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Stukenholtz: The Approach That Changed Husker Football
They’re not there yet.
Don’t misconstrue this as some sort of “Mission Accomplished” claim. Nebraska has, in fact accomplished nothing of note this season. That will only change if they keep doing what they’ve been doing. And here’s the thing:
I fully expect them to keep winning.
Feels different than the last few years, huh? As Quinton Newsome and Tommi Hill were high fiving on that blocked field goal return touchdown early in the 3rd quarter, it hit me. This team, this program, under this coach and staff, has figured it out.
There has been a missing ingredient for years that has cost Nebraska win after win after win.
Confidence is that ingredient.
Having the confidence in your defense, rebuilt with a new scheme, to lead. Trusting your turnover prone, injury-riddled offense to execute a homerun play they’ve never run in a game before. Then to execute it again the following week. Sending your kicker, who has a few misses on his ledger, out to try a 55-yarder on a cold, windy day.
Confidence has been unlocked. Swagger, even. Pretty clear to see on defense as seemingly 25 different players have made impact plays over the course of the season. A bit harder to find on offense as you sift through fumbles, penalties, and injuries, but it’s there, too. Quarterback Heinrich Haarberg shows you his confidence through toughness, bouncing back from all the big hits ready to dish out his own. Emmett Johnson is solidifying his starting running back role, and freshmen wide receivers Malachi Coleman and Jaylen Lloyd continue to develop before our eyes. Tight end Thomas Fidone appears to ooze confidence in himself at all times.
Matt Rhule has instilled that confidence in this team. Already.
With NU’s 31-14 victory over Purdue on Saturday, Rhule’s Huskers proved just how ahead of schedule he is. It didn’t turn around this fast for him at Temple or Baylor, as he only managed three total victories in the first seasons at his previous college stops. Now he has five Ws with four more chances to add to the win column.
What’s really crazy? If you had forecast this success before the opener, I believe the only reason you could have justified it is the transfer portal. That’s the new variable in the equation. Like if Jeff Sims stepped in and was the real deal, or MJ Sherman and Chief Borders starred on defense from the jump, that could’ve explained how this rebuild was quicker than the others.
But that’s not what’s happened. Name the top 15-20 most important healthy Huskers right now. How many do you count before you name a guy who played for another Division I school last year? How many until you get to two? Ben Scott is the only one I can think of in the top 20. Transfer portal players have had surprisingly little to do with the winning thus far.
So yes, credit to Rhule and company, but shout-out to the young men who are doing the work on the field in a completely different manner than a year ago.
The strides from the major contributors on defense are the most impressive. Defensive tackle Nash Hutmacher and rover Isaac Gifford are bona-fide stars, wrecking offensive game plans on a weekly basis. Newsome was, in my opinion, NU’s best returning player, but he has continued to improve. The cornerback finally snagged his first career interception against Northwestern, then scored his first career touchdown in the Purdue win. Linebackers Luke Reimer and Nick Henrich keep doing their thing, Ty Robinson and Blaise Gunnerson have held it down at defensive end, and safety Omar Brown has had stretches of "best player on the field" in a couple games, too.
The reason it’s different now is because of the approach. Go 1-0 every game, every day. Don’t stop at making a bowl game, which only requires one more win. “I don’t want just one more,” Rhule said. “Do you want just one more? I want to try to win every game that we play.” He is keeping the cart behind the horse, not before. I wouldn’t be surprised if he went back and read up on how Scott Frost talked all the time about the goal of winning the Big Ten, and how they had to win the division first. Lots of talk about the end goal, but his teams were always behind the 8-ball, stuck playing catch-up because there didn’t appear to be enough attention on the how.
This is not to say Rhule doesn't have the goal of winning the West division. He just knows what has to come first and emphasize that instead. To put it another way: Rhule wants to put in the time and effort to train for a marathon, while Frost thought he was ready to run one even though he hadn't trained in years.
Rhule understands that players instinctively try to win the entire game on a single play. I saw firsthand how players under Frost carried so much weight, so much stress building with each week. Garrett Nelson essentially admitted seeing just that in his head coach, outwardly wishing for a victory just so the team could see him smile. Rhule has gotten rid of that mentality and boiled it down to much simpler tasks.
Coaches demonstrate confidence in players to meet small achievements which lead to big accomplishments - that’s the approach.
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Comparisons to the 2009 Huskers have been made. Great defense, terrible offense; that’s pretty much the analogy. I disagree, but not because the 2023 defense doesn’t compare to 2009’s Blackshirts. Obviously the 2023 edition doesn’t have a fully-realized singular talent like Ndamukong Suh on the roster, but they are dominating games week in and week out in a similar fashion.
I don’t see the comparison because that 2009 offense didn’t try to win games, they simply tried to not lose them. Rhule is not doing that here in 2023. They’re turning it over more than he’d like, sure, but he’s still counting on them to make big plays and contribute to the cause. “I just can’t live in a world where it’s ‘what if this happens?’ and ‘what if that happens?’” Rhule said. “We have to go out there and play. Good teams play and bad things happen. We gotta go play. So if I don’t want the players to live in that whole ‘what if?’ world, then we have to be that.”
After that eight-turnover debacle against Iowa State in 2009, Bo Pelini handcuffed his offensive coordinator, Shawn Watson, for the rest of the season. Rhule will earn more development out of this group by showing confidence in them. He clearly doesn’t mind that they’re down three starters on the offensive line, or on their fourth string running back and fifth string receiver. Even if they make frustrating mistakes, they are still landing haymakers, and he’s gonna go back to them for more.
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For years the Huskers essentially spent 45-50 game minutes putting a puzzle together, only to realize they had lost a few pieces, and so they couldn’t finish the puzzle by the time it had been a full 60 minutes. Sometimes they never even got the thing started because they spilled the pieces out of the box and onto the floor. Now, there’s a purpose-built puzzle table, all the pieces have been laid out and organized, they’ve got the edges all connected, and the entire operation is the model of efficiency.
Now comes the fun part.
Since the team has clearly bought in to this new way of thinking, they’re playing freer and faster, especially on defense. For the first time since 2001 when they were #1 in the BCS standings after an 11-0 start, Nebraska has completed an unbeaten October. They’re on the first three-game winning streak since the 7-0 start in 2016, which is also the last season NU made a bowl game or carried a winning Big Ten record into November. At this rate, maybe they’ll go 1-0 a few more times and finish with a winning conference slate.
They’re not there yet.
But they’re closer than they have been for a long, long time.
