Rhule Explains Spring Practice Takeaways Saturday
Photo Credit: Nebraska Athletics
Nebraska Head Coach Matt Rhule met with members of the media following spring practice on Saturday.
Rhule began by debriefing today's practice and key improvements he's looking to make.
"We really like what we've been doing," Rhule said. "We really like the teamwork followed by the spring league and I think it's really raising the level of a lot of guys' play so it looked like a really good practice. It's always hard to tell when you have so many people there. You're kind of spread out a little bit more but what I saw was a lot of guys making plays on the ball. Marcus (Satterfield) did a good job talking to you guys the other day saying, 'You look back to last year, we have to throw the ball better. We can't be minus 17 turnover ratio.' We ran the ball well, we stopped the run well, we were pretty decent on third down in some areas so really true focus on throwing the football has been important. Everybody talks about the quarterback when that happens but the guys getting open and catching the ball matter. I saw a lot of plays made on the ball today which made me excited so looking forward to watching the tape."
Rhule explained what he believes makes a great player.
"Everyone thinks that great players do extraordinary things," Rhule said. "I think the thing that I've learned about great players is that great players do the ordinary things unbelievably well. We would run an option route with Christian McCaffrey and it's not that he would run some route every game that was new. He would run that same option route so well so that it was uncoverable. Delanie Walker is here with Will Compton. I was talking to Delanie about a little bit of football last night. He was talking about a corner post read that he would run. That was his route. He wouldn't have to change it every game but he ran it really really well so to me, whether we're watching seven on seven or one on one or nine on seven or team run or team move the field or the spring league today was third downs, all an opportunity for guys to go and make plays and the concept of in the spring like, 'I need to be playing next to you' or 'We need to have chemistry' and all that, that's absolute farce to me. In fact, I should be such a good player that you can put anybody next to me and I make them better. That's what I'm looking for."
Rhule was asked what he hopes alumni and visitors take away from seeing Nebraska's practices and clinics.
"It's our program," Rhule said. "It's all those alums' program. It's the high school coaches in the state's program. It's the player's program. It's the university's program. It's the state's program. It's alumni everywhere, it's their program. I'm just entrusted it for a short amount of time. I'm trying to do the best job that I can. I know that, you know what? Someone will be here after me and I want them to say, 'You know what, Matt left it in a good place.' What I said to the coaches at the end of my session today was, 'I hope when they come into our clinic and when they see that we designed a logo just for the clinic or they walk and see the signage or taste the quality of the food or listen to the quality of the presentations, I hope with all these little things they say, 'Wow everything in this program is really intentional' and 'Everything is done at a really high level.'
The Huskers will continue with spring practice on Tuesday. The annual Red-White Spring game presented by FNBO is scheduled for Saturday, April 27 at 11 a.m. (CT). Tickets can be purchased on huskers.com or by calling the ticket office at 800-8-BIG RED.
