Huskers promote John Butler to DC, make two more hires

Per a report from ESPN, Nebraska’s search for a defensive coordinator ended on Tuesday, and head coach Matt Rhule stayed in-house the decision.

Nebraska secondary coach and pass game coordinator John Butler has been promoted to defensive coordinator, sources confirmed to Inside Nebraska.

Butler, who Rhule said would be the interim DC for the Pinstripe Bowl against Boston College on Dec. 28, takes over for Tony White, who spent the past two seasons as the Huskers’ DC before leaving for the same role at Florida State.

“John’s definitely a candidate for the (defensive coordinator) job right now,” Rhule said last week. “I brought him in knowing that, at some point, Tony was gonna leave, whether it was a coordinator job or a head coaching job. John’s been a DC before, so right away I just said, ‘Here you go, John, I need you to take this over and run with it.’”

Rhule said he wanted to keep the same defense that’s been run the past two seasons at Nebraska, the 3-3-5.

“I think what’s important to me is that I like how we play defense. I like this defense. I like these fronts. I like the multiplicity of what we did. We did some different things against Iowa I thought were great,” Rhule said. “I don’t want to switch to something different. I want to do this defense. Whoever that is, I don’t want to make that decision for a short term, ‘oh we feel good about it.’ I don’t want to make a splashy hire. If we’ll remember when I hired Tony with the 3-3-5, my phone didn’t stop blowing up. People were asking how the 3-3-5 was ever gonna work. People were panicking. I think it’s worked out pretty good. I have no timetable other than to just get it right. Just to make it right.”

Prior to the 2024 season, Butler has spent the previous 10 seasons in the NFL with the Buffalo Bills and Houston Texans. He coached the Bills’ DBs for six seasons and the Texans’ DBs before that, from 2014-2017.

Before his time with the Texans, the 51-year-old Butler was in the Big Ten coaching at Penn State. He held the role of DBs coach in 2012 and was the Nittany Lions’ defensive coordinator/DBs coach under Bill O’Brien in 2013.

There’s a connection between Nebraska’s general manager, Sean Padden, and Butler. Both went to Catholic University, a Division III program in Washington, D.C. That’s where Butler played and started his coaching career, and it’s where Padden was a player as well. Butler was the DBs coach in 1995 and the DC in 1996. Padden was the scout team player of the year in 1995.

Butler has Big Ten coaching experience outside of his time at Penn State as well. He was the special teams coach/linebackers coach at Minnesota from 2007-10. After his stint with the Golden Gophers, he went to South Carolina for the same role.

Butler also spent two seasons, 1999 and 2000, at Midwestern State, which is the same program current Husker quarterbacks coach Glenn Thomas coached for seven years (2001-2007) before landing a coaching gig with the Atlanta Falcons, but it doesn’t appear the two coaches overlapped at Midwestern.

Separate ESPN reports noted Nebraska will also add longtime Rhule assistant Phil Snow and Terry Bradden to the coaching staff.

The 68-year-old Snow will be the associate head coach, per the report. Snow is a veteran coach who was Rhule’s DC at all three of his head coaching stops: Temple, Baylor and the NFL’s Carolina Panthers. Most recently, Snow did consulting work with Nebraska’s defense following the loss to UCLA in November.

Bradden most recently served as the assistant DL coach for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, where he spent the past eight years. Bradden spent his first three seasons in Kansas City as a defensive quality control coach (2018-20) and one season as a defensive assistant (2017).

Bradden is a Riviera Beach, Fla., native who played quarterback for three seasons at Howard University (2009-11) in Washington, D.C., before transferring to Tuskegee University (2011-13), where he also played quarterback.

Snow and Bradden are the two most recent staff additions. On Monday, Phil Simpson announced he’s returning to Nebraska to coach outside linebackers. Simpson, an excellent recruiter with strong ties in Florida, spent the 2023 season at Nebraska as a defensive quality control coach before spending 2024 at Florida State.