Matt Rhule’s three bye week goals, Daniel Day-Lewis and his surprising Player of the Game vs Rutgers

Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule knows the Huskers will have their hands full this Saturday when they travel to Bloomington for a Big Noon showdown at No. 16 Indiana.

The Huskers own a 5-1 overall mark and 2-1 record in the Big Ten heading into the matchup against unbeaten Indiana – Nebraska’s sixth opponent of the season that will be undefeated by the time they square off – and have an opportunity to vault back into the Top 25 with a win over the Hoosiers who stand at 6-0 overall and 3-0 in the conference.

Rhule already dove into Saturday’s road test earlier this week during his regular Monday Game Week press conference. On Wednesday night, Rhule made his monthly appearance on Huskers Radio Network featuring a lengthy interview with HRN host Greg Sharpe.

Below are Inside Nebraska’s most notable takeaways from Rhule’s time on the mic.

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There has been a common rhetoric from Rhule this week, both on Monday during his regular presser to kick off Game Week and again during Wednesday night’s interview, as it feels like he is not so subtly setting the table for what this weekend’s Huskers vs. Hoosiers showdown entails: A battle of teams that have been able to quickly turn things in a new and positive direction.

“The new era of college football (with) super conferences, the (transfer) portal, roster parity, the game is in a different place,” Rhule said. “So when you turn the game on, you don’t know what’s gonna happen.Teams that you kind of say to yourself, ‘That shouldn’t be a powerhouse,’ or ‘They’re not a blue blood.’ But they might be a heck of a team now, and teams that were a really good team last year, the roster can change quickly. So every Saturday makes for some interesting things to happen. There’s only three undefeated teams in an 18-team Big Ten, so I think it’s all very interesting.”

Nebraska could fit into that type of description. Indiana, led by head coach Curt Cignetti, certainly does fit that description this year as perhaps the biggest surprise of the entire college football season.

“Indiana’s done a great job,” Rhule said. “They’ve transported in a bunch of good players from a 10- or 11-win James Madison team. Some of those guys probably played there when they were FCS and then they were FBS. So, they’re winners, they know how to win. That wouldn’t have happened (in years past). I remember when I left Temple and took the Baylor job, it was in my contract that I couldn’t even offer a scholarship to a player that we had been recruiting at Temple.

“Some coaches came along who had guys committed to them, they took another job and they took the commits. Now, you see guys taking the whole team. Not saying that’s wrong or right, it’s just different, it’s just changing the dynamics. Every year, people are gonna have to forget the logos, forget the names and just wait to see how things play out, see how the roster is. Coach Cignetti is an amazing coach, he’s done a great job of taking that team and putting together a Top-20 ranked team.”

There are three main “purposes” during a bye week, especially the first bye week during a year when you have two of them, per Rhule’s philosophy.

1: Self scout

“Really, you say to yourself, hey, what do we do well? What are we not doing well that we’re doing too much of? Who are the guys that are making plays for us? Who aren’t and how can we help them?

“… (Running backs are) one of the things we looked at last week: Are we doing the right things with the right players at every position? Are the right guys touching the football? What we’ve lacked – I’m not putting this on the running backs, just in general whether it’s perimeter blocking, running backs, throwing it enough, running it enough – we’ve just kind of lacked the 50-, 60-, 70-yarder. You look at a lot of our runs that are 60, 65, 70 percent efficient, but we’re not getting the huge (run). The four-yard hit is great, but we’re not getting the 80-yard hit. So we’re going back and looking at that: Are we doing the right thing? So that’s really what the bye week’s for.”

2: Develop next year’s team

“We go out there with the the twos and the threes, and we get live work with the fours and some guys that are down on the depth chart. And some guys really popped. Some guys, from where they were in training camp to working on the scout team to now getting to that bye week, I mean, you see some guys really, really, really pop. You watch practice and you see a Braylen Prude, or you see a Caleb Benning, you say to yourself, ‘Hey, we’re gonna be in really good hands here when these older guys leave,’ just seeing the way that they practice and many more.”

3: Opponent scout and rest

“Finally, you’re (working on) Indiana, you’re getting ahead on the next week. You’re getting guys ready and prepared. So you’re taking your self-scout but also looking at the opponent and trying to put it together. And then you’re getting some guys healthy. We’re a little beat up, so getting some guys healthy is important.”

Rhule says that the switch from the self-evaluation/self-scouting stage of the bye week to the focus on scouting Indiana happened “simultaneously.”

“We spent two days on self-evaluation, two days on Indiana in terms of us, and last Thursday was the main day of scout teams and saying ‘Hey, here’s what we’re gonna go against,’” Rhule said. “Then, it was practice on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. We practice three days on (Indiana) this week, and then we have two more days. We believe that you prepare all the way up until game time and then, really, you’re still preparing even in the game. You’re still learning how they’re attacking you. So our guys have gotten really good about preparation and understanding what it means.”

Daniel Kaelin? More like Daniel Day-Lewis, AmIRite?

The Huskers’ true freshman backup quarterback, projected to take the reins of the starting job at some point down the road during his Nebraska career, has had a crucial job to do in practice this week. Kaelin has been doing his best acting job in serving as the scout team quarterback, representing Indiana standout QB Kurtis Rourke.

“Danny’s doing a great job, especially in a week like this week, where he’s playing a lot of reps at quarterback for us but also playing Rourke,” Rhule said. “He’s done a great job. Tremendously accurate, great feet, smart. I was coming out of the meeting rooms last night, heading downstairs, there’s not many players in the building. It’s 9 o’clock at night, 9:30 at night, and Danny’s walking out of the quarterback room watching extra tape. I said, ‘Hey, you ready to go if you need to go?’ He said, ‘Absolutely.’ So I love his approach.

“What people don’t understand is, sometimes you’re a quarterback in high school and you get evaluated at Elite 11 and 7-on-7 – all great things, but it doesn’t show how you can play the pass rush, how you can move in the pocket. When you’re going over there on the scout team, and you got Ty (Robinson) and Nash (Hutmacher) coming at you, you’re gonna learn how to manage the pocket and still keep your eyes down the field. I think he’s doing a great job of that and still getting ready to play on (our) offense, coming over and taking reps there. I’m proud of what he’s done so far.”

Brodie Tagaloa

“He played in one game so far. He’s working his way back, he’s doing a nice job. Obviously, he’s got some good players in front of him, but I think the future is very bright for him. Love his approach, and we’re lucky to have him. You go on the scout team and our first-team offense, they’re blocking Brodie, they’re blocking Riley Van Pop, and they’re blocking some really good players. So, Brodie’s time will come.”

Riley Van Poppel

“He played the first two, and then we made the decision after that. So he’s got one last game, but we knew that was a game (against Rutgers) that we would want him (to play). We knew that they were gonna come out, run the ball, 60, 70, 80 (percent of the time). You look at the schedule moving forward, there’s gonna be a game where we could use him. The biggest thing I like about him is this isn’t wasted time for him. This isn’t like a year off. He’s getting better.

“We get to the postseason, you can play that as well. Over the years what I found is, before the College Football Playoff Era, just even in the bowl weeks, we were kind of known for making these major changes, changing positions and doing things with guys or developing players. A lot of it came from those two, three, four weeks leading up to a bowl game really developing players. It’s almost like another spring ball. Riley’s taking advantage of that time right now. Then, we get into the postseason, it’s just gonna be so much more for him that I think, when next year comes, I think he’ll be a fantastic player.”

Rhule gave his opinion on his MVP in the win over Rutgers, and it is certainly someone you would not have guessed. And it’s absolutely not a player you would have had on your list of best bets to be named the game’s MVP going into that Oct. 5 Big Ten battle.

“Henry Lutovsky was probably the player of the game in the Rutgers game,” Rhule said. “I thought he played well. He was down the field knocking guys over. Gunnar (Gottula) has done a lot of really good things. Gunnar’s still learning how to anchor versus the bull rush, and last week was a really valuable week for him and Donnie (Raiola) to spend some time really working on that. When you’re the third left tackle in spring, you’ll get your reps but you won’t get as many reps, and you’re getting reps versus different guys. All of a sudden, now you’re out there, and you’re blocking James Williams every day or you’re blocking Ty Robinson.

“That’s the big thing with those young players is don’t go out there and panic. You go against good players every day. … You’re facing good players, so go out there and trust yourself. And I think Gunnar has done a good job of trusting himself in big moments, and he’ll only get better.”