Husker DC John Butler wants to stop the run, affect the quarterback

At the time of his departure from the Buffalo Bills after six seasons coaching its defensive backs, John Butler wanted the open defensive coordinator role.

He didn’t get it.

Head coach Sean McDermott, a high school classmate of Butler’s at La Salle College in Pennsylvania, instead chose to promote one of the young, rising stars in the organization he didn’t want to lose: linebackers coach Bobby Babich.

So Butler moved on from Buffalo. He thought about taking a year off from the sidelines. But then Matt Rhule showed up, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“It’s well documented that, when things ended the way they did in Buffalo, a lot of that conversation was centered on the fact that, at the time, I thought I was the right man for the job there. That didn’t happen, and life goes on,” Butler said Thursday following a Nebraska bowl practice.

Five months later, Butler’s title of Nebraska secondary coach and pass game coordinator has changed to, simply put, defensive coordinator. He’ll take over for Tony White, who took the same role at Florida State.

Butler wasn’t McDermott’s guy. But he is Rhule’s.

The possibility of becoming Nebraska’s next defensive coordinator in a post-Tony White world wasn’t the reason Butler chose to come to Lincoln, he said.

“When it came down to the opportunity to come here, the decision wasn’t, well, I’m going to come here because of this opportunity down the road,” Butler said. “I came here because I had heard so many great things about working with Matt. I had a lot of respect from afar for Tony. And obviously, the University of Nebraska speaks for itself. It’s pro football.”

But Butler doesn’t hide the fact he’s wanted to be a DC again. So when the opportunity presented itself, he wanted the job.

“This is kind of a silver lining, or a cherry on top, that if you believe things work out for a reason, which I do, things happen the way they happen,” Butler said. “Your road in life, and your road in your career, is never going to go exactly to the script that you want it. But when opportunities come, you better be willing to either accept them or not.”

Butler has lived a football life. In his 30 years of being a coach, he’s learned there will always be a fundamental system in place when stepping into a new role. But coaches are always adding and eliminating from the system to make it better. And of course, a key part to building a defense is finding out what the personnel is good at, and going from there.

Butler isn’t about to step in and change a whole lot on Nebraska’s defense.

“We’re going to be schematically like we’ve been here for the last two years,” Butler said. “Obviously, I loved working with Tony. Tony was great to work with. And I think we had a great working relationship where his ideas and fundamentals kind of are blended into mine. And I think that it’s going to be a collaboration of everybody that we have we hired, once we complete the staff.”

One of those staff members whose reported hire is yet to be finalized is Phil Snow, Rhule’s longtime assistant who was his defensive coordinator at his previous three stops: Temple, Baylor and the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.

Snow is expected to be Rhule’s associate head coach and keep an eye on the defense. Butler is excited about the chance to work with Snow.

“Adding Phil is a big deal. That’s something I’m very happy about, just with his experience in this system and his experience with Matt,” Butler said. “I think we’re going to put, schematically, fundamentally and personnel, a defense that is going to be one that’s hard to deal with.”

Each offseason when a defensive coordinator is hired, the coach usually uses the same word to describe the defense he wants to build: Aggressive.

Yes, of course a defense needs to be aggressive. Butler wants his unit to be an “attack-oriented defense” and thinks he’ll achieve that because of who he is deep down.

“I’m an aggressive person. So I would assume that’s going to bleed into what we’re doing schematically,” Butler said.

Some of Butler’s strongest football beliefs to this day were taught to him from day one when he was a player, and then coach, at Division III Catholic University in Washington, D.C., where he got his career started.

Stop the run. Pressure the quarterback.

Be consistent with those two things, and a good defense will follow.

“It’s very simple. You have to be able to stop the run in today’s market, in today’s football — that’s the run and the RPO (run-pass option) game. And you got to be able to affect the quarterback,” Butler said. “And that requires you to be aggressive, not only in how you’re calling the game, but aggressive in how you’re teaching the fundamentals to your team.”

As Butler put it, being an “aggressive DC” isn’t about the amount of times, or how many defenders, you blitz. It goes beyond the game field.

“Aggressive isn’t about zero blitzing every snap — that sometimes can be stupid,” Butler said. “But you have to be aggressive in how you get your players to play, to attack the line of scrimmage up front, to be physical at the second level, for our DBs to challenge and contest the ball. That’s aggressive.”

During a press conference on Thursday, Rhule mentioned the reason he promoted Butler instead of making an external hire was his belief in Butler to fix what Rhule thought were the biggest issues defensively in 2024: third down defense, red zone defense and two-minute pass defense.

“To be able to stop the offenses that we’re going to need to stop, that can drop back and spin the ball, we’re going to need some advanced, I think, defense on third down, two-minute, red zone,” Rhule said.

How Butler sees it, the best offenses Nebraska will play in the future will be the balanced ones. In other words, offenses that keep coordinators like himself guessing run or pass.

“A lot of those situations, not really the red zone, but third down and two-minute, for the most part it’s 90 percent pass,” Butler said. “So when you are playing defense and you can immediately identify if it’s a run or a pass, then obviously your approach changes.”

For the most part, Butler understands what he’ll be getting in third down and two-minute situations. When opposing offenses are in those situations, Butler studies pass protections from the offensive line, route concepts the receivers are using and who the quarterback is usually targeting.

“I think what happens is, is when you can hone in on the passing game you can take away a team’s best player. You can attack the weak link in protection,” Butler said. “You can affect the quarterback, either up the middle, on the outside, whatever it happens to be, without a concern of the run, without maybe a draw or a screen every once in a while — that’s what they do to keep you off balance. So when you’re doing that, you’re doing that with multiple front looks, and you’re doing it with coverage variety.”

But college football is not the NFL. Butler isn’t working with professionals, he’s working with college kids who are splitting their time with football, school and everything else. There’s a sweet spot to find when determining how much is too much to put on the plate of his players.

“You have to really hit the target in terms of what these players at this age group can handle from a processing and an execution standpoint versus what the pros are just because they’re six to eight to 10 years older, with that much more experience,” Butler said. “So I think that’s the fine line that, as I was adapting to what was going on when everything happened so fast that it did, it was just understanding that, at the end of the day, it’s an old cliche, but it’s not about what the coach knows, it’s about what the player knows and what they’re able to execute.”

On Thursday Rhule talked about how several of his current players, some who are leaving the program, came to him with a message of wanting Butler to be the next DC.

Rhule didn’t hire Butler because the players wanted him to be the DC, but it showed Rhule the players back Butler and would play hard for him.

“I’m not going to make that decision because of that, but I think some of the current guys in the secondary felt like, after three or four years in college, John had brought a professionalism and a next-level mentality to them that they thought was going to prepare them for the next level. Some of them are leaving, so they didn’t have to say that to me,” Rhule said.

Having the players’ support meant something to Butler.

“I think that’s pretty cool. I was told that there was actually not just DBs, there was D-linemen, there was a couple offensive guys. So that’s pretty cool to hear that you’ve at least impacted people in your experience. Because really, when you do get into coaching, you want to make sure that at the end of the day you’ve had some type of impact on them as people, as much as you’ve had on them developing them into players.”

Consider starting corner Ceyair Wright a fan of Butler being DC.

“He’s a really great guy. We’ve gotten to know him really well over the course of the season. And I think my favorite thing about him is his mind. I think he’s just super, super advanced with his knowledge of the game, and I think he does a really good job at passing that knowledge on to us.”

And this, from defensive lineman Cam Lenhardt: “As a group, we think he deserved it. He’s a great guy, and we know him. So getting somebody in there that we know and we’re comfortable with. So I think a lot of us went in there with that.”

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