Fall Camp Video & Report: August 10

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule met with members of the media following the teams’ fall camp practice Saturday morning. Rhule spoke on the morning’s scrimmage overall and the play of specific position groups among other items.  

“It was very, very regimented,” he said. “More regimented than I normally am. It was like eight plays in a row, the defense went three and out, the offense stayed out there. The offense drove the ball down to the ten yard line, I blew it dead and said ‘next group up.’ I’m really trying to be disciplined staying eight and eight, eight and eight. I think it was good. Physical work back and forth.”  

Rhule continued to discuss the scrimmage and overall creativity. 

“A lot of the mistakes out there today were with young players,” he said. “We’re playing a lot of true freshmen. I say that in terms of the creativity part because if they know the base offense and they don’t have the ability yet to absorb that information. Like in the redzone on Wednesday we’re going to put this play in for you. Billy Kemp you could put it in on Saturday, he’s played a lot of football. Some of these guys' eyes are a little different. The weapons are there, they’re just in the maturing process mentally as much as physically. We have enough good players to win.”

Rhule touched on how both the quarterback and running back groups are performing. 

“There was a couple turnovers in areas I would not like to see them,” he said. “Other than that, the ball was moved, the passes were thrown and caught. I was happy with it. It’s not the level it’s gonna be. The biggest thing I’m looking for from the quarterbacks is what things look like when things are going wrong. If you’re a true freshman quarterback, if you’re Danny (Kaelin) or Dylan (Raiola), you haven’t had a lot of things go wrong yet. Trying to expose them to strenuous situations to see how they respond, and they’re doing a good job at responding to it, but it’s going to be a fire out there when you’re the quarterback. Heinrich (Haarberg) is used to the fire. Can you handle the fire? That’s the whole key to young people becoming men. When you go out in the real world, you start to go through fire, you start to go through adversity, so our ability to handle adversity is the biggest thing right now.” 

“I like the whole group (running backs). I think Dante (Dowdell) was lagging a little bit in the spring. He’s starting to catch his wind. He’s doing better now. It’s great to have Rahmir (Johsnon) and Gabe (Ervin Jr.) out there really attacking. Emmett (Johnson) is having a really good camp. Obviously when you play running back, we need guys who protect the football. We need guys to protect. We’d like them to be able to catch. They have to have rush skills. The difference between where we were last year and where we want to be this year is that four yard run where maybe we make a nice cut and get eight on. We need to get eighty. We need guys who can make somebody miss who have juice and are electric and take off. That challenge versus our defense who’s swarming, you’re protecting the ball a lot. But, also finding the guys who can make guys miss and I see them all working at it. That’s a tight race and it’ll all play itself out.” 

Rhule also spoke about living in the dorms during fall camp. 

“We’re in Selleck not to have that be a team thought process, just to be around each other, so that’s why we do it,” he said. “We’re getting to the point now where the real stories on our team are football. I’m not giving these long powerpoints on how to behave and act. We’re talking about third down from two-minute situational football.”

Fall camp will continue on Monday, and the next media availability will be Tuesday, Aug. 13.