Matt Rhule resists ‘panic’ after Nebraska’s loss to Indiana

One of those viewings included the whole Husker team, who surely listened to Rhule explain, as he did Monday afternoon to NU media, how one mistake tips many dominoes.

A defensive lineman who is too eager to pursue the opposing quarterback overlooks a neatly designed delay run, leaving Husker safeties out of position for hard tackles. And if a receiver misses a block on a quick screen, the whole point of Dylan Raiola throwing that pass is lost.

The Huskers had a bye week to prepare for the undefeated Hoosiers. They played like they just came out of hibernation.

Now, Rhule plans to challenge assistants and players alike to redouble their efforts.

“We legitimately worked on these things, over and over,” Rhule said Monday during his 30-minute media chat. “Sometimes — no one’s going to want to hear this — maybe it’ll show up this week. Maybe it’ll show up next week. But these are not things we haven’t all done all year, all spring. We got to that moment and didn’t do the things I know we’re capable of doing.”

So NU took a “deep step back” to address some fundamental concerns.

But Nebraska did not, by Rhule’s accounting Monday, have some come-to-religion moment by practicing on Sunday or deleting the depth chart. Rhule reached not for rage but rationality.

“My main thing in life as a coach is not to panic,” Rhule said, “not to change everything but to keep getting better at it — until you’re the best at it.”

Playing the Big Ten’s best — No. 4 Ohio State — this week might have something to do with NU’s approach.

The Buckeyes (5-1, 2-1) lost two weeks ago to Oregon and haven’t played in the conference title game since 2020, but they still represent the league’s gold standard. With a rumored $20 million NIL war chest, Ohio State has, Rhule said, “the best roster in the country,” full of future NFL players on offense and defense.

This isn’t struggling Illinois — which NU faced after last year’s Michigan debacle — or bottom-of-the-barrel Purdue, the Huskers’ foe after a loss to Illinois this season. In Nebraska’s four trips to the Horseshoe since 2012, it has lost by an average of 31 points — there’s a reason NU is a 25½-point underdog this weekend.

“If we spend the whole game playing Ohio State looking at the scoreboard hoping to win,” Rhule said, “we’ll get our face beat in.”

So the coach spent time challenging his players positively: Do you think you’re an NFL player? Prove it against these guys. Rhule wants the Huskers (5-2, 2-2) to live up to the stake of the moment, and not shrink as they did at Indiana, where defenders got frustrated, defensive end Jimari Butler said, when IU made big plays on offense.

“At times, a big play would happen,” Butler said Saturday, “and everybody’s heads went down.”

It’s a familiar Nebraska response that spans five coaching tenures. A 70-10 loss to Texas Tech 20 years ago almost has, as a two-decade bookend, the 56-7 throttling.

“My battle since I’ve been here has been the ‘Here we go again,’” Rhule said. The coach didn’t feel that himself, he said. He heard it talking to others, though, and also heard, from NU’s chief media relations liaison, that a comment Rhule made in his postgame press conference had “traction.”

The one about not foreseeing a 49-point loss.

“If I saw this coming,” Rhule said, “you guys should all be very nervous.”

Nebraska’s play surprised him. NU’s corners lost one-on-one battles. The front seven never stopped the run. The Huskers couldn’t run the ball themselves. Quarterback Dylan Raiola threw three interceptions as receivers struggled to get open.

Rhule himself wished he’d kicked a field goal, midway through the third quarter, instead of gambling on a fourth-and-eight pass that turned into an Indiana interception and 78-yard return. What would a 28-10 deficit have done vs. a 35-7 deficit? Probably not much. But a 49-point loss prompts such explorations.

Four viewings of the tape, too. The answers are there, Rhule said. But answers in football aren’t solutions until they’re applied to the gridiron by big, fast men crashing into each other while making split-second decisions about what to do.

“This happened to us,” Rhule said. “We allowed it to happen. It stunk, it hurt. We’ll find out a lot about ourselves moving forward. We’ll find out about the coaches. We’ll find out about the players. We’ll find out about me.

“But the last thing we’re going to do is sit around and be victims.”