Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule
***Rhule said Nebraska’s focus had been “great” all week, and the only talk about the outside noise regarding the rumors of Rhule and Penn State came during Tuesday’s media availability.
***Rhule said NU practiced with “insane crowd noise” this week in practice to prepare for Friday night’s road environment. He learned how loud UM’s stadium could be when they played there two years ago.
***Rhule said
Emmett Johnson would be a captain next year. He said he was excited for Johnson to return home to Minneapolis, and Nebraska will practice at Johnson’s old high school on Thursday.
***Rhule said he “highly” respects Minnesota head coach
P.J. Fleck. He said Fleck was a coach he’d let his son play for because of how much he teaches character and mindset. They’ve gotten to know each other since their early days of coaching, and now they have a great mutual respect.
They even ran into each other at a Kenny Chesney concert this summer and spent some time together.
***Rhule said every coach and player who was at the Minnesota game two years ago had grown “in every single way” since then. He thinks the Huskers are a much better team now than they were then. That’s shown by how they’ve handled adversity this season. That said, none of that means anything if they don’t carry that over again on Friday night.
***Rhule noted that outside zone runs have hurt Nebraska’s defense, and Minnesota is an outside zone team. He praised UM’s top two running backs,
Darius Taylor and
Fame Ijeboi, saying that the duo would be a significant challenge for the Blackshirts.
***Rhule didn’t think Nebraska “had a problem” with its pass rush at Maryland. He said DC
John Butler is always very critical of his unit. But Rhule thought the defense played well and pressured the quarterback.
***Rhule said defensive back
Malcolm Hartzog was out for the Minnesota game. He added that left tackle
Elijah Pritchett was 100% after dealing with an ankle injury last week.
----RW