LINCOLN—Matt Rhule isn’t beating around the bush on how he feels about how the Michigan game ended up.
“Obviously, disappointed with the result on Saturday,” the Nebraska football coach said to open his Monday media availability. “I think it’s really, really important for us right now as a coaching staff, and really a football program, is to have a very calculated response. Not to overreact, not to underreact, but just to be very disciplined in the way that we see things.
“What I’ve asked our guys not to do is not to settle for the narrative of we’re just a couple plays away. That’s a deadly, deadly thing when you start saying things like that.”
Nebraska did have chances to make a few plays in the fourth quarter in winning time. Michigan had three of its four third-down conversions on the final field goal drive to make the difference two possessions. The Huskers did respond with a touchdown drive, but a perfect onside kick was squandered by how the hands team went after the ball.
“You always have to make one more play than your opponent,” Rhule said. “We had our opportunities. We didn’t get it done.”
In evaluating Saturday’s loss, Rhule acknowledged that Michigan’s three big touchdown runs can’t be taken away from how the game unfolded, but for much of the game, the defense wasn’t breaking.
“What’s frustrating about it is it’s really three big runs on offense,” Rhule said. “They made the plays.
“Everybody can play better. We had so many chances to make more plays.”
While Rhule said part of Saturday’s loss was the fact that Michigan is one of the top teams in the conference, he also saw that his team didn’t control the trenches when it was needed.
“We’re also not overwhelming people,” Rhule said. “We’re gonna have to play better. We’re gonna have to coach better. I don’t want to minimize how good their backs are.
“I don’t know that it’s a major overhaul. I think we’re doing sound things. I think it’s making sure the right guys are doing the right things.”
The Huskers were down 10 points twice on Saturday, battling back to give themseleves a chance twice.
“I love the progress that they’ve made,” Rhule said. “We got down by 10, we fought back, got down by seven, we fought back. We fought back at the end of the game. Their mindset is where I want it to be.”
One of the biggest issues for Nebraska on Saturday was pass protection. Dylan Raiola was sacked seven times and pressured or hurried on a number of other occasions.
“If we give Dylan time, not many people can cover us,” Rhule said, adding how his team could have better protected its quarterback. “We didn’t widen the pocket enough.
“From a football perspective, you want to have the width and depth of the pocket. The tackles set the width, your inside guys set the depth. For the most part, the depth was okay, but the width, the edge guys won versus our tackles too much.”
Left tackle is one spot that remains up for grabs, even though the last few weeks have seen the starting spot held by Gunnar Gottula.
“This whole week, we’re going to go back and look at those guys, Rhule said. “We’ll
have to see how the guys respond this week. We’ve been rotating a lot of guys at those
positions and hoping that we would solidify and crystallize by the Big Ten.
“We’ll have to see through this week and then go into next week hopefully with them, hopefully, hey, here’s our best five guys, and let’s go to war with those five guys, and the rest of the guys are backups and they’ll go in as needed.”
As for Elijah Pritchett specifcally, Rhule said the Alabama transfer has been practicing better of late.
“There’s a dependability and a focus level—I’m not talking about just him, talking about in general on the offensive line—that you need,” Rhule said. “It’s just hard to be in third-and-threes and go to third-and-eight.
I like Elijah a lot. I think he’s got great physical talent. Sometimes players come to us because they have great, great physical talent, and our way of doing things, we hope, helps them play their best football. We’re searching for that with him.”
Another area that showed up as an issue through the first four games, including Saturday, was red zone offense.
“I think we’ve attached a lot of RPOs to them,” Rhule said. “We haven’t really hit on the RPOs. At the end of the game, we went to the last RPO to Heinrich (Haarberg) that we did on fourth-and-one. That one worked.”
Something that helps with the run game and finishing drives is having a solid run game. While Emmett Johnson is the No. 1 running back, nobody has solidified himself as the No. 2 guy.
“That was literally what my question was in the morning staff meeting,” Rhule said. “We need more production out of that second spot.”
As for the schedule this week, the team was off Monday but will practice Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then the coaching staff will be getting out and recruiting. Rhule said he has heard good things from recruits after Saturday, even with the end result.
“As disappointed as everybody is,” Rhule began, “the word from recruits from that game on Saturday—just the atmosphere, the crowd, the experience, the energy, the intensity, the excitement—I think we had an amazing, amazing experience for those guys, and they had a lot of good things to say. I think they all see kind of where the program is trending.”
You can watch the full media session from Monday below. Continue scrolling for more coverage.
Nebraska Football 2025 Schedule
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