The ‘little things’ Matt Rhule learned in year one

In the final minute of Nebraska’s 2023 football season, it almost had no choice but to attempt what it did worst: Throw the ball.

In that same minute of clock, rival Iowa had the luxury of trying a run.

The difference played a key factor in the Hawkeyes’ game-winning field goal and 13-10 win over the Huskers. Nebraska marched into a strong north wind — had already missed a 44-yard field goal in the fourth quarter because of it. Iowa had that breeze at its back.

So when NU cornerback Tommi Hill intercepted an Iowa pass near midfield with 31 seconds left, Husker coach Matt Rhule either had to sit on the ball and head to overtime or risk Chubba Purdy throwing into the teeth of Iowa’s pass defense, ranked fourth nationally.

Rhule chose risk. The Hawkeyes got an interception with 15 seconds left. After a stunning 22-yard run from back Leshon Williams, Iowa nailed a field goal off the foot of its backup kicker.

Rhule said in June he got a valuable lesson from Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz.

Before kickoff, Iowa won the coin flip and Ferentz chose to take the ball. That left Rhule to choose how Nebraska started the second half. He took the ball, while Ferentz grabbed the wind for the fourth quarter.

“Here, late in the year, it’s going to be cold and it’s going to be really windy, and there’s going to be two quarters of the game where you’re throwing the ball into a 30-to-50-mile-an-hour wind,” Rhule said. “And I’d better master those things. Little things.”

Rhule conceded Ferentz outfoxed him a bit. Ferentz enters his 26^th year in Iowa City. Rhule just finished his first year at NU.

“The biggest thing I learned — and I’d heard about it, but until you feel it, especially with our stadium — was the weather,” Rhule said when asked about winning in the Big Ten. “You talk about that.”

The Huskers had a roller-coaster season that started slow — turnover-filled losses at Minnesota and Colorado — hit a midseason peak when NU rattled off wins over Illinois, Northwestern and Purdue and ended in a four-game skid that kept the program out of a bowl game for the seventh straight season.

Nebraska had the nation’s No. 18 scoring defense, allowing just 18.3 points per game. NU’s offense scored just 18 points per game, the worst figure in more than a half-century. Two of the team’s three starting quarterbacks transferred, and the one who stayed, Heinrich Haarberg, is likely to be a backup to true freshman Dylan Raiola, whose mid-December signing put an exclamation point on Rhule’s first full year on campus.

He instilled a new culture, hired and deployed a large staff, embraced Tony White’s aggressive 3-3-5 defense and, by the third game of the season, Nebraska’s old-school option offense. Under the lights in his first career start as NU’s quarterback, Haarberg rushed for 98 yards and a touchdown during Rhule’s first win in Lincoln.

“I’m not the prototypical quarterback,” Haarberg said that night. “I’m heavier, faster and stronger, so I’m gonna use that to my advantage.”

The Kearney Catholic graduate had one in wins over Louisiana Tech, Illinois and Northwestern. By the time Purdue’s linebackers repeatedly lit him up in Nebraska’s 31-14 victory, Haarberg had been slowed by the physicality of a brutish Big Ten. He’d struggle in a 20-17 loss at Michigan State and miss the last 2 1/2 games.

NU lost 13-10 to Maryland, 24-17 at Wisconsin and 13-10 to Iowa. In each, the Huskers’ last pass of the game was picked off. Nebraska finished 1-5 in one-score games, continuing a long-term trend of close-but-not-quite performances.

Still, Rhule’s posted NU’s best record since the 2019 team went 5-7. The great majority of Nebraska’s experienced offensive and defensive linemen return, as do the offensive skill players. Raiola is on hand with prodigious arm talent. And Rhule, as he said in June, learned a few things in year one.

“If you are coming in at a time of adversity, you’d better be really well put together to survive,” Rhule said. “But if you survive adverse times, you’ll be really profitable in non-adverse times.

“How does that relate to us? Transfer portal, NIL, revenue-sharing, roster limits, all these things — if we can navigate them ‘that much’ better than everyone else, that’s our advantage.”