Nebraska football embraces underdog role against basketball school

“He came in and ‘bang’ and I woke up,” Rhule said Monday at his weekly press conference.

Dylan Raiola, reporting for duty, on the first week of the 2024 season where NU is underdog, against the No. 16 team nobody could have predicted would be undefeated and a touchdown favorite in mid-October.

The basketball school whose football program has just two nine-win seasons — ever — to its name. The school that just fired its head coach last year hired a 63-year-old replacement Curt Cignetti, who talked big at conference media days and stunningly, through six games, has backed it up.

Cignetti arrived from James Madison, brought a boatload of his best players from that team, has a depth chart full of transfers, a prime spot on Fox’s “Big Noon” TV slot and the look of what Rhule calls a “top ten team.” Yeah. Indiana.

“Everyone has to forget the logos and the names,” Rhule said. In the new Big Ten, 9-3 and 8-4 will be good records and games will boil down to final possessions like they did in four league games last week. Two of those four went to overtime.

So this week is the same test Nebraska often faces — a one-score game. But it’s also from the other end of the point spread.

“I much prefer that,” Rhule said. “I love turning on (ESPN) GameDay and seeing them all pick the other team. That’s good for us. It’s just who I am, and who a lot of our guys are.”

Both NU (5-1, 2-1) and Indiana (6-0, 3-0) enjoyed a bye week. Rhule spent his coaching up younger players and doing an “extensive” study on a run game that ranks 90th nationally in yards per game (136.67) and 88th nationally in yards per carry (3.89). He found a lot of four-and-five yard runs that kept the offense on schedule.

“I like the consistency of the runs more than I thought I did,” Rhule said. “We have to hit a couple of big ones, we haven’t done that yet.”

He then noted Nebraska would always be the kind of team that deployed fullbacks and multiple tight ends in pursuit of a physical run game that wears on defenses and also prepares NU’s own defense to play against a physical run team.

It “hardens” a team, Rhule said, in ways that defending a spread passing offense would not. Rhule said he feels bad for defensive coordinators who work for offensive head coaches who are dynamic playcallers of passing offenses.

“You’re not getting hardened,” Rhule said. “If you play in this program, we might not ever be the top ten in passing, but we’re going to run power, duo, counter, and you’re going to see those things in practice, so when you get to the game it’s not really a shock.”

Meanwhile, Indiana leads the Big Ten in passing at 315 yards per game and 11 yards per attempt. IU quarterback Kurtis Rourke, Rhule said, might be playing better than any other Big Ten quarterback, and Cignetti surrounded the Ohio transfer with seasoned running backs and receivers who know Cignetti’s system from their days at James Madison.

Even when the Hoosiers’ defense struggled — as it did in wins over Maryland and Northwestern — Rourke kept dealing. IU throws two fewer times per game than Nebraska for 71 more yards.

“Their quarterback is absolutely fantastic,” Rhule said. “They’ve got playmakers.”

That Indiana couldn’t have secured just seven years ago, when transfers were a laborious process that almost always included sitting out a year. The advent of an easy-to-use virtual portal — complete with immediate eligibility at one’s new school — changed the landscape. Name, image and likeness compensation — which allows boosters from a power school like Indiana to easily outspend the whales at James Madison — also allows a coach like Cignetti to get good fast.

“If you lose a coach to a better job or a different job, it can decimate your program,” Rhule said. “It can be a quick fix for another program.”

Rhule joked last week that, after getting fired from the Carolina Panthers, he couldn’t bring NFL players with him to Nebraska, so he had to pull transfers from an open market and coach the guys he inherited from previous NU coach Scott Frost. Rhule hasn’t shied away from the portal — in any game, five-to-seven transfers start for the Huskers — but his program-building models aren’t a quick fix, but a sustained build.

“The teams that I want to be like in terms of their records recruit really well,” Rhule said. “I think we can recruit really well. I think recruits are figuring out that they can come here. I think our recruiting will get better and better and better. You just have to win.”

Which, for this Saturday, means a 4:30 a.m. wakeup call and finding a way to slow down the team few thought would be this prolific.

“We’ll need to steal a possession against Indiana,” Rhule said. “They’re just too dynamic on offense.”