What Nebraska Coach Matt Rhule Said at Big Ten Football Media Days

Penn State football letterman Matt Rhule returns to Beaver Stadium as a Big Ten coach in November, when the Nebraska Cornhuskers visit the Nittany Lions. Rhule enters his third season as the Nebraska coach feeling as though he has unraveled some of the program's issues the past two seasons.

Yes, we have to win more. That's the deal," Rhule said Tuesday at Big Ten Football Media Days in Las Vegas. "But we came into a program that we knew was going to take a little bit of time to fix. I think we're close to fixed."

What kind of team will Rhule bring to Penn State? He discussed that at Big Ten Media Days. Some highlights of his press conference.

Live updates from Day 1 of Big Ten Football Media Days

QUESTION: After everything you said you were planning on doing with the team, especially that loaded senior class you had, all of them graduating with their degrees, and you were just happy about the kind of people that they are and the success that you've had on the team, with this year how do you kind of reach the younger guys to let them know that it has to go further than that?

MATT RHULE: I think each and every day it's really our players. Players talk to players more than we can. I get up in front of the team. I speak; I think they listen. I try to have tremendous relationships. Our coaches are great. People in the building are great.

At the end of the day, the program moves forward when players are talking to players about the right things, when they take the program from Coach Rhule's program to their program. Right now it's their
program. We went to dinner last night with the fellows, and they were this kind of joking, like, Coach, you don't have to come tomorrow, we'll handle it for you, which I almost took them up on. You could put Dylan [Raiola], you could put Henry, you could put any of them up here, and I think we would all speak the same way because we believe in what we believe.

I've taken a lot of jobs, and when you walk into a job that hasn't been winning, everyone tells you what's wrong. They usually say, "Well, it's this guy, it's that guy, it's the last coach, it's this,
it's that." Good organizations win because everyone owns the product. Like very rarely on a bad team when you take over a bad team, do you hear people say, you know what, I've got to do better. The reason why I believe that we're about to make the jump that we're going to make is because each and every day, whether it's our administration, whether it's the people around us, no one is saying, it's this person's fault, it's that person's fault. Everyone is owning the product.

Yes, we have to win more. That's the deal, but we came into a program that we knew was going to take a little bit of time to fix. I think we're close to fixed.

QUESTION: I wanted to ask you just about the maturation of Dylan [Raiola]. What have you seen from him in the offseason as he prepares for this season, and not just under center, but as one of the leaders of this team as you guys prepare for the 2025 season?

MATT RHULE: Yeah, I would not have brought Dylan if I wasn't so proud of his work. I mean, he's done a great job with his body. He's done a great job with his knowledge of the offense, his growth with Glenn Thomas, our quarterback coach, and Dana Holgorsen, our OC.

His command of the roster, of the team, make no mistake, it's really hard to come in as a freshman with tremendous expectations and have to go be the leader. You're 18 years old, and you're telling
six-year seniors now and telling 25-, 24-year-old men, Hey, I need you to do this. It's so hard. What Dylan did last year was really hard.

The thing to me when you are a five-star quarterback, you probably breeze through high school, you haven't had a lot of adversity. Every time you go somewhere, people talk about how great you are.
When I recruited Dylan, I said, hey, come help me turn around Nebraska football. Man, it's going to be hard, and doing something hard is how we become great.

If not, you go somewhere. You go play on the best team in the country, which is pretty cool, and every once in a while they need you to make a throw to win the game, and then you go to the NFL, and the
worst team in the worst city drafts you, and now you have to deal with all this adversity. I said, come to Nebraska. It's going to be hard. There will be adversity. You'll be frustrated sometimes, but we will
eventually do something great.

And what I have seen from him, high temperature, his maturity is he now embraces when he is frustrated. He embraces when things aren't going well. He's the one going back to the ownership I talked about. Instead of saying, like, this guy has to do better, this guy has to do better, he puts it on himself. He says, I'll fix this.

I think our team is going to play for Dylan, and I love coaching the kid, young man.

"Husker football is about performance. It's about us going out there and getting it done." 🗣️

Matt Rhule makes the @HuskerFootball standard clear 👇#B1GFootball pic.twitter.com/UBkZO7lWjo
— Big Ten Football (@B1Gfootball) July 22, 2025

QUESTION: Nebraska achieved bowl eligibility and won the Pinstripe Bowl, but close losses in special teams remain concerns. As you continue rebuilding, what fine-tuning are you emphasizing in tight-game execution and confidence-building for 2025?

MATT RHULE: Yeah, I think we lost a lot of those games because we just weren't good enough. I think that's just sometimes a great storyline to say, hey, you know what, close loss here, close loss - and there is some of it, but our focus has been on, like, just improving as a team because they don't all have to be close. Some of those games, why don't we win by 14?

I saw a different mindset from our team in the Pinstripe Bowl. We were up, and they came back. We had to make a couple of plays. Dylan made a play. Rahmir Stewart hit a power to win the game on fourth and two. What I saw for the first time was not a lot of panic.

But that panic comes from when you don't think you control what happens. When you are, like, listening to all the outside narratives and we should be doing this and we should do that, and finally the team grows up. When people always ask me about year three, finally the team grows up, and they're, like, well, I got to go make the play, and I got to go pick the ball off and block the punt. None of those special teams errors were coached that way.

We take ownership of it. Don't get me wrong. It's a much different feeling when you walk in with a bunch of guys that now they know they're good, and some of them, they're the same players. They're just good because they're a year into the system. That 250-pound guy is now a 280-pound guy. I'm an incrementalist. I believe in getting a little bit better every year. I've got great news. Nothing that happened last year carries over into this year. That's a good thing, right?

The Iowa loss at the end of the year was really, really probably painful, but sometimes it's the pain you need. It's the pain that spurs you forward in the offseason when guys get a little bit complacent. There's no complacency at the University of Nebraska right now. Our guys all understand that we have good enough players.

We have an excellent roster. We're fast. We're explosive. We've got veterans where we need to. We're good on the lines. We've got great coaches. But we're going to have to go perform. That performance comes from guys owning it and not listening to anything else, not listening to the guy in the locker room complaining. Shutting all that up and saying, Hey, Husker Football, it's about performance. It's about us going out there and getting it done.

So that's why I mentioned the classroom. That's why I mentioned the growth of these guys. You see a team that understands that.

I look forward to the first close game. I look forward to seeing our guys execute in it, but it's not something out here. It's about getting young people to be a little bit better each year, recruiting good players, and I think you'll see a good team this year.

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