Cignetti, Rhule strike different tones, but results similar

At Big Ten Media Days in July, Rhule took the podium and mentioned Nebraska’s team GPA, its improvements on offense and what he’d learned from a year coaching in the Big Ten.

It was no frills and all business from Rhule. It was all flashiness from Cignetti.

“Normally at these things I stand up here and we’re picked to win the league,” Cignetti said, firing back at a preseason media poll that ranked Indiana 17th in the new 18-team Big Ten.

The 63-year-old head coach presented an energized, ambitious vision for Indiana football, one which unequivocally demands winning. Just months earlier, Cignetti drew headlines for how he pitched an Indiana program coming off three consecutive losing seasons to recruits.

“It’s pretty simple — I win,” Cignetti said in December. “Google me.”

Cignetti has backed it up with his Indiana Hoosiers off to their first 6-0 start since 1967. “Fox’s Big Noon Kickoff” will be in Bloomington for Saturday’s game against Nebraska, and a bowl game is already secured for a program that has made just five bowls since the 2000 season.

Indiana is yet to trail for a single minute of play this season and has outscored its opponents 285-89 to earn a No. 16 national ranking.

It’s a dramatic turnaround from a program that won just three games a year ago. Between high school recruits and incoming transfers, Cignetti brought in 46 new players to the Indiana program, many of whom came from his previous program, James Madison.

“We’ve got a good core group of guys that are accustomed to winning and are used to winning,” Cignetti said in July. “Now you probably wonder how you say that inheriting a program like this, but in this day and age in the portal, you can change things real fast.”

That’s a sentiment that was echoed by Rhule during the week. While many would’ve pegged Indiana as an easy win for the Huskers prior to the season, it’s hardly played out that way six games into the 2024 campaign.

Indiana may not be a traditional football powerhouse, but it’s been one of the best teams in the nation to date.

“This is probably a Top 10 football team we’re facing,” Rhule said.

The statistics back it up, too.

Offensively, the Hoosiers have built the nation’s second-best scoring offense behind a top-10 passing game and a rushing attack that averages 200 yards per game. A two-man rotation at running back and a deep group of pass-catchers have helped Indiana get the best out of sixth-year senior quarterback Kurtis Rourke.

“They have a really good O-line, an excellent tight end, two great (running) backs and they’ve got about five receivers who can make plays,” Rhule said. “They have a good system, they know who they are and they know what they do.”

An above-average passer in five seasons at Ohio, Rourke’s level of play has elevated significantly in an offense built upon quick reads and accurate throws. Rourke fits the bill perfectly, having thrown for 1,752 yards and 14 touchdowns while completing 73.8% of his passes.

Nebraska defensive coordinator Tony White, who faced Rourke during a Syracuse-Ohio matchup in 2021, said the quarterback is a “completely different player” than he was when they first met.

Given Indiana’s success at jumping on opponents early, never ceding and carrying a lead for the remainder of the game, it’ll be crucial for White’s Blackshirts to withstand the early Hoosier test. Indiana has outscored opponents 73-0 in the first quarter of games during its undefeated start.

“When we’ve played our complete games, we’ve done just that — being able to go out there and have success early on,” White said. “With a team like this, you’re going to give up some plays.”

Accordingly, the Nebraska offense will need to keep pace. It’s a big moment for Dylan Raiola, NU’s freshman quarterback who’s been trustworthy and steady.

However, facing an opponent that ranks sixth nationally in total defense and No. 11 in scoring defense will be no easy task. The Hoosiers allow just 83.8 yards per game on the ground, so it’s likely Raiola will need to power the Husker offense’s scoring drives.

Nebraska “sharpened some tools” over its bye week, Raiola said, on account of the “urgency” they feel to win.

“They play a lot of different schemes and they’re hard to identify what they’re doing, but it’ll be a good test for us,” Raiola said of facing Indiana. “… I think our team is ready and built for this.”

Indiana’s rebuild may be the one in the national spotlight, but Rhule’s rebuild has been just as successful in many ways.

Rhule has made good on his offseason promises that turnovers would improve and so would the Husker offense. Combined with a defense that can do it all and a program filled with young talent across the board, that has Nebraska off to a 5-1 start which places it on the verge of the school’s first six-win season since 2016.

It wasn’t the instant fix via the portal of Indiana, but the slow burn that Rhule prefers. The Husker head coach said on Monday that he wants to build by recruiting high school players and that Nebraska simply needs to win games to prove that the nation’s best athletes should come to Lincoln.

“The teams that I want to be like in terms of their records recruit really well, and I think we can recruit really well,” Rhule said.

Cignetti, meanwhile, sold players on the vision of a quick turnaround powered by a staff that knows how to win. And in the way he’s transformed attitudes, Cignetti’s approach isn’t all that different from Rhule’s.

After all, the three ideals Cignetti laid out for players were to be early, do their best and improve every day — highly similar to Nebraska’s rallying cry of getting 1% better every day.

“As a leader, you’ve got to change the way people think inside and outside the program, and then you’ve got to have a blueprint and a plan,” Cignetti said. “You’ve got to have high standards for everything you do.”

Playing in the national spotlight on Saturday provides an opportunity for both programs. For Indiana, improving to 7-0 would further legitimize its status as one of the Big Ten’s best teams and a dark horse College Football Playoff contender.

For Nebraska, the impact runs much deeper. The Huskers haven’t beaten a ranked opponent since the 2016 season, nor have they reached a bowl game since either.

The lack of postseason trips has hung over the Nebraska program every year that followed, and it’s a streak that the team’s veterans are ready to snap after falling short with a five-win campaign last fall.

“I think we’re definitely on the right track, and that’s kind of what I wanted to come back for, to bring this team back to a winning level and just be a part of that,” linebacker John Bullock said.

Nebraska will look to do so as the underdog in its upcoming matchup, a situation Rhule said is “good for us” as the Huskers lock in and hit the road with a 74-man travel roster.

But as Nebraska continues to build for the future, that situation is a reminder that Rhule’s transformation of the program is far from finished.

“There’s going to come a time again when we’re those guys,” Ty Robinson said. “We’re going to be ranked, and people are going to be coming for us. That’s the mentality we’ve been having this season — it’s time to stop being the hunter; let’s be the hunted.”