Why Nebraska coach Matt Rhule feels his team ‘got better’ during the bye week

The Huskers couldn’t fully escape football over their bye week — many players watched film from past NU games or tuned into games involving future or past opponents.

With Nebraska’s weekend away from the field coming at the midway point in its season, it gave the Huskers an opportunity for a brief reprieve and recharging of the batteries.

“The guys have had to show competitive stamina and they’ve had to grind,” head coach Matt Rhule said of NU’s first six games. “I think it (the bye) came at a good time. I was able to get away and the players were able to get away. Even if get away means they sat in their dorm room and watched anime, they got to have some time to themselves.”

Nebraska’s bye week schedule included a typical Monday practice followed by a Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday practice schedule that came with a twist. Nebraska coaches gathered the program’s young players for a day of practice on their own, then added veterans to the mix as the week progressed.

A three-day weekend with no practice commitments might’ve looked nice on paper to the Nebraska players, but they had to earn it first.

“We worked our tails off last week,” Rhule said. “We got better.”

Rhule said he felt the team was in a good mood and had an “excellent” practice on Monday, which may be indicative of the atmosphere around Nebraska football this week. The team’s temperature is hardly red-hot as it was in the aftermath of NU’s surprising loss to Illinois, an effort that drove improvements in the weeks that followed.

Changes were notable on the defensive side of the ball, where a Nebraska defense that surrendered 31 points to the Illini allowed just 17 points over its next 120 minutes of football. It’s not just the scoring that has improved, too.

The effort and plays Nebraska put on tape in the two weeks since have looked nothing like the disjointed performance in which poor tackling and missed assignments loomed large.

“If the other team’s better than us and they score, that’s fine, but the way film looks, the way that we hit, the way we contact, get off blocks and communicate should be better,” Rhule said of the NU defense. “I thought on that night (against Illinois) that was a tense defense that wasn’t quite playing to the level they were capable of.”

The wins Nebraska earned over Purdue and Rutgers prior to the bye also required the Huskers to dig deep and vanquish prior struggles in one-score games. Nebraska led by just four points heading into the fourth quarter of its win over Purdue and held on late against Rutgers, showing the team’s mettle in two different circumstances.

“You’re watching college football this week and every good game comes down to the last possession like it’s an NFL game,” Rhule said. “Hopefully the last two weeks have gotten us used to that.”

A one-score game or a contest that is settled late is highly likely in Nebraska’s return to the field against the No. 16 Indiana Hoosiers.

With Indiana off to an undefeated 6-0 start in which it has built the nation’s second-best scoring offense and No. 11 scoring defense, the Hoosiers enter the matchup as roughly five-to-seven-point favorites — a situation that Rhule welcomes.

“I much prefer that,” Rhule said of being an underdog. “I love turning on GameDay and seeing them all pick the other team; that’s good for us.”

Being an underdog may just be the topic Nebraska can latch around to insulate itself from the pressure surrounding the contest.

Rhule won’t make a big deal about it, but with a win on Saturday, Nebraska would reach the six-win mark needed to play in a bowl game. It’s a situation the Huskers haven’t found themselves in since 2016, having crucially gone 0-4 as a five-win team late in the 2023 season.

It’s a different Husker team now than the one that lost four consecutive one-score games down the stretch, and a national television audience will get to see as much on Fox’s Big Noon Saturday.

With a win, Nebraska can vault itself back into the national conversation, Top 25 and secure a long-awaited bowl game.

However, it’s the difficulty of the opponent standing in their way that has Rhule and the Huskers’ attention, not what it means if they were to come away with a victory.

“This is as big of a game as we’ve ever probably played in in terms of the stakes, all the things that get people excited — on the road, (against) a ranked team and the best offense, probably that we’ve faced and one of the best that we’ll see,” Rhule said. “I’m sure our guys are focused.”