There's plenty of work to be done, but the Huskers have a proven college winner who could lead their climb out of irrelevance.
Nebraska is ready for the next football coaching reload. This time, the Cornhuskers may have the right man for a big job.
The program announced Saturday morning that former Baylor and Carolina Panthers coach Matt Rhule was its new head coach. He takes over the top job after interim Mickey Joseph guided the team after Scott Frost’s dismissal three games into the season.
Rhule isn’t the next Tom Osborne, but he might be the next Frank Solich. That should be just fine with Nebraska fans who have been properly humbled over the past 20 years, as their program has slid into irrelevance and crash-landed in incompetence.
Solich won 75% of his games at the school, a conference championship and three division titles in six seasons before getting fired for not being Osborne. Since then, the Huskers have won 53% of their games and on Friday completed their sixth straight losing season (albeit on a positive note, upsetting rival Iowa). Given the program’s current state, landing a proven college winner who miscast himself as an NFL coach could be a major win.
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Unlike Frost, Rhule doesn’t have the nostalgic ties to the school and isn’t coming in red hot off an undefeated season. He took some lumps with the Carolina Panthers, but he still might be the best fit for what Nebraska needs. This is a program in search of steak, not sizzle. This is a hire with good long-haul possibilities.
Rhule has built from the ground up twice—at Temple, which is a dead-end job, and at Baylor. He has two of the three 10-win seasons in Temple history, and his 11–2 record at Baylor in 2019 came just four years after the program was decimated by scandal. They were not gimmicky rebuilds.
His Temple teams in 2015 and ’16 led the American Athletic Conference in total defense. His ’19 Baylor team led the Big 12 in fewest yards allowed per play, sacks and turnover margin. Those were solidly built, line-of-scrimmage teams that didn’t beat themselves.
All of that should be welcomed with open Big Red arms after years of watching Frost’s teams self destruct or get pushed around in the trenches. Nebraska will take winning any way it can get it, but an ability to win with the bedrock principles of football would be perfect. Rhule and Nebraska both could be returning to their stylistic comfort zone together.
Rhule replacing Frost feels a little like Brian Kelly replacing Ed Orgeron at LSU—you’re simply bringing in a superior program organizer and manager after a period of leadership that approached chaos. That said, this isn’t LSU in terms of latent talent—nothing is a sure thing at Nebraska anymore. While this hire makes sense on paper, it’s still no cinch making it work.
The college game has changed dramatically in the three years since Rhule was last in it, so making staff hires that are up to speed on NIL-based recruiting and the current transfer rules will be vital. But at the same time, Rhule being unemployed since early October and having his eyes on a return to college has had seven weeks to study what he’s getting into and plan his hires accordingly.
In several respects, the early firing or Rhule and Nebraska’s early firing of Frost allowed them to get ahead of the customary college hiring timeline. They needed the time to work things out.
Rhule said no to Nebraska at least once, sources told Sports Illustrated this week. Maybe more than once. A lucrative separation from the Panthers, reported at $34 million, had its share of entanglements that reportedly are still being worked through. For a while, it appeared athletic director Trev Alberts’s search was destined to go elsewhere.
But some other candidates declined to get involved, sources say, and Alberts never gave up on Rhule. If a major commitment was needed to make it happen, Nebraska was willing to do it. Details have not yet been reported on the duration and dollar figures of Rhule’s contract, but expect the numbers to be big.
He won’t ever approach Nick Saban as the ultimate college winner-turned NFL bust-turned college winner, but neither will anyone else. He could, instead, mirror the third-act success of Lou Holtz, Steve Spurrier and Bobby Petrino.
The commonly held wisdom for years is that the Big Ten West, where Nebraska resides, is annually there for the taking—or at least has more upward mobility. Being on the opposite side of the conference from Ohio State and Michigan—and to a lesser extent Penn State—made the jobs in the West more enticing. But divisions may well be going away in the near future, with USC and UCLA arriving to swell membership to 16 teams in 2024.
In that scenario, there would be no hiding out and stacking wins in a weaker division. And Nebraska has had a hard enough time in the West anyway, winning just 15 league games in the past six seasons heading into the game against Iowa Friday.
Rhule established recruiting contacts in the state of Texas while at Baylor, and it would seem vital to revive those given the talent footprint where Nebraska resides. He’s got to be ready to pounce in the transfer portal when players start officially flowing back into it Dec. 5. He will have work to do immediately to retain the talent that is on the roster, especially if popular interim coach Mickey Joseph does not return as a staff member.
But Nebraska does have one important thing in its favor: an enormously passionate fan base that will do its part to help bring the program back. That means filling the stadium, and more importantly it will mean donating to NIL collectives to support recruiting efforts.
Nebraska football will never experience again what it did in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, when it ranked among the top few programs in the nation. But it can certainly be better than the miserable product of recent seasons. It can be good enough to avoid losing seasons; good enough, perhaps, to consistently finish in the upper half of a 16-team Big Ten; and occasionally good enough to compete for a league title.
Matt Rhule gives the Cornhuskers a chance. Maybe their best chance in about 20 years. That’s all the program can ask for at this point.
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