Nebraska Football Coach Matt Rhule, Players Speak After UCLA Loss

Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule met with the media after his team fell to UCLA 27-20 Saturday afternoon at Memorial Stadium. Watch Rhule’s full appearance above and read some of his comments below. Keep scrolling to hear from several players, including Isaac Gifford, Ty Robinson, Dylan Raiola, and more.

Opening Statement

“We’re obviously very disappointed. A tremendous missed opportunity for us. That was a game we had every opportunity to win. Even when we got down, we clawed our way back in it. Didn’t make the plays we needed to make. Credit to them.”

On offensive difficulties

“They did a good job early on of coming out, bringing four guys in the B-gaps and bringing the free safety behind. Some of the mechanisms we have to handle that are the screen game, and our gapping it up, and trying to throw the ball down the field. Eventually we got to one with (Isaiah) Neyor where he hit them down the field and got them a little bit out of that. They took the ball and went on a long drive. We went three and out, and they went on another long drive. We had seen that against Rutgers. That’s kind of how they play early on in the first half. Rutgers only had three possessions. We were able to hit the big play to make it a 7-0 game. But I think in general in the passing game, when it came to converting third downs, they were just all out zero blitzing us, and we weren’t answering it the way that you need to. We finished the game like 9-17 on third down. In the first half at one point it was one for a lot. We struggled, made the adjustment early, got it kind of finally taken care of in the second half and were able to stay on the field more. Down in the red zone, first time down there we scored, really the one before the half where we put the ball at the two. We’d been running the power play. We lost Barret (Liebentritt) so we put Elijah Jeudy in at fullback. He was doing a great job. He went down… then just finding the play to get in. They maxed us again, zeroed us up, and we just didn’t withstand it. In terms of everything that went wrong, in the first half I came up to the guys in the locker room and said, ‘That’s about as bad of football as you can withstand between the offense and defense, and yet it was 13-7.’ We were excited to go out and play in the second half, and then unfortunately had that pick six. But still crawled back into it, so there’s a lot of things that we have to continue to work on.”

On what UCLA’s defense did to get NU off-balance

“UCLA came down the field and scored the first drive off Rutgers. I believe they scored on the first drive against Minnesota. They have a veteran quarterback who’s trying to find his rhythm in that offense. They won on third down against man. They threw the shallow cross, they threw the corner route. We were able to hold them to a field goal, but we just couldn’t get off the field early on in that series. The second time through, we really couldn’t get off the field either. I pulled all the guys up and told them that we had a sack and we just kind of fell off of him and he ran out. We had another one where he blitzed five and he went up the A-gap for about 60 yards. There were a lot of little things that aren’t really about talent, but just kind of us making the play that needs to be made. I thought we settled down a little bit after that. I think (Ethan) Garbers’ legs hurt us. We came into it knowing that they move the ball early. The key to people has been wearing them down in the fourth quarter. That game was a carbon copy of their Minnesota game where Minnesota got the ball back and went down the field. They just made one more play to win the game. Unfortunately, Heinrich (Haarberg) makes the fourth down stop. We get down there and we take a penalty and we lose time and we don’t make the plays.” 

On UCLA’s interception in the fourth quarter

“He (Dylan Raiola) was under duress in the first half, and I think any young quarterback coming out of that would start to see a lot. The old saying, you see a lot, you see a little, you see a little, you see a lot. I think he wasn’t comfortable. I won’t speak for him, but with all of the things he was seeing, I don’t think he was real comfortable. That was a play-action pass down to Thomas (Fidone) down the middle of the field, into cover two, he was running free was going to be an explosive play, and behind him was an incut and he threw the incut. Credit to him, I thought after that he settled down, we found some run game. A lot of that was what we had seen people do against them. They withstand the early storm against UCLA and their script and then you make the plays to get back into the game. Unfortunately, that pick six and the missed opportunity down the red zone the first time, that hurt us and set it apart.”

Defensive Back Isaac Gifford

On the standard

“I can’t really answer that off the top of my dome. I’ll go back and watch film and probably have a better answer for you. Obviously, we have to come out to a faster start.”

On third down defensive struggles

“We have to get up and contest. There are too many guys making a catch, and the defender is not right there to make the tackle. We got to get up, be on them, we got to be contesting passes.”

On challenges presented by the secondary

“It’s the next man up mentality. We all go to practice every day. I’m comfortable with whoever goes out there. We practice together all week. It just comes down to competing and winning our one-on-ones.”

Punter Brian Buschini

On mood at halftime 

“It’s something that, with how poorly we played in the first half, it was a one-score ballgame. Tried  to bring some juice going into halftime. I thought the mentality was good, obviously the specialists came out a little bit quicker than the team. As far as what was said after that I’m not sure. To come out on the first play and have that turnover, that was tough. I thought we battled back and put ourselves in a position where we could have won the game. It’s not like we should have won the game with all of the mistakes we had. We don’t deserve to win a game making those amount of mistakes, but that’s the nature of the beast.”

On being a veteran and what he says to the younger players

“In times like this, a lot of people want to start pointing fingers. In times like this, it’s really critical to understand that when you point a finger, there’s three pointing back at you. You just really have to examine yourself and how you play. If you’re someone who’s not contributing as consistently as you’d like, if you’re someone who’s not the same guy everyday, if you’re someone who’s put in a position to make a play and you’re not, maybe examine your process and see what’s happening there. It starts with me and the punt team. I can affect the special teams room and try to be more consistent with how we approach every kick. I think that everyone needs to take a look at themselves before they start talking about so-and-so needs to change this or that.” 

On Big Ten football 

“I would say the Big Ten is the mini NFL. The parody is crazy, from that standpoint yes, but Big Ten football should not look like the amount of mistakes and errors that we make. From a talent standpoint, gone are the days where we can line up and be oh we can beat this team, beat that team. With the transfer portal and NIL every team we play in this conference they’re going to have dudes up front, they are going to be able to run the ball, they are going to be able to throw the ball over the yard, they are going to have good quarterbacks and good skilled players. We saw that out there today, they have some incredible players. I would go back to the point over here to look at ourselves because at the end of the day, talking about the opponent only gets you so far. If you give your best and you play to your best, we’re unstoppable, but we haven’t been doing that.”

Defensive Lineman Ty Robinson

On defensive prep

“Everyone was there, everyone was ready to go out there and compete for 60 minutes. That toss play, we didn’t see a lot of them when we were breaking down film. That’s one thing you just have to figure it out when you’re out there. We did that pretty well when we came out in the second half, finally settled in and started playing our ball

On getting through the bye week

“We make sure that doesn’t happen, that ‘here we go again’ mentality. I know I’m not going to stand for it because I’m here to win. That’s the reason why I came back, if I start hearing that around, I’m going to nip in the bud and I know the older guys will as well. I know how bad us older guys want to go out there and win. Just to fall short like that and not, it really stings, it really hurts. I know as a team we’re disappointed. 

On third down and defense getting off the field

“I think guys just needed to start winning their one-on-ones. The past few times I’ve been up here, that’s been the mentality of the defense. When all of the guys are able to win their one-on-ones, we’re a force to be reckoned with type of deal. In the second half, we finally got that to click a little bit better and our defense was a lot better in the second half.” 

Wide Receiver Isaiah Neyor

On what isn’t working for the offense

“We just got to get going, start fast, play with more confidence even though I believe we’re a confident offense. We just got to go out there and believe in our ability and go execute. Execute the playcalling, and do our jobs to the best of our ability.”

On concerns about lack of confidence amongst offense

“We believe in each other, we believe in the coaching staff. They do a great job of game-planning. It’s up to us to find a rhythm and maintain that rhythm throughout the game, and just do what we normally do. Treat it like team-compete and go out there and execute.”

On getting in the flow after a slow start 

“It was a bit challenging not being able to be out on the field and just playing. We stayed warm. We stayed in the game. In situations like that, it’s easy to get tight and fall out of rhythm. We did a great job of staying up. When the time came, we went out there and did what we did.”

Quarterback Dylan Raiola

On coming back out after injury

“I thought I could go, I thought I could fight through it. I just went out there, and it kind of locked up on me. From that point try to come back, but we trust Heinrich (Haarberg) in those situations, and I thought it was best for the team. I could possibly hurt them if I went back out there, Heinrich did a really good job.”

On trying to stay in the game

“I think their offense did a good job of staying on the field. They had their looks that we haven’t seen. We came out after the second half and we had answers for it all. They did a good job, and I give them credit.”

On today’s missed opportunity

“Like Coach Rhule said, ‘Missed.’ Had every chance to go win that game, especially in the first half, and came up short. We’ll let it sting for a couple days, we have a bye week this week. We’ve got to figure it out and there’s really no other way around it other than attacking it head on.”