Football Video & Report: Sept. 18

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule met with members of the media following Wednesday’s practice. He spoke on adjusting to gametime decisions and maintaining energy going into Friday night’s game. 

“One thing we try to teach the players is that you prepare through the event,” he said. “It’s an old Al Golden saying when I used to work for him; the hay is in the barn. We don’t believe that. As you get in the game, you see how they’re playing and you try to adjust. We have a lot of work to do, but so far the guys have worked hard. We’ll keep trying to pick up steam heading into the game on Friday night.” 

Rhule talked about being able to get many players involved on offense.

“We’ve thrown a lot of drop-back,” he said. “So when you throw drop-back, it’s progression one, two, three. You can get touches to guys by calling screens and things, which we do some of that. Let’s get the ball to this guy, get the ball to that guy. Last game we came out, we had a lot of tempo drop-back. Dylan’s pretty good at that. When you go to drop-back passes, the ball finds the open receiver. They pressured us and he threw the hot swing route. They blitzed us, he threw the glance to Isaiah (Neyor). It’s a good challenge to have, there’s only one ball. It’s hard to get everyone involved, I’m sure a ton of guys want to touch the ball more. I thought the wideouts played really well last week. They got open, the ball came to them. Dylan’s not afraid to work his way through all the progressions. He’s hit the fifth progression a couple times which is great to see.” 

He also discussed the number of carries he’d like each running back to have.

“Every game is different,” he said. “Last game, I didn’t see the need to put a ton of carries on Dante (Dowdell) with a short week coming up, or our staff didn’t, and that’s pretty high level thinking by those guys. This game is different. As I’ve said, I’d like to have one guy in the low twenties, one guy around 15. We’re not running the quarterback, so you’re running some other guys, and obviously, you have to incorporate the receivers a little bit into the run game. As the game plays, we’re facing a team that has an elite run defense. They’re also an elite pass defense. They’re just an elite defense. Each game is a little different, we’ll see what we need to do in each game to win.”

NU will face off against the Illinois Fighting Illini on Friday, Sept. 20 at 7 p.m. (CT) at Memorial Stadium. The game will be broadcast on FOX, with radio coverage by the Huskers Radio Network.