Skip to main content

Tad Stryker: The Fullback and the Damage Done

Frank Solich gets his homecoming while Matt Rhule works to rebuild Husker fortunes
  • Author:
  • Updated:
    Original:

The day Frank Solich finally came home to Nebraska's Memorial Stadium was a raw, cloudy, windy one, a day filled with tributes and words of thanks, too many turnovers, not much polish and a dash of hope.

They held a spring game on Saturday in Lincoln, complete with quarterbacks set free from their green jerseys, full contact, with no thudding or tagging off, just old-school blocking and tackling. Not necessarily crisp, but real, at least, with no gimmicks, unless you consider the XFL kickoff rules gimmicky or like me, you were hoping that the newly unveiled Herbie Husker would mow down Li’l Red on his motorcycle jaunt across the field.

First-year coach Matt Rhule gave Husker fans four quarters of real football, which lasted nearly two and a half hours.

It was a time for revisiting the good things from the Big Red scrapbook, and burying the disappointments that piled up over the past eight years, mourning what might have been, then turning the page and looking at what could be once again in Nebraska.

It was a day for re-introducing the fullback. It was a day for clearing away rubble and pouring foundations.

In the nearly two decades since he was fired by Steve Pederson, Solich watched Cornhusker football fall off, recover, then stumble into the abyss, where it wandered through the wilderness under poor coaching by Mike Riley and Scott Frost, and even worse leadership from Riley and Frost’s bosses. He probably didn’t have much time to analyze it, which is a blessing, because he wouldn’t have recognized much of it, anyway. Heck, I watched almost every play, and I’m at a loss to explain it.

Whether or not there was ever an actual Curse of Solich to explain the Huskers’ descent into madness, the sight of Fearless Frankie standing on the specially marked 45-yard line, surrounded by his family, along with Tom Osborne, Trev Alberts and Touchdown Club President Terry Connealy, while more than 66,000 red-clad fans gave him a loud, sustained standing ovation,  provided some much-needed healing to Husker Nation. To discover that the new football locker room will be named after Solich was more good medicine.

When Janiran Bonner, a redshirt freshman from Georgia, lined up at fullback for the White team in the game’s opening moments and carried the ball 7 yards on a dive play, it got the day off to a fitting start. Red team defensive tackle Nash Hutmacher immediately carried the ball to the sidelines to hand to Solich.

“To hand the ball off to the fullback first play, and then to hand the ball to him, that’s kind of a bucket list item for me,” said Rhule, who got a last-minute invitation to the Friday night reception held by Solich’s former players to honor the former Husker fullback, running back coach and head coach.

Rhule’s not just shaking hands and kissing babies when it comes to this Husker tradition; he’s scheduled a daylong fullback camp at Memorial Stadium in June, and he’s planning to work the position it into his arsenal. If you’re a connoisseur of the Franklin/Rathman/Schlesenger/Makovicka vintage, you might not have recognized the 6-foot-3, 200-pound Bonner as a real fullback. You’ll need to expect occasional H-back infiltration, which offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield referred to in a March 23 interview.

"We're a positionless offense," Satterfield said. "Our tight ends can play running backs. Our running backs can go play receiver. Our receivers can go play tight end.”

Rhule elaborated on that during his press conference Saturday

“We have guys who can do multiple things,” said Rhule, who was quick to mention the Huskers have a couple of young Nebraska natives named Braden Klover and Trevor Ruth who can smack linebackers in the mouth, but he understood from a certain former Husker coach that undersized fullbacks can make it in Lincoln as well. “Sometimes it looks like we’re in 21 personnel, and we’re really in 11. Janiran can play almost any position on offense for us. He gives us a guy who can run it, and we’re still running power and iso with him. He also goes in there and runs option on third down. He’s really a weapon.”

It was not so much a day for the tight ends. Thomas Fidone caught one pass for four yards, but at least he didn’t re-injure a knee. Georgia transfer Arik Gilbert dropped a perfectly-thrown 30-yard opportunity from Heinrich Haarberg and later caught a ball out of bounds. But starting quarterback Jeff Sims hit Nate Boerkircher on a pretty 38-yard seam route to set up the White team’s first touchdown late in the opening quarter.

It was a better day for promising young players in the defensive front seven and proven players in the defensive backfield. There were six lost fumbles, partly due to sloppy play on offense, but some of the credit can be given to defensive coordinator Tony White’s stunting, blitzing 3-3-5 defense that made its debut. Ball-hawking defenders could do as much or more than a few words from Solich to turn around Nebraska’s Big Ten fortunes. Defense generally had the upper hand on Saturday; the Whites rushed for 146 yards on 48 carries, while the Reds were held to 46 yards rushing on 23 carries. The Whites, who had the No. 1 offense, had to work hard to get 300 yards of total offense against the No. 1 defense.

Youngsters like Princewell Umanmielen (four tackles, including a sack and three tackles for loss), Cameron Lenhardt (four tackles) and MJ Sherman (four tackles with one TFL), all first-year Huskers, made sure of that. Rhule is enthusiastic about his young defenders-in-training, and said that on the d-line, “We’re going to play two hockey lines if we could, if not three. We have a lot of young talent.”

There are gaps in this team, to be sure. The 2023 Huskers will not be anywhere close to where you and I originally envisioned they’d be in what we assumed would be a sixth year of the Frost era. But we’re letting that go, right? I got the feeling the Huskers are re-learning parts of the game long abandoned by Riley and Frost, like re-establishing complexity in the run game, and it’s going to take some time to bring it to maturity. At least Anthony Grant is learning to trust himself — and the o-line — enough to run between the tackles again.

The first-string offensive line looked servicable with Ben Scott at center, Ethan Piper at left guard, Nouredin Noulli at right guard, Turner Corcoran at left tackle and Bryce Benhart at right tackle.

The kicking game is by no means a finished product, although Rhule and his staff deserve credit for actually running full-scale punting and kickoffs with returns, something their predecessors chose not to do. Timmy Bleekrode made a 49-yard field goal with the 18-mph wind at his back, but failed twice on shorter kicks against the wind. Rhule used XFL rules kickoffs, possibly to reduce the likelihood of injury. Zavier Betts was the only kickoff returner to make it past the 30-yard line.

There will be real competition at quarterback and running back in fall camp. Sims played well, completing nine of 13 passes for 139 yards and rushing for a 7-yard touchdown. When Casey Thompson returns, whoever convinces Rhule he is less likely to turn the ball over is the favorite to start Aug. 31 against Minnesota. Gabe Ervin Jr., who rushed for another 7-yard score, along with Grant, Ajay Allen and Rahmir Johnson, make running back the deepest position on the team.

Lack of depth on both the offensive and defensive line will plague this team, and both Luke Reimer and Nick Henrich have proven injury-prone. There are plenty of things to be concerned about. But Rhule seems to have raw material to build with for future years, especially if he lives up to his reputation as a developer of talent. You get the feeling that few players are really established, that Rhule and his coaches will be evaluating throughout the summer.

The opener against Minnesota will expose inadequacies to be sure, but hopefully, less of the self-destructive behavior with which Husker fans have been all too familiar.


More coverage & info