Everything Matt Rhule said in preparation for Northern Iowa

“It’s where we should probably be, but it’s not where we want to be. My kids were excited, so I’m happy for them. My players were probably excited, but we have bigger plans than that.”

“I went for a full hour with the team. I believe there is three stages. There is eliminating losing football, then you play winning football, and eventually you are going to play championship football. I think we are playing winning football and so we have to get to championship football. There is a lot of things to learn from. Last week, you correct the correctable things. I did it in front of the whole team so the guys would take ownership. Colorado is a bunch of four and five star recruits. That is as talented and skilled of a team as we are going to face. There is talent everywhere. You have a chance to really look at ourselves now and say what are we doing well and what are we not doing well. I thought the film sessions were very honest.”

I’m not in the offensive and defensive ones, but mine was very honest in terms of guys taking ownership and recognizing the execution. Tommi Hill had a great pick six but if you watch the tape, Travis Hunter runs a spot route and (John) Bullock takes it away. He tries to go inside and Bullock slides inside, Bullock played an amazing game. So the quarterback goes out late to Tommi and Tommi picks it. I think the guys on defense really understand I can’t do what I do unless you do what you do. We had good pass rush because we had good pass coverage. There was not people running open very often. There was a couple, but not often.

Roman Mangini and Kenneth Williams played five and 12 last week and they destroyed us. I had to call the team up. I was so upset. But the guys got better on defense on Tuesday to Wednesday, Wednesday to Thursday, Thursday to Friday. After the game, the first thing (Isaac) Gifford said to me was Kenneth and Roman really did a good job. Pointing out the good and the bad and looking at the things we got better at look at the coverage, and then the opportunities we had to put the game away that we didn’t do.”

“The worst special teams’ performance I’ve had in a long time. The worst. I’m disappointed and it’s a lot of things. It’s not just one thing. It’s yeah we run down on the opening kickoff and we set the tone with some big hits. But we aren’t leveraging the ball so the next one comes out. Thank goodness John Huhl is the fastest kicker I’ve ever seen because he runs Jimmy (Horn Jr.) out of bounds. We get a punt blocked that’s not supposed to happen. We blocked a field goal which is awesome. We have some goals about that. (Brian) Buschini was a weapon. When the complementary football was good. The first drive we stopped them and they punt the ball to IGC (Isaiah Garcia-Castaneda) it bounces twice he picks it up and gets the ball back to the 50.

People are not talking enough about what Isaiah is doing for us in the punt return game. He dives and catches the one, I don’t love the dive but he catches one at the thirty and then we go down and score in two minutes. He’s doing a great job. Kickoff return, the first one should’ve been a big hit we don’t hit it. The second one the ball hits the ground. I know Jacory (Barney Jr.) lost it in the lights. We practice at nine o’clock in the morning and I put that on me, maybe we aren’t catching enough in the lights. Last year we practiced on Wednesday nights, so I’ll have to do more of that this week and then we missed a field goal. The snaps haven’t been great on field goals so I feel like the kickers now are worried about that. There’s a lot of things that aren’t real good. We got the right guy for the job in Ed (Foley). He will get it fixed. I think the guys have to recognize that we have got to do a better job and I think they all felt that.”

“Mikai (Gbayor) played great. Played his tail off. I really have no issues with how anybody played on defense. I thought the guys played well. The defensive coaches will have some things but the guys all played hard and played well. It was really a game plan. It wasn’t really a super aggressive gameplan, it was cover and let our guys rush and our guys rushed really well.”

“He’s suspended for the first half. You can file an appeal. We filed that and we’ll wait to see. We never want our guys to hurt anybody. I was really happy that Shedeur (Sanders) was okay. It was kind of a late slide, he didn’t launch in there or go down with his head. There were certainly some that I thought in that game that were going to be targeting that we didn’t get. I hope Mikai is able to play, but if not, V9 (Vincent Shavers Jr.) and Stef (Stefon Thompson) will be ready to go.”

“We didn’t block very well on the perimeter. The story offensively, very simply, is this. We were going out the first two drives and scoring touchdowns. We’re playing great in the two-minute – two weeks in a row, we go down and score in the two-minute. We can do more and do better if we fill out a bubble screen and hit in the legs. Their receivers blocked us. I think our receivers have to have a better week blocking. I think we had eight penalties on offense. Not the penalty yards, I think the penalty yards was like 50-something. The yards lost was like 160 and a touchdown. That could’ve been a 45 or 50 point game. When I coach, I’m not coaching worrying about what Robin (Washut) is going to give the offensive and defensive grade this week. I just want to win the game. I’m not worried about that, but I want execution. I didn’t like the execution by some people. I thought Dylan (Raiola) executed the whole game. I thought some guys executed the whole game, but I did not like some of the execution, and one of those was the perimeter blocking. I think it could be way better. It was way better at times last year. It was way better last week. This wasn’t the best week we’ve had.”

“He loves to play. He’s 160 pounds, that first jet sweep, they light him up on the sideline and he gets up and does his thing. It’s joy. I love watching Jacory play. You can’t give the ball enough to him in my mind. This week, I told the team, we’re facing the No. 21 team in the FCS in the country. They have one of the top run defenses in the country. Guys are going to compete for touches. I’m not a schematic person. I know a lot of football scheme, I’ve coached for some great coaches. But I think you get the ball to the guys who can make plays. The guys have to go make plays. Jacory makes plays. He should’ve had a touchdown on the reverse, if a couple guys would have sprinted a little harder. If you have a chance to go back and watch that reverse, watch what Dylan (Raiola) does. He hands the ball off and blocks a blitzing corner. Good players make plays. Dylan makes plays. Jacory makes plays. I don’t know if we get the ball to Jacory enough.”

“I better be careful because PJ (Walker) and those guys will call me and yell at me. PJ Walker was my quarterback at Temple. After every game, he’s furious because I would’ve run the ball 30 more times and let him throw it 12, but we’ve opened it up a lot more than we did at Temple. PJ and Charlie Brewer, I had two guys as freshmen that were gamers. They were winners. With Dylan (Raiola)  at such a high level we’re able to do just so much with him. The headset is a big deal. It would be a lot different without the headsets. The headsets are a big big deal. We didn’t have those with the other guys, but I’ve been blessed. I’m in the position I am in because of great quarterbacks.”

“That’s a great question. I don’t know. I certainly had the opinion that let’s be aggressive. Let’s attack. We had the ball backed up on our own 13-yard line after the block in the back. We threw four verticals and hit a seam route to (Nate) Boerkircher. It was second and 24, I was playing to be aggressive. I was not just going to sit there, and the same concern about the points. I kept saying, when they kicked the field goal I said to Tony (White), ‘It’s four touchdowns.’ So I was going to be smart and milk the clock at times. With 8 minutes left, we went into four-minute mode, but I don’t see the defense do anything. Going back to Mitch’s (Sherman) question, a lot of the problems have happened in the second half also happened in the first half. They’re the second game of the year problems. You have to jump now from game two to game three and the game three you have to improve every week. I don’t think it was a letdown. I do think some guys on the offensive got tired. That bothers me. We have to be better about that.”

“He’s in shape. Mitch Cholewisnki, our sports science guy, he does extra running every week. He’s just kind of an anxious, asthmatic kid that can sometimes hyperventilate so he can only have so many plays in a row. He’s a wonderful kid. He scored a touchdown, everyone is celebrating and I am yelling at him on the field because he reached the ball across the goal line and fumbled it. I don’t care what the results are, that’s not what we do. So he’s getting used to me. ‘Coach Rhule doesn’t care what the result was. He cares about the process.’ We are going to face better teams. We are going to face different situations or whatever. I think Dante has done a really nice job. I thought this was a game because of all the man coverage where I felt like the safeties were going to have to make a lot of tackles for them. So it was more of a big back game early. And then later in the game, it would be more of a get the ball on the perimeter which we hit with Rahmir (Johnson) with the touchdown that got called back. It was going to be a counter game, a duo game. We tried to run duo to the right because Travis (Hunter) is a great player but we wanted him to have to tackle. Let’s make Travis Hunter play football football, not man coverage he is great at that. Unfortunately, Shilo (Sanders) got hurt but we thought we would get the ball to the safety and the corner a bunch and make them tackle. And Dante is just very hard to tackle.”

“It’s making the same improvement this week that we made last week. The defense felt the urgency of the skill and the speed because we got burned on it last year. Now you are facing the number four rushing offense in FCS. You are facing 298 yards a game. You are facing a coach in Coach (Mark) Farley that has won a ton of games. When I was in the NFL, I looked at Northern Iowa’s alignment. I never looked at a Nebraska alignment. You better be ready for a physical battle with the way they play. Run defense and run offense. That’s one of the challenges and then fixing the problems we are having. Fixing the special teams. We’ve won the turnover battle two games in a row. That’s the number one thing that I care about. I felt like we were the more physical team on Saturday but we did not have the execution at the level I wanted it to so we have to keep improving that.”

“I like their backs. They have two backs that have gone over 100 yards. I like the way they play. It’s my kind of football. Twelve personnel, run the ball, play action, take shots, be physical up front. Run defense. Safeties trigger on the run. Be physical. I like the way that they play. When you face a big back you have to gang tackle. You have to run great angles. Last week, we said every time Colorado runs it it’s a win for us. Even if they run for seven yards we don’t care. Just don’t give up the explosive play. We still gave up four plays of over 20 yards. Our goal was two. There’s still things on defense that weren’t good enough. This week it will just be the war of attrition. That’s why I told our guys that were competing that our starters are our starters on defense that are playing well. But if Mikai (Gbayor) can’t start, who’s gonna start. V9 (Vincent Shavers Jr.) or Stef (Stefon Thompson), they are going to compete for that this week. Ceyair (Wright) played really well when Ceyair was in at both corner and on special teams. Those guys are going to compete to get on the field because I want a bunch of guys fighting to play well this week.

“If you want to play championship football, you’re just like this. I don’t get too high, I don’t get too low. I return people’s texts when they text me about the game, but it wasn’t the highlight of the year for me. It wasn’t vindication, it wasn’t anything. It was a game that we played. I expected the game to go that way. I expected us to score 40 points in that game and hold them to about 10. That was my prediction going into it. I thought that’s where the game was. That’s no disrespect to them. I think they’re a really good team, I just felt like we matched up well against that team. We have to improve because there are other teams that we’re playing like this type of team we’re playing this week. How are we going to match up against those teams? We’ve played two spread teams and now it changes. How do we match up against teams that want to run the ball like we want to run the ball? How do you match up against teams that want to play physical defense and play special teams? We’ll walk right through the fatigue. I think the guys feel the pressure of us not playing too well on special teams. We had way too many penalties, especially on offense in the second. Dante (Dowdell) hit that run on the second or third drive of the game down to the 4-yard line. It should be another touchdown drive. It’s 35 nothing at the half. (Bryce) Benhart had the hold and the ball came back and we ended up not scoring on that drive. There’s too much of that stuff happening, so we have to get a lot better.”

“There’s no doubt. I think for us, night games are a weapon. It’s an absolute weapon. I was talking about my preference. I like to get done and then go watch. I watched Oregon play Boise State and that was a great game. That was just me being selfish. For the team, night games are amazing because the crowd is so electric. Even seeing some of the stuff on Twitter, I don’t always see some of the other stuff that happens behind the scenes. It was a great crowd. I thought personally, our game experience and operations, Brandon Meier and all those guys – from the Will Compton video to the songs they were playing to the light show and all that, it matters. Especially with this generation of kids. You want them to want to come to the games. I thought the whole atmosphere – again, I have the headset on – I had to ask Jay (Terry) to get noise-canceling headsets because I cannot hear on defense. ‘Do you want a timeout?’ I can’t hear, that’s how loud it is. I say that because it’ll help us win.”

“I think there’s two separate parts of it. Part is the game day experience. They go to an NBA game nowadays and there is music constantly playing. I think our basketball team does an amazing job. I’m saying kids want to go to the games because the sellout streak will go and continue. Tomorrow’s crowds will be today’s 10-year-olds. That’s why we do all of the youth camps. I won’t be the head coach when today’s kids are buying season tickets, to me that’s how you build the future of the program. You keep investing in all the kids and have amazing memories. People come up to me and they’re like ‘coach I’ve had season tickets and my grandparents had them this year I remember the Oklahoma game.’ They all have these amazing memories so creating memories around a group of kids nowadays that could be just as easy as them watching the game on their phone right. So I look at my kids and they’re like, ‘Are we doing the drone show tonight Dad? Are there going to be fireworks?’ But then in recruiting. I think Will Compton and Bussin’ with the Boys, that’s trending among that generation of kids. We are always relevant here but I need to be relevant in all 50 states, so that helps. Will (Compton) to take the time to come here, that’s big time.”