college football playoff comes around in a couple years and there's some home games, I think they're going to  invite some teams to come up here and play us. So building a team that can win. One of the things I've learned from Coach (Bill) Belichick and Mike Lombardi, build a team that can win in the environment that you're in. Play football differently. And so, that's been important to me. I think the offensive line and defensive line will win in these conditions.” 

On how NIL can be an advantage for Nebraska
“Obviously at its face, every player, if I have a name, image and likeness that can bring value to me, I would want to capitalize on and take advantage of it. I'm not working for free, you guys aren't working for free. We all want something if we can get it, that's the original intention of it. You can see it's being misused and mishandled in a lot of places. I said this on TV earlier, so please forgive me but I'm at a point in my life where I've kind of done some cool things. I like what I've done. I have a lot more I want to accomplish. My family is comfortable. I'm only coaching college football because I love this age group and I want to feel like I'm doing something in their lives and our staff is doing something in their lives. So I can't start that relationship off with lies. I can't start that relationship off by saying, ‘Hey I want to help you be the best man you can be, but let me go tamper with someone on someone else's roster and start it off by cheating,’ which is happening everywhere right now. It's saddening to me. As a guy that was in college football, to see what's happened to college football, I walk into school, I can't talk to that junior, and I follow all those rules, but somebody could call a kid on my team and say, ‘Hey if you get in the transfer portal, I’ll give you….’ It's just sad to me. You're hearing a lot of coaches say that. That being said, I want it done the right way for our guys. I don't get involved in it because even in the NFL, I don't want players looking at me saying, ‘Well why is he making this and you're making that’. By rule, I can't be involved in it. I think we have a great setup here. I think the donors and people of Nebraska and the fans are going to do right by the kids and help them be great. I think the key for me is to make sure I recruit guys who want to be here, not who want to come to get the best NIL deal. I need to recruit guys who want to be here and want to be coached and if I do that, I'll find the right guys. I hope that they make great opportunities for themselves and a lot of great connections, but I'm going to try to do it the right way. I don't do divisiveness in the locker room. I think we're all seeing what it looks like for teams. When everyone's not getting what they're supposed to get or everything's not fair, and I don't want that for our guys either. This age group of kids, 18 to 22, in today's society, especially after COVID-19, you look at mental health issues and all these things, anxiety, depression, I mean, it's skyrocketing. It's scary. Now you throw in guys going to other schools, not this school, going to other schools and if you don't play well, your money goes down. We're just going to ruin kids. So I think NIL is awesome, I’ll say that, when done right, when done professionally. I'm so thrilled with the setup here because like everything else, like true Nebraskans, they're going to do things the right way to help kids and not to take advantage of kids.”

On how he balances development with the transfer portal
“That's one of the things I learned in the NFL. You have a guy for one year, you can do some things with him. I think it's just about taking the right guys from the transfer portal. We've taken some kids who have three or four years, and I'm so confused with COVID right now because there's COVID years and non-COVID years, but taking guys who have three or four years left. You can still work with them for a long amount of time. What I don't want to do is, moving forward, have a bunch of kids that fight in my program for four years, then I just bring a one year guy in every year to top them. If we need to, we need to. It's competition, but we want to get guys here for at least two years, three years. That's kind of the hope. But again, everything's on an individual basis. I think the NFL really helped me in terms of what kind of impact we can make on a guy in a year. I’m not here to toot our horn, but players want to go to the NFL. Well the staff either played in the NFL or coached in the NFL. Coach Rhule coached in the NFL. When you sit in draft meetings, it's not anything like what we think it is. You listen to NFL Network, and it's awesome. But they're talking about psychological studies. They're talking about background stuff. They're talking about medical reports. And so my hope is that people want to be here at the end of their careers. Because we kind of went through all that and as the personnel people are trying to find all the x's to x the guy off or downgrade him, we can help turn those x's into checks and say, I will vouch for this kid on this, this, and this. That will help guys in the draft process and I think that'll bring some transfers in. If we do a really good job in recruiting, hopefully we will have a bunch of high school kids here for a long time as well.” 

On how much he saw guys develop in one year in the NFL
“A lot of the guys who I’ve had in college at Temple and Baylor, like the Hasson Reddicks and those guys, it was the last year, when they were focused, that they really made the turn. Curtis Samuel, he was a great player. We had some guys, just in one year, play their best football. I come back to college football, from the NFL, way more focused and understanding what needs to be done for these guys from a football perspective. Hopefully, we can help guys, even if they’re only here for six months, play their best football.”

On how big it is to get guys like Malachi Coleman to stay in Lincoln
“The biggest thing about Malachi (Coleman) is that I just kind of really like him. You know what I’m saying? Once everybody gets here, the stars go away and you’re all just guys on the team. But I just really like Malachi. I like his family. I love his sister. I love the people around him. I love the people at his school, the people at Lincoln East. There wasn’t a guy we recruited where I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I’m going to like this guy.’ Malachi is a really cool guy. He’s obviously very talented, but he cares about others. You talk about NIL, he’s donating things to foster care and helping kids. He’s really special in that regard. To me, if I say that our job as a staff is to make these guys’ lives better, I love the fact that Malachi’s life is to make other people’s lives better. And that’s way more important to me than the 10.3 that he runs. I think that’s pretty cool too.”

On how the staff arrives at certain players
“I’ll just say this to you guys, Texas Tech, Joey McGuire, one of my best friends, James Blanchard, recruiting guy. We all come from the same tree, so you’ll start seeing guys like Jaylen Lloyd. You’ll start seeing guys like Erik Fields, who have Texas Tech, because we have a system that we use and that we believe in. Erik Fields – I don’t want to make promises, but everyone here is going to know who he is. He’s an elite player. He’s got excellent talent. He’s fast, physical. I was talking to Danny Woodhead the other day. There’s a big difference between great recruits and great players. Sometimes they’re the same thing, and Malachi (Coleman) is the same thing. But there’s a lot of guys who are really good recruits, and a lot of guys who are really good players. Sometimes recruiting and how you’re ranked is really a function of what you were in tenth grade. You go to the camps, you’re 6-foot-3, 220, oh my goodness. I’m always looking for the kid who’s getting to be a senior, and I’m looking for him to take off. We’ll have a really good recruiting class next year. We’ll be close to full. This year was so much fun, because we got to watch everyone’s senior tape. That’s the way Coach (Tom) Osborne was able to do it. The way Coach (Frank) Solich was able to do it. Where they could watch guys’ senior tape and see what kind of player they were. Then everyone started offering kids in ninth grade and it changed. This has been fun for me. But Fields, we watch tape all day long. Evan Cooper is the absolute best I’ve ever been around. If we ever offer a guy that no one’s heard of, it’s Evan. Because he stays up at night and texts me at three 'o' clock in the morning, watching this guy, watching that guy. I think what you’ll start to see is that we’ll offer guys no one has heard of, then they’ll start getting 10, 11, 12 offers and their stars will bump up. That’s not disrespectful to anybody, it’s just that people will know that (Evan Cooper) goes and finds guys. We’re not afraid to offer anybody, I don’t care who we recruit. If we think they’re a fit, we’re going to take them.”

On if Evan Cooper found Erik Fields
“Before I took the job, I kept calling him, like ‘Do you think this is the right fit for us?,' and he was like ‘Coach, take the job, then call Jaylen Lloyd.’ He knew this class. I just want to say this to the kids in Nebraska who didn’t come, because there’s some that we liked. I wish them all the best. There’s some guys signing Division II and Division III. Playing college football is awesome. All we talk about now is all this other stuff. I coached at Albright College, Division III, it was one of the best years of my life. I’m excited for all the kids playing. From Malachi (Coleman) to Gunnar (Gottula) to Brock (Knutson) to Maverick (Noonan), to all the guys, to Tristan (Alvano), Sam Sledge, we got to know a bunch of really cool kids in the state. I think it’s going to be really fun moving forward.”

NU Athletic Communications