Coach Matt Rhule Press Conference Quotes

Nebraska Football Signing Day Press Conference
Head Coach Matt Rhule
Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023 

Opening statement
"I just want to make sure we honor and celebrate National Women's and Girls in Sports Day. A great HuskHers event  that my wife came in for today. It is really one of the great things about being here is to see other sports. You don't get that in the National Football League. Elite match last week watching our women's tennis team play, so I look forward to being a part of the campus community and watching, with my son and my two daughters and my wife, all the women athletes here on campus as they excel at their craft and support Title IX and all it has done for athletics. I am excited to celebrate today the beginning of Black History Month. Obviously I support that within our team and on campus. I want to wish the best of luck to the four former Huskers that are going to play in the Super Bowl. I had a chance to text back and forth with Ndamukong Suh the other day. (Cameron) Jurgens, Jack Stoll and DiCaprio Bootle with Kansas City, so I am excited for those guys. It is probably a dream come true. Finally, I tweeted it out yesterday, but I am honored that Coach (Tom) Osborne has agreed to be the keynote speaker at our spring clinic. Just having the chance to visit with him a few times, the amount of football that he is willing to give up to people, it will be a great clinic. Finally, I just want to say it has been a privilege to get to know this team. Really cool guys on this team. Change is always hard. A new coach is always really, really hard. There is this period where it is 'why are we doing this' or 'why are we doing that,' but I am really proud of the way they are working. They are working really hard. Both on the field and off the field. A couple of things I want to highlight from the fall to credit Dennis (LeBlanc) and Andrea (Einsphar) and the previous coaching staff, but most importantly, probably the players. The cumulative GPA for the guys that are returning was 3.124. I think anytime you have a football team that is above a 3.0 GPA, you have a really good culture. 61 of the 98 returning players were a 3.0 GPA or above in the fall. 32 of those guys got a 3.4. 58 Nebraska football players were named to the fall academic Big Ten team. In November, the Nebraska NCAA Graduation Success Rate was reported at 92-percent which is the highest in school history. I think Dennis LeBlanc and his team they do a fantastic job, and our players are dedicated to success both on and off the field."

On settling in at Nebraska 
"We are in a sprint. We are going to sprint. We are not going to take a break. Now the focus is just purely on the guys that are here. There are a lot of winners on this team. There are a lot of guys that I need to do a great evaluation on to help them be the most successful they can be. I gave the coaches a couple of days off here. I am here right now. I will be here all week. We are working on 2024 and some 2025s. But most importantly, working on this team and getting ourselves ready to be in a good place for spring ball." 

On the transfer portal
"I think the transfer portal is a great thing for players to control their destiny. Like many other modalities that are ruined by adults, I think more players are told to transfer then decide they want to transfer. But if a good is not in the right spot, I think he should have the chance to leave and the chance to play right away. I don't like tampering that can sometimes go on when kids are happy and people are coming in. I am afraid when the COVID sixth year is over, the impact on kids' academics. Sometimes they are 15 credits away at one place, and then they leave, and now all of a sudden they are 50. With that being said, it has been good to us. We don't we want to be the hugest transfer team. We want to recruit high school student-athletes and watch them develop over four or five years. But, if someone is somewhere else and they really love Nebraska and think this is the right place for them, I want them to be here. And if a young person really wants to get on the field and they don't think they can get on the field for us and they have a chance to go somewhere else, I want to support them in that. I am very student-athlete centric. I want each kid to do what is right for them. I don't want them to run away adversity, but I want them to make the right decision for their future when the time comes."

On his recruiting approach
"Great teams are built on two things: relationships and standards. So, we have a standard, and our standard is to work really, really hard. I don't want it to be competitive where it is 'Hey I want to sign more guys than you' because that leads to bad teams, that leads to coaches taking guys' favors. Everybody that we bring in is brought in by the entire staff. That being said, I like that we are still old school. A lot of teams are flying somewhere and are going to see three or four schools in that area. We are going to try effect high schools. We are going to try and see eight or nine or 10 high schools. Marcus Satterfield was in Denver working on 2024s in Colorado and as he was driving by a school, it wasn't on his list, so he called the coach and said 'hey can I come in'. As he is talking to the coach the coach said 'hey I have this kid that is under the radar that no one really knows about, some people are recruiting him, but I think you are missing out on him.' And D'Andre (Barnes) signed today. He hits all the metrics that we look for. He is smart. He is big. To me, the reason why you go out and see as many schools as you do is because when someone does have a transfer or someone does have an under the radar guy, they pick up the phone and call the University of Nebraska because they know they have relationships with the coaches."

On recruiting at Nebraska
"We should recruit well. We will always probably appeal to a certain mindset. It has to be someone who really likes football. It has to be someone who also wants to go to school. It has to be someone that wants to be developed on and off the field. It has to be someone who likes to work. But, the brand itself, the fan base, the town, the city of Lincoln and the facilities, I think a lot of those things run parallel. A lot of those things are unmatched. We should absolutely recruit well every year." 

On scholarship numbers 
"I am very hesitant to talk about positions or spaces to fill. Sometimes I hear people talk. We all have to be very careful talking like 'well we are really bad at this position,' because these kids are still 18-22. They are not NFL players. They are developing, so I cannot comment on positions yet because I haven't coached them. I have two guys that played for me in college that are playing in the Super Bowl. Hassan Reddick plays edge now. He didn't play outside backer in college. I have Shaun Bradley who is unfortunately on IR right now. He is a linebacker. He was not a linebacker in high school. Some of the real magic that I think good staffs do is they find the right position for players. You are a good defensive end, but I think you could be a great tackle. I think that is part of the magic. In terms of scholarship numbers at positions, I am still not where I would want to be on the offensive line. I would like to always be at 16 scholarships at the offensive line. Watching some of the non-scholarship offensive linemen move, they look like scholarship offensive linemen at other places I have been. I have not seen them play, so I will have to watch. We are obviously over on scholarships right now. There are so many new rules now that allow you to do things to get there, so we will work on that as we go. We have kind of remade the team, and I think the team that is here is remaking themselves in the weight room right now. A lot of guys look significantly different to me just after a couple of weeks."

On bringing in three Georgia transfers
“Obviously they played until late, so they had a limited window because all those players, except for Arik (Gilbert), went into the portal after it was over with. As I get older, guys who coached for me now go on, like Fran (Brown) was a graduate assistant than a position coach and now he’s really one of the top assistants in the country and should be a head coach and will be a head coach. As guys are going in ‘hey coach this is a guy that fits you'. He kind of knows how I am, the way I want to do things, the process we’ll want to have, the character of the guys we want, the work ethic. So, he was able to tell me about them and then also tell them about us and what we’re doing here and kind of let us recruit from there. Even a guy like Arik, Jake Peats who I worked with, you know a Nebraska alum, he had had him at LSU. A big thing when you bring transfers in, is why are they transferring? Why do they want to be here? I think all those guys, to me, are really good players and they have a chance to help us. They also have the right mindset to play at Nebraska.”
 
On the 2023 recruiting class
“As you’re out there in the world and people say 'Ah Nebraska, can you find big strong guys? Can you find speed?' Just in state you’re not going to find anyone faster than Malachi (Coleman) and Jaylen (Lloyd). The speed is there. Bryce Turner is as fast a kid as there is in the country. I like that part of it. I like each player for who they are. The previous staff did a really good job with the big guys, the offensive lineman. I am going to be numbers based. I do know that track times and triple jumps, and 40-yard dashes don’t mean you are a good football player, but when I’m not sure, those things guide you. They’re just a rock you can kind of lean on. When I see a kid who is a 47-foot triple jumper and likes football, I am going to take a chance on him. I like some of those things that we’re able to bring in. I had a lot of success over the year bringing in guys who are fast and finding the right position. For us to increase our team speed, I’m not saying the previous team was slow, but just to bring in that level of speed, to me, is really important. Then we brought in some size and offensive lineman, you have to grow them. It takes some time with them. They have to get in the weight room. But I like the group we brought in.”
 
On the personnel fit with players and coaches
“My goal is to hire coordinators who are smart enough to utilize their best players. Every spring and every fall I make them rank the playmakers, make them rank the guys on defense who can affect the ball. Build an offense and defense that can put those guys on the field. What I liked about what Marcus (Satterfield) did at the end of last year at South Carolina, everyone was injured, and he was basically playing with four tight ends. A tight end maybe taking a speed sweep, lining up at wideout. He used who he had. I think we’ll find that there is enough talent to go out there and play complementary football. When you say complimentary football, to me it’s teaching the game. Like lots of people teach X’s and O’s. They teach their offense. They teach their defense. Teaching the game really matter. Great defenses answer an offensive score with a stop. Bad teams aren’t connected. The defense is yelling at the offense. The offense is yelling at the defense. When we understand field position, when we understand kicking. When there’s only walk-ons on special teams, it means the scholarship guys and the starters don’t understand, ‘Hey I should affect the game’. Hassan Reddick was a first-round draft pick, and he was running down on punts. Guys should want to affect the game. We want them to understand what the offense does even if they get two first downs and have to punt the ball, and we have a great punt team and they have a 42-yard net, that then lets our defense play better football. That teaching of the game and that teaching of the clock management. There’s a time to play fast, there’s a time to play slow. We really have to understand the middle eight, the last four minutes of the first half and the first four minutes of the second half. We want to teach them the game, so when they watch the game, they’re not just watching so-and-so made a play. It’s more about the little things that happen to allow us to have big moments. I hope when you watch us play, when a guy has a long run, he’s not pointing at the crowd, he’s pointing to his o-lineman. I hope you see when a guy has a sack, I want him to throw the bones, but then he better turn around to the defensive backs who covered everybody. That’s complimentary football to me. It’s not ‘me, me, me’. I’m able to do what I can do because of the guys around me. We’ll try and do that. I know you’re asking about the roster, I just don’t yet. I feel really good about the areas we’re heading, but it’s a long, slow process.”
 
On learning everyone's name 
“They all have names on the back of t-shirts. That’s number one. I literally had to say to the guys, ‘Hey when you walk up and say hello, for the first couple weeks, introduce yourself again. I’m meeting 120 new players. There’s one of me and 120 of you.’ I just think being around guys, being around each other. We divided our team up into competition teams the very first Sunday. Not offensive line, defensive line, but everybody getting to know everybody. We don’t want everyone to see each other in terms of offense, defense, freshman, senior, walk-on, scholarship. They’re all people. All people have dreams, all people have fears. Just get to know each other. I think when you have that kind of holistic approach, when you have the same standards for everybody, the best players in our program don’t get the best perks. The guys who work the hardest, if there is any perks, they get them. Just try to be around. The more we’re around the guys, the more we get to know each other. The guys aren’t getting their food in the cafeteria and leaving anymore. We sit down and eat. Coaches go in and sit down with the players. We’re going to build something where we all know each other.”
 
On who he leans on to help build the culture
 “We just come up with some standards. What do they have to do with winning? Nothing. But everything. If you’re willing to sacrifice a little of yourself for the team every day, you have the chance to have a good team. I think we count on everyone to do that. There’re some guys on our roster, Corey (Campbell) in the weight room and his staff, they are around the players way more than we are. I tell them the academic area and the locker room are extensions of the weight room. So go be present. Our recruiting guys do such a good job on building relationships, and when the guy gets there, at a lot of places, they forget about them. We continue to want to be around those guys. We try and do something at least once a week that is team building. A Madden tournament or whatever. Just get them around each other. I have 14 former players of mine in some role within the organization. Whether it’s wait room, recruiting and that’s Western Carolina, Temple as an assistant, Temple as the head coach, Baylor and then a couple of Carolina Panthers. Having guys that can explain what’s wrong with Coach Rhule and this is what he really means, is really vital.”
 
On Arik Gilbert
“He’s as talented a player there is. Like with all of our players, I want him in 10 years to say his life is better for having played for us at Nebraska. That’s all I care about with these guys. I’m just getting to know him. I want him to have elite success in the classroom. I want him to go be involved in the community. I want him to have great relationships and I want him to go play well in football. If Arik gets on the field for us, football for him comes naturally, but we’re going to push him to be the best that he can be. I think there is a lot of talent there, but with a lot of these guys there is a lot of talent. We just have harness it and help them develop it. Get them on the field, get them to trust us and then turn them loose.”
 
On Corey Campbell
“Corey’s been elite since the day I first met him at Baylor. He’s unbelievably demanding. Players sometimes feel that your either for them or against them. He can hold you really accountable and they still know he’s fort them. But he also is really knowledgeable. He understands all the science of what he does in the weight room. I want us to be a place that is on the cutting edge of everything sports science wise, player development wise, recovery wise. That’s what this GO BIG project is going to allow us to do. But the people have to match the functionality. Corey has that. He built a staff of guys, we have physical therapist as part of our weight room staff, so we have one of the greatest gifts we can give our players, health. We have the right knowledge base because I don’t know anything about the weight room. I need people that are experts, that I can trust, who also have my mindset about culture, about development and Corey has all of that. Corey is also a former walk-on on my staff. There’s a bunch of us that had to fight our way for everything.”

On his coaching stafff 
"I saw what Ed (Foley) said,  I try to listen to the coaches' press conferences. Sometimes we make fun of them for something they said. But Ed, no one's ever loved a press conference more than Ed, let me just say that, okay? But Ed, he talked about family the other day, and about being at Adam's wedding and the funeral of a former player and former assistant that passed away for us. I actually screenshotted that, and I sent it out to the whole staff because there's so many of us that have been together for such a long time. I saw Philip, 14 years, or ten years ago. I haven't seen him in ten years, right? But there are these connections. I also hired a defensive coordinator who I've never worked with. It's not like I'm just hiring people I know, like I want everyone in our organization on our staff to understand that family is, for us, family isn't blood. It's the decisions we make every day to protect each other and to push each other and to advocate for each other, and so it can be little things. It can be Terrence Knighton's eighth grade son Jahmir has his first basketball game and I show up to cheer him on. Because I want him to know, like thank you Jahmir for moving across the country. Like the impact, this is an unbelievable opportunity, but the sacrifice of our spouses and the sacrifices of our kids. My kids just moved three years ago now they have to turn around and move again. Even though they're coming to a wonderful place, it's still hard on kids, so when my coaches see my kids and they hug them like they're their own, I think that has a great impact on our players, but B, we become like family. And so, I really mean it when I say that I want our players to say that our lives are better for having been there. But, I also want all our coaches who coach for me to say the same things. 'You know what, working for Coach Rhule, working for Matt, was a great time in my life, and my life is better for that, and that includes their families, too'. We work really hard, we're really honest with each other, it's not easy.  It's not easy to work here. The standards are high. You guys have done a really nice job making a big deal of Ed going around. Ed's doing what we've always done. Like going to eight schools around the state of Nebraska is the bare minimum. We're not doing something special, it's not like, oh look how hard they work, we're just doing our jobs. We're showing up and doing our jobs. Stopping at a high school and them having a cup of coffee with the special education students are giving away coffee and taking a picture with them. That's called being hardworking. The people of Nebraska work way harder than us. That I know. I've been to some small towns, I've been to the cities, I've seen people. People in this state, you guys work hard. So, we're not going to celebrate ourselves for working hard. We're going to celebrate ourselves for having a purpose where were trying to help young people have better lives. That's really what's important. The working hard is because we want to win too."
 
On carrying over family culture to the Nebraska community
"Nebraska Athletics is just getting around the student athletes. So, I'm sitting in the lunchroom the other day, and Omar (Hales) is talking to a couple of the young ladies on the women's tennis team, and I'm talking to them, and a couple of football players are sitting with us, and I believe her name's Sam (Alicea), she's a senior from Miami, she said, 'we're playing today at 4:00. You guys coming?' Yep. So, we went and watched them. So, first of all, I love college tennis. It's one of the great things. It's one of the great sports to go watch because there's a lot of action going on. I bet there were 27 football players there. The coaches were there, Trev (Alberts) was there, and we're just supporting. I mean it's way easier to play when you have coaches screaming like 'Let's go!' you play better. You know we're not going to take ourselves too seriously, we're not like celebrities. We're coaches. We coach a game. And so, we're going to be there to support the other student-athletes. We're going to be there to support the students on campus. Anyway that we can help in the community, we're going to do it. Not because it's our job but because it's what good people do, and there's a lot of good people. Twitter doesn't recognize the people that do way more than we do."
 
On the quarterback position
"I think one of the things I'm trying to teach the team because sometimes we can always be very outcome based, I want to go to a bowl game next year. Just worry about today, The other thing is I'm going to worry about the team and I'm going to worry about these guys. If everybody just gets one-percent better every day, the best way to improve the team is to improve yourself. So that model of hey just improve yourself and then other people will follow you. So, if quarterbacks are going to have voluntary throwing on their own, and they show up five minutes early, and they're prepared, then that will have an impact on everybody else. What we don't need is a bunch of guys, we don't need every highlight video with people talking, right. We just need people doing. Christian McCaffrey said something great to me one time. He said, "We just need to play loud." Like everyone wants to talk. Just play loud. So, the quarterbacks to me, they can just be serious about themselves, academically, athletically and in the community. They can be the same people when the coaches aren't around as when the coaches are around. That sends a real message to the team, and then when they know everybody's name on the team, and they know the people who work in the cafeteria's names, and then they become someone that people want to follow. So, I like the group. We have a couple guys who won't be able to do spring because of their shoulders, you know Logan and Casey won't be able to do that. There will be a time here soon when we start working on football. They're got to learn a lot of X's and O's, a lot of different things, but right now, I just want them working on themselves. Invariably, they have enough charisma that people will follow them."
 
On Isaiah Garcia-Castaneda and Zavier Betts
"They didn't go in the transfer portal on me. They had done that before, so I had no real issue with that. I'm going to take everything on a case-by-case basis. Jeff Nixon, who worked with me, who was a high school teammate of mine, who worked with me, and his son played on the team. He called me about Zavier, I didn't know who Zavier was. And so, I talked with him, I just met with him. I love Zavier Betts, and I don't love Zavier Betts for who he is on the football field because that's what's wrong, I love who he is as a person. I love getting to know him. I appreciate he texted me happy birthday yesterday, that means something to me. I like who he is as a guy, I'm rooting for him, I'm anxious to see him get back on the football field and do well in the classroom. So, I'm anxious not just to give him a chance but to be an advocate for him. My son's 18. He's trying to figure out what he wants to do for the rest of his life. I want him to go places where there are people, they don't entitle him, they don't enable him, but they advocate for him. So, we'll do that for Zavier. And then Isaiah, he just reached out. And I was like hey, let's give him a chance. Give everybody a chance and then go through the spring and then, people are going to see the standards and how we do things and they'll either decide that they want to do it or not. They hadn't gone in the portal on me, so it didn't really affect me."
 
On Billy Kemp IV
"He's caught a ton of balls, and he's been through two coaching staffs, so he's had to learn a lot of offense. I'm excited about him as a return man. He's a guy who, his stature, people will think he's an inside receiver, but you watch him in the ACC and he's playing outside, he's playing inside, he's a guy that can move the chains on third down. He's competitive. He's a guy who as I watched, to your point about the quarterbacks, I watch him mentor other people by doing the right thing himself and kind of bringing some young guys along, along the way. We want to be dynamic on special teams, we want to score on special teams. I'm not saying we will, but we want to. He's a big key to that because having a veteran punt-returner, kick-returner, especially in the conditions here will be really important."
 
On roster size
"I think a lot of things about the roster are going to be determined just really via Title IX and a lot of the things coming in in terms of what we can do. That's probably still working with the athletic department on that. I want to make sure we give kids an opportunity to play here but also give every kid the right amount of resources. We're not going to have like a walk-on lifting session, or anything. I was a walk on, that's just how I got on the team. That doesn't mean once they get here there are non-scholarship players and scholarship players. We have to make sure the roster is manageable enough to really give everybody the academic, life skills, football, training, recovery, resources that they deserve. But I don't know what that number will be yet. I think that's still outside my purview."

 On recruiting players who develop later
"Before I hired Bob (Wager), he called me about Ismael (Smith Flores). He said 'I've got this kid, he's only played one year. His dad is in the Iowa Football Hall of Fame. You should check him out.' And then, we got to the end of the December period, we hadn't really done much with him. Then Bob came and showed him to us, and we were like holy smokes. He's visiting Iowa, he's visiting Rutgers. It seemed like with his dad it might be a hard one, but with Bob there, maybe. And so he was coming on a visit, we went down to go watch him play basketball. We stopped by Bob's house beforehand, his son was there, his wife and daughter, and they were like, oh Jeremiah (Charles) still hasn't signed anywhere yet. He had gotten an offer, and I think Jeremiah triple-jumped like 47, had an unofficial 51. So those numbers always kind of make me wake up, and we kind of walked in the gym and I looked down and he looked like he's probably about 6 foot, 6-1. And then the game began, and my man just started dunking on everyone. And I was like holy smokes. And I was like 'Coop', and Coop was like 'I see it coach', and then Coop walked out and was like watching his film. It's one of the benefits of the first year. Recruiting you used to wait until everybody's senior year, you watched their senior tape and see who they were as 17-year-olds, and you projected who they were going to be as 22. Now we're watching like 14-year-olds sometimes. I don't know what you guys were like at 14, but I wasn't very coordinated. I think the last couple years in the draft, where was I going to? Where was I looking? I was looking for guys at Northern Iowa, North Dakota State. I went to North Dakota State to see two first-rounders. And so, how do those guys end up there? Well, sometimes guys develop a little bit later, they hit maturity a little later. I want to be a team to recruit the top players in the country, but I never want to not look at a guy's senior tape. Because guys are going to pop their senior year. Sometimes they play one year, and sometimes so, they're keeping our third guy who only played one year of football. It's just kind of a cool story, but Bob certainly had a lot of influence on that, but those guys also came here and fell in love with the university and the opportunities they have on this campus."

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