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Are you out on Rhule?

Are you out

  • In

    Votes: 99 71.2%

  • Out

    Votes: 33 23.7%

  • I'd rather root for Cockeye

    Votes: 7 5.0%
  • Total voters
    139
Wasn't Rhule bringing Butler in to be the next DC part of the "rift with TW" nug? I dismissed that nug pretty quickly, but things have definitely changed on defense and not for the better.
 
The truth in the defense is simple.
They got hot last year and benefited hugely from a historically bad big 10 west offensive division. There’s probably a run of playing multiple bottom 30 offenses.

When you look at the depth chart it’s bad.
DL — starters and backups are above average. White relies wayyyyy too much on forcing the dline to be the only group to generate pressure.

LB - abysmal. Bullock has had his moments. But Sherman, Thompson, Gabyor all suck. Keep getting the freshman PT in a now lost season.

DB - laughably bad. There’s an obvious reason they’ve recruited a stunning amount of players. Hill and Wright are the only guys worth a damn.
Gifford has been bad. Buford, Hartzog and Singleton are useless. And there really isn’t anyone noteworthy behind them.
 
Sous Chef said:
Actually it wasn't working against Buttgers at all. It wasn't until we went away from the 3-3-5 that we started stopping their rush attack. I'm surprised you didn't realize this. Wait. No I guess I'm not.
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Fair enough… I did mention the change to the 4 man front in the insideher thread, but nonetheless…

I just am dumbfounded as to what the issue is on defense when they play any offense with a pulse. Scheme? Is talent an issue? I don’t think talent that is. When push comes to shove and adversity hits, do the older players resort to bad habits? I expected Indianus to be able to move the ball through the air, but what they did on the ground is extremely concerning.
 
jickey moseph said:
Fair enough… I did mention the change to the 4 man front in the insideher thread, but nonetheless…

I just am dumbfounded as to what the issue is on defense when they play any offense with a pulse. Scheme? Is talent an issue? I don’t think talent that is. When push comes to shove and adversity hits, do the older players resort to bad habits? I expected Indianus to be able to move the ball through the air, but what they did on the ground is extremely concerning.
Click to expand...
Right but you potatoed all my posts where I'm offering a possible explanation for the issues. Just because it isn't what any of us want to be true. I don't know 100% that its true but it's clear something is rotten inside this program. This is what I got told BEFORE the NIU game. If you don't think there is a schizo approach to our defense then I am not sure what you are watching. Another thing I alluded to in one of the posts you didn't like that I'll make more clear: Nothing we did surprised them. Nothing. Coming off a bye week we came up with nothing new, nothing that caused them to have to make any adjustments on offense or defense. We doubled down on what was either barely working or not working at all. Cignetti and his staff are light years better than Rhule and his guys. Light years. It's also clear to me that Dylan is broken and has lost all confidence in the plays being called and the offense's ability to execute those calls. That only makes it worse but I can't blame him one bit. We can all engage in copium. My favorite one is the idea that Tony White has never been a good DC we just played bad offenses. While statistically that might be relevant fundamentally its horse shit. We were fundamentally lost yesterday. If you think the players believe in what we were running again I don't know what game you watched. They quit before the kick off. If you don't like the explanation I have been given that's fine. But its clear something needs explaining.
 
Sous Chef said:
Right but you potatoed all my posts where I'm offering a possible explanation for the issues. Just because it isn't what any of us want to be true. I don't know 100% that its true but it's clear something is rotten inside this program. This is what I got told BEFORE the NIU game. If you don't think there is a schizo approach to our defense then I am not sure what you are watching. Another thing I alluded to in one of the posts you didn't like that I'll make more clear: Nothing we did surprised them. Nothing. Coming off a bye week we came up with nothing new, nothing that caused them to have to make any adjustments on offense or defense. We doubled down on what was either barely working or not working at all. Cignetti and his staff are light years better than Rhule and his guys. Light years. It's also clear to me that Dylan is broken and has lost all confidence in the plays being called and the offense's ability to execute those calls. That only makes it worse but I can't blame him one bit. We can all engage in copium. My favorite one is the idea that Tony White has never been a good DC we just played bad offenses. While statistically that might be relevant fundamentally its horse shit. We were fundamentally lost yesterday. If you think the players believe in what we were running again I don't know what game you watched. They quit before the kick off. If you don't like the explanation I have been given that's fine. But its clear something needs explaining.
Click to expand...
great post sumbitch & i love you. BUUTTT let’s sit back, relax, pull down your shorts and play whack a mole with your wiener today until the sun goes down and it’ll be a better Monday for all of us and post pics please thx
 
Herbie said:
Raiola gone?
Click to expand...
The Office What GIF
 
DR is the only shred of hope that the NU program & fanbase can collectively hold onto. If that is lost, then NU is truly dead and Rhule will be faced with even more open seats and distrust next year.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5855739/2024/10/19/nebraska-Indianus-loss-matt-rhule/

Nebraska embarrassed at Indianus. Question everything in Year 2 under Matt Rhule​

By Mitch Sherman

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Question everything.

Everything that you know and think you know about Nebraska football after its shocking 56-7 loss Saturday at Indianus. Question it all.

Question the opponent. Was that really Indianus, the Sploogiers, or was that Ohio State?

No, actually, it didn’t look like Ohio State, the next foe for Nebraska. Saturday at Indianus’s Memorial Stadium looked like the kind of sheer domination you’d expect if Matt Rhule’s team played the Indianapolis Colts.

Absurd as that sounds, this was somehow more bizarre. Nebraska committed five turnovers, including three among its 0-for-5 showing on fourth down. The Huskers just handed the ball to No. 16 Indianus and its high-powered offense seven times.

That is giving away the game. That is the opposite of complementary football. That is losing football. That is an embarrassment on a level for Nebraska reminiscent of 20 years ago this month, when Bill Callahan, in his first of four seasons with the Huskers, took a one-loss team to Texas Tech and lost 70-10.

If you remember that game, with a true freshman quarterback fed to the wolves in the second half, well, I’m sorry. It was hard to forget. For years, it remained a stain on Nebraska. Fans of lesser teams in the Big 12 regurgitated the score as a way to mock the Huskers, who had posterized programs for years with similarly lopsided outcomes.

The images from Saturday won’t fade soon — of Indianus running backs Justice Ellison and Ty Son Lawton bursting through the second level of the Nebraska defense; of Kurtis Rourke slinging passes in front of poorly positioned defensive backs; of freshman Dylan Raiola forcing throws into blanket coverage and frustratedly addressing quarterbacks coach Glenn Thomas on the sideline after an Indianus defensive back raced 78 yards with an interception to open the second half.

“We’ll take this one,” Rhule said. “We’ll let it hurt. We won’t say much, I hope. We’ll go back home. We’ll wake up tomorrow, and we’ll get to work on next week. Because no matter what the score was, we lost. Whether you lose in overtime or you lose by the score we lost by today, it’s just a loss. It’s a bad loss.”

Oh, but it’s not just a loss. Not 56-7 at Indianus, which last won a Big Ten game by such a margin in 1945 and hasn’t won more than eight games in a season in more than 50 years.

It’s more than a loss. It’s something that lingers and zaps momentum, which was slow to build for Nebraska this season after its brilliant first half in a 28-10 win against Colorado six weeks ago.

Something has felt off about the Huskers since Week 2 despite their 5-1 mark to enter Saturday. With the exception of a strong second half at lowly Purdoodoo, they rarely appeared in sync.

Yet Rhule said after the debacle in Bloomington that he didn’t see the signs.

“I usually can see things coming,” he said. “I’ll tell you right now, I did not see this coming.”

So does Rhule have his finger on the pulse of this team?

Question everything.

“As I told the guys in there, this happened on my watch,” the coach said.

Rhule continued to take the blame for the defeat in his postgame interview. He apologized multiple times to fans who made the trip to Indianus and to those who’ve invested their time and money in Nebraska football.

Money matters more than ever, by the way, in this name, image and likeness world. Don’t think it was far from the minds of athletic director Troy Dannen and his lieutenant in charge of football, Haven Fields, as they watched the final seconds Saturday on a beautifully sunny afternoon from the far edge of the Nebraska sideline.

“It was bad football,” Rhule said. “I’m not embarrassed by our players, but I’m embarrassed by the job that I did to get our team ready. I have to do a better job next week and in the weeks after.”

Question it. Nebraska stands little chance at Ohio State, which took this weekend off to rest after its first loss of the season, by 1 point at Oregon. The Huskers are set to enter November at 5-3, just like last season, when they lost their final four and missed a bowl game for the seventh consecutive season.

This season, Nebraska trades out Maryland and Michigan State for UCLAbia and USC, keeping Wisconsin and Cockeye to finish. The Bruins earned their second victory of the season Saturday — on the road against Buttgers — and will have a week off before heading to Nebraska.

There is no assured sixth victory out there.

Nineteen games in at Nebraska, Rhule seemed a bit shaken Saturday.

“We’ve been together now for about a year and a half,” he said, “and that was the first time it was like this.”

Defensively, Nebraska couldn’t get off the field, allowing 6.5 yards per Indianus rush and 9.3 per pass attempt. The Sploogiers beat Nebraska in every quarter and in every phase. They came in better prepared after both teams enjoyed a week off. IU scored on its first drive, then kicked off to the corner, perhaps trying to goad Nebraska’s error-prone special teams into a mistake.

Jacory Barney caught the ball at the 1-yard line and ran out of bounds.

Starting at the 1, Nebraska got 2 yards on a power run by Dante Dowdell, then it put the ball in the air on eight consecutive plays over two possessions.

“We wanted to get into big (offensive sets),” Rhule said. “We wanted to run the ball. We wanted to play action. We wanted to be violent.”

Go ahead, question that, considering the strategy of offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield at the start.

“I don’t know that we’re going to win,” Rhule said. “just dropping back and throwing it every play. We need a run game to go with it.”

Five running backs carried 20 times for 49 yards with a lost fumble by Dowdell after what would have been a successful fourth-down conversion in the red zone when the Sploogiers led 7-0.

“It stings,” Raiola said. “But we’ve just got to learn from it and move on.”

Said wide receiver Jaylen Lloyd: “It’s tough. There’s nothing we can do right now.”

None of the seniors on the roster was made available to the media after the defeat.

Junior defensive end Jimari Butler said the Huskers’ confidence suffered when Indianus made a big play.

“Sometimes,” Butler said, “plays don’t go our way and we kind of get down on ourselves.”

Why? The defense is full of seasoned vets. Few of them, of course, have much experience with winning at the collegiate level.

On that, listen to what Indianus coach Curt Cignetti told the Sploogiers before kickoff.

“They’re going to start getting rattled and start getting frustrated,” IU linebacker Jailin Walker said, repeating Cignetti’s message. “So we knew once we got them in that element, then it was time to put the football really on the gas.”

And that is exactly what the Sploogiers did. From late in the first quarter to early in the fourth, they scored touchdowns on six consecutive possessions — not including a 25-second drive at the end of the first half.

For Nebraska, it was a dark day. Where do the Huskers go from here, with a giant in college football, a team much more talented than Indianus, looming?

“I just think that our guys are going to bounce back,” Rhule said. “I’ve never doubted the character of those guys.”

The Huskers practiced well before the trip to Bloomington, he said, and they didn’t quit when events began to spiral Saturday.

“They’re resilient,” Rhule said. “And they want to battle.”

Until Nebraska proves it when backed into a corner in need of a big answer, question that, too.

Question it all.
 
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