Get fired at some point in the next 3 years.
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POLL Will Rhule be fired at the end of the 2026 season?
- Thread starter ChocaEgg
- Start date
That would be 6 years...longer than most coaches for sure.
I wonder what percentage of college football P4 coaches make it 6 years
Good point. Our bar was so low. I would still say anyone that doesn't move at least laterally failed.
I think he can have a terrible year next year and not get fired.
I agree
Nebraska definitely dropped the ball at the RB position this year. Production from the RB position next season is going to be iffy at best.
I know things feel very wobbly and aimless, but I'm still surprised at how many people out there are like RAGEFULLY against Rhule at this point. I let my On3 sub expire so I look at the free board every once in awhile, and the mood there is like we've gone 3-9 the past two years.
To me, I think Rhule is in a very tenuous spot, but I don't think he's been a failure. He's somewhere in the middle. He's used up all of the benefit of the doubt, all off-field fluff has lost its usefulness, but I appreciate that he's still throwing things against the wall to see what sticks and I think his tenure could still go either way.
We'll see how it plays out, but I do think he's sincerely trying to reset the vibe of the program, after realizing he compromised a lot of his original vision over the past 2 seasons.
To me, I think Rhule is in a very tenuous spot, but I don't think he's been a failure. He's somewhere in the middle. He's used up all of the benefit of the doubt, all off-field fluff has lost its usefulness, but I appreciate that he's still throwing things against the wall to see what sticks and I think his tenure could still go either way.
We'll see how it plays out, but I do think he's sincerely trying to reset the vibe of the program, after realizing he compromised a lot of his original vision over the past 2 seasons.
I think what he’s facing is that his original blueprint failed. Year 3 was supposed to be the year that his plan came together. He even raised expectations by saying that NU was further along when he got here than at his previous stops.
I still think he could have withstood this year not meeting expectations if this offseason looked like he was relentlessly trying to fix everything that went wrong.
But it hasn’t looked that way. Credit for what they did on the OL for sure. Which makes the DL an even bigger mystery.
We were flat footed when Robinson didn’t happen. We didn’t hit on anything big in the portal.
We somehow had everybody connected with the program touting the potential hire of a juco coach in part because of the players he could bring at DL, and then very publicly appear to have lost the only one who showed us any interest (likely to a program that doesn’t even like to use the portal).
It’s a mixed bag offseason that maybe doesn’t cause much consternation if the year had gone to plan.
But you can’t have your original vision be exposed and then follow that up with a meh offseason. He kind of underwhelmed in both places and now people are going to wonder what we are supposed to be buying into.
Sums up my feelings as well. Rhule was hired at an incredible transition point for college football. His developmental program approach, something everyone agreed with at the time, was quickly undermined by the transfer portal. Maybe he should've seen the writing on the wall sooner but I think they've done a good job of mitigating their losses, just wish the additions would've been higher caliber.
I don't think development has necessarily been bad under Rhule, it just hasn't been good enough. Couple that with a coaching staff that's seen a heavy amount of turnover (3 OG coaches still on staff) and that's a pretty tumultuous environment to win in and yet he still made back to back bowls. Progress but not good enough.
Who knows if Rhule will succeed. College football is way different today than it was during the Pelini years, Frost years, or even since Rhule was hired.
I like this take. Everyone was going into uncharted territory for the most part.
The issue is, Cignetti is a developmental program as well. His B1G OL of the Year and zero star guy was already at Indiana when he got there. One of his DBs that was at Indiana before he got there and Indiana was by far his best offer made B1G First-Team All-Conference this year.
He of course has misses in the portal, but he has a ton of hits there as well. We all know about Mendoza, but his center he brought in from Notre Dame was 3rd team all-conference, his TE he brought in from Wisconsin was 3rd team all-conference. His LB he brought in from Navy was 2nd team all-conference.
Shoot, even Charlie Becker was at Indiana before Cignetti got there and didn't even really play in 2023/2024, but in 2025 even though he didn't make all-conference, ended up with more receiving yards than anyone on Nebraska's roster this year and all of us would feel like we took a viagra pill if he was transferring here.
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Yep, and what I said doesn't absolve Rhule of blame either, just feels like necessary context if we're trying to figure out why the rebuild hasn't felt as successful as it should.
Cignetti has been the unicorn and appears to be a hall of fame coach. Shit, Becker didn't even break out until November of this season. Just incredibly impressive stuff.
lol he’s been a failure. Lets hope he turns things around
This does risk you being grilled if you are wrong, like you are being in the baskeball thread...so there IS some risk here. 😉
He had a plan, but he had to shift pretty quick from it. I made reference that what he was doing with grabbing track guys that don't have football offers but only have track offers to "teach them football" was very similar to Frost and Duval's method for OL in the 2019 class where they just grabbed tall and athletic guys that were small to get them in Husker Power.
Brant Banks, Michael Lynn, Matthew Anderson, and Jimmy Fritzsche are basically the same as Brice Turner, Jaylen Lloyd, and Jeremiah Charles in the 2023 class for Rhule. Lowly recruited guys on the football field but "what we do will make them elite."
I think his plan with a lot of things had to be revamped. If you remember when he was getting second-guessed first year, he came with "we know this works and we are doubling down on what we do." But things just have seemed different. Now on his 8th coordinator hire after the third season, and everything else that's gone on on the field. I will say though, we have back to back bowl games for the first time in over a decade so I don't want to be too hard on him.
I mean it's a little bit of semantics whether you wanna call it a "failure" or not, it absolutely hasn't been a "success," but the reason I say it's somewhere in the middle is because we HAVE improved.
It's absolutely wild that we're on our 8th coordinator hire, the amount of coaching turnover and system uncertainty we've had is ridiculous and it's an indictment on Rhule's process here so far. But in most cases that type of turnover would mean we've cratered multiple seasons in a row, Frost style. But we haven't, we've actually had the best two-year stretch in over a decade. That's a VERY low bar, but it's true. It also might be Rhule's ceiling, that's what I don't have a solid feeling on yet.
I just feel like continuity and consistency can trump some talent gaps. My issue is going into year 4 our most seasoned coordinator is Holgo heading into year 2 and 66% of the guys leaving. So even if the head man is still the same, there's been a ton of change defensively in those 4 years.
I just want to finally see what Rhule himself wants, and just go from there. Because I think he arrived with one idea/identity in mind, and through various reasons and decisions he ended up somewhere else.
- They brought in Sims who they projected to be a certain type of freewheeling big-play-potential QB who could throw bombs and make things happen with his legs, inbetween bruising rushing attacks from RBs -> He was a bizarre disaster, beyond just a "bad evaluation" he had the yips unlike anything I've ever seen. But we saw the original "vision" for the type of QB/offense he wanted.
- He then signed 5* legacy recruit Raiola, who he absolutely could not NOT take, but who was the opposite style of QB. Totally risk averse, completed tons of passes but they seemed to always be about 3 yard throws and couldn't run to save his life. Beyond that, he and his family were given tons of latitude within the program, and the offensive identity was seemingly retrofitted to what he could and couldn't do as a QB, rather than having a QB who fit what Rhule wanted to run.
- I think that contributed to how he started his tenure stressing the importance of OL and DL to having them both as glaring weaknesses in year 3. He kept Donnie Raiola at OL coach when he shouldn't have, he directed more resources to WRs who could catch Dylan's passes and prop up his stats than to OL who could protect him, etc.
- He knocked it out of the park with Tony White and an aggressive gang-tackling hard nosed defense -> Rhule micromanaged in year 2 then when White left he hired an unproven DB coach and insisted on him running Tony White's system, which looked much worse and went very poorly. But again, we saw the original "vision" of the type of defense he wanted.
- Culturally Rhule went from "we're going to be a tough physical team, no nonsense, get social media out of here, IF WE DIE WE DIE" to insisting to everyone how important podcasts and McAfee appearances were to recruits, wearing gold chains, posing in goofy flashy social media photos, etc. I don't doubt that a lot of that stuff brought us some attention with recruits and their families, but the change in priorities made it all seem embarrassing once we tanked the end of the season.
Anyway, I don't know exactly where I'm going with this other than to say, I am hypothetically still onboard with what he said was his original vision coming in, and I think he's attempting to course-correct back to that after letting things spin out a bit. Colandrea, Geep, Aurich, etc seem to be way more in line with the OG Rhule ideas for NU, and I still hope it works.
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You must not have been in Ashland lately. Is quickly becoming the "charming little town that your wife goes to spend a few hundred at". Also has one of the best new steakhouse restaurants in the state, and a great and huge new brewery. They are now building apartment complexes of scope in the city, and expanding the Iron Horse development, also have one of the best wineries in the area Cellar 426. https://www.cellar426.com/
They also have a great wine tasting room attached to Glacial Till Winery in downtown.
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Fire Rhule and completely give up the '27 class. We hitched our wagon and are riding it out.
No, he’ll be fired during the season
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