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If we can give Hoiberg time why not Rhule?

Toss out at least 2 of Fred's first years for COVID then try again
Not to mention Matt Abdelmassih was fucking up the culture with constant overpromising and underdelivering on NIL for three years. (you can imagine what he was doing before NIL was allowed).

If you're wondering what this human parasite is up today, he's getting fired from st Johns for skimming off the top of NIL funds.


So yes Fred had a rocky start but Matt on the other hand has had 3 full years of unrestricted access to any resource he needs. Despite this, we're rebuilding the trenches from scratch going into year 4........ and by rebuilding i mean we rebuilt the O line and did jack shit on the D line lol.
 
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Its really a big apples vs oranges conversation, but overall I agree with the premise.

I should lead with I have never agreed with just cycling through a new coach every 3 years like some seem to want. Eventually you may hit, but there is something to continuity and expecting teams to completely turn over every few years and just churn out results like fans want is completely unreasonable.

I've seen a few people point to Fred needing to adjust the roster when he got here as if Rhule didn't have to as well after the Frost debacle. Fred did have to deal with Covid, I agree, however I'd argue it's quite a bit easier to flip a roster in basketball than football.

Now, as for Rhule himself. I'm willing to be patient with him as he has shown the ability to do this at two other places before. Its not like he has forgotten how to do that. Hell, he may have been the hottest coach candidate in the country after his last year at Temple and Baylor, respectively. However, he's made some decisions that have definitely been questionable. His handling of the DL coach the past two offseasons has been piss poor. Not adding more OL last year was a killer and I think the same can be said about not adding enough DL this year.

Overall, I think he for sure gets one more after this year unless he completely bombs and just gets 2 or 3 wins. But I think if he doesn't show serious promise, such as improving on back to back 7 win seasons, 2027 will be it for him.
 
I still think Rhule can do this, but he’s not making it easy on himself or the fanbase.

I’m encouraged he has the stones to admit he’s made a mistake with a coaching hire, but I’m equally disturbed by the fact that he keeps making them. I like Aurich, but he’s working with a limited group on the DL. How does that play out? We struggle in year one (as most of Aurich’s first year teams have) and he gets canned? I can defend Rhule's slow walking the hiring of a DL coach, but then we hire a guy we likely could have hired the day after the season ended or the DC is hired. It doesn’t make any sense.

On offense, let Holgorsen be Holgorsen or get someone else. If you want to run the football and your OC isn’t great at running the football, what the hell are you doing? Wade is a big upgrade as OL coach, so let’s do something with the talent at hand. I like what we’ve done in the QB room, like the WR room, think I’ll grow to like the RB room if they progress like I think they will, but I’m looking at the ’26 schedule and trying to figure out how the roster gets to a third year at 7-5. I honestly don’t see it.

I have no choice but to ride it out for 2026 and barring a 4 wins or less record, we’ll at least start 2027 with Rhule in the Head Coaches office. ’26 doesn’t set up well for a big leap, but at minimum NU needs to try to hold serve. Can we do that? Man. I honestly haven’t seen anything that makes me think we’re ready to take that step.

Are we a better football program than when Frost was wandering through the building? Yes. Problem is I don’t know how close to our ‘Rhule Ceiling’ we are.
I'm going to just add my name to this and turn it in as if it were my homework.

The biggest argument against Matt though is that Fred gets crumbs for resources when Matt is eating prime rib most nights.
 
Not to mention Matt Abdelmassih was fucking up the culture with constant overpromising and underdelivering on NIL for three years. (you can imagine what he was doing before NIL was allowed).

If you're wondering what this human parasite is up today, he's getting fired from st Johns for skimming off the top of NIL funds.


So yes Fred had a rocky start but Matt on the other hand has had 3 full years of unrestricted access to any resource he needs. Despite this, we're rebuilding the trenches from scratch going into year 4........ and by rebuilding i mean we rebuilt the O line and did jack shit on the D line lol.
Does Fred not deserve the blame for letting Matt A in the door though? Fred made a mistake there and then made a reset. I don’t think many are willing to give Rhule that same type of grace.
 
Does Fred not deserve the blame for letting Matt A in the door though? Fred made a mistake there and then made a reset. I don’t think many are willing to give Rhule that same type of grace.
Huh? Rhule has needed to reset his staff numerous times for making awful hires and fans have been more than graceful each time. This is the first offseason I would say impatience is setting in going on a combined 5 coordinators into year 4.

The other difference is for however bad Matt A. was here he was quite the get at the time and was considered one of the top transfer recruiters in the game. It would be the equivalent of Rhule landing a Coach O or E Rob as an assistant and them flaking out. Rhule on the other hand brought Satterfield, who was failing at South Carolina and was provided a lifeline by his buddy as one of the top paid coordinators in college football.
 
Hire a coach, let them know they are expected to make the best possible staff hires at all times, give them money to make those hires, let them know they are expected to make the best possible portal moves at all times, give them money for that. ignore them for months on end. Fire them only if they don't listen to said rules, get too angry, get too drunk, or get too horny. It's really pretty simple.
But writing angry, drunken rants on message boards is far more entertaining
 
I think it’s likely Rhule has reached his ceiling here, but I don’t feel the need to broadcast that in every thread where it comes up. He’s here through 2026, so I’ll support him.

That said, I remember how loud the calls were for Hoiberg’s job. It was about as intense as it gets for basketball. If I recall correctly, part of the reason he wasn’t fired was the Frost buyout, which forced everyone to be more patient (and to be fair, we are more patient with basketball).

Now when we compare the two, which I agree is apples to oranges, excuses will be made for Fred but not for Rhule.
 
It wasn’t easy for me to just give in and let it play out but here we are…2 days ago my mindset was Rhule is a bum and doesn’t deserve the Nebraska job….after last night I gave up and just letting it ride
For 40 years I have been all in on Nebraska Football and everything else has been ancillary to that - Nebrasketball and baseball. I just wanted to be good at football and if we happen to find something in hoops and baseball, that's just gravy.

Fast forward to 2025-26 and that has flipped; All in on Fred and Nebrasketball and if we happen to find something in Football, that's gravy.

I don't expect (or maybe rely on) us to be competent in football. Maybe we'll put one season in ten together and go 10-2 or something, but I've made my peace with that not being the norm. The norm will be closer to between 5-7 to 7-5. Wish I would've gotten to this point years ago. Would've saved a lot of angst and strife.
 
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Even when we sucked under Hoiberg you could tell we were a well coached team.
This is patently false. NU wasn't doing anything like they are now in terms of sets, continuous offense and defensive strategy. When Fred initially got here it was an NBA type of system of 5-out (which is what nearly everyone runs a variation of) with high pick-and-roll and let your best offensive player make a play. We're having a lot of revisionist history with rose-colored glasses on Fred's first 4 years at Nebraska.

Once Fred got the RIGHT ASSISTANT COACHES in the results changed. It also took 2.5 years to establish a standard of play in a much easier sport to turn around.

I see many parallels between Coach Rhule and Coach Hoiberg in how they have approached taking control of their programs. I think Rhule has made the right moves and will be successful, but it won't be overnight.
 
People forget he left that Big Ten tournament game against IU in his first year and people thought he had covid/might be dying. Guy couldn’t go on the road to recruit for basically 2 years to a place that at the time was borderline impossible to recruit to with our history and inability to travel.

By the end of the 2021 season you could see it. People may have gotten a bit impatient towards the middle part of 2021-22 season but the end to the year I think showed that Fred was figuring it out. Combine that with the jump the next two years and things were off to the races.
Tim Miles left him absolutely nothing, Frost believe it or not left Rhule some sunday guys
 
Hoiberg has shown through the years he is serious about winning. The fact we didn’t bring in a RB this portal cycle shows me how serious rhule is about winning, or just fucking retarded. I’ll hold out hope for Marty Brown, but fuck
 
Hoiberg has shown through the years he is serious about winning. The fact we didn’t bring in a RB this portal cycle shows me how serious rhule is about winning, or just fucking retarded. I’ll hold out hope for Marty Brown, but fuck

And more DL
 
Rhule seems like he's similarly situated to Fred going into year 4 with probably needing to show some substantial improvement to give people the warm fuzzies so I'm not sure how he isn't getting time. He's not remotely on the hot seat with his boss.

The vibes are bad right now in part due to the Ekeler business because we all lived through "Foley will get special teams figured out", the three pink sock-ings they took to close the season, and the underwhelming portal cycle at the teams weakest positions (EDGE, DL, and RB).

But I largely agree with @wildcat_husker, I think Rhule is probably at his ceiling here. For me personally, I don't think making a change is sensible after your first back to back bowl games and winning seasons in a decade, but he clearly has enough rope with the higher ups that he has been afforded the "time" to take this program in whatever direction he's going to take it.
 
This is patently false. NU wasn't doing anything like they are now in terms of sets, continuous offense and defensive strategy. When Fred initially got here it was an NBA type of system of 5-out (which is what nearly everyone runs a variation of) with high pick-and-roll and let your best offensive player make a play. We're having a lot of revisionist history with rose-colored glasses on Fred's first 4 years at Nebraska.

Once Fred got the RIGHT ASSISTANT COACHES in the results changed. It also took 2.5 years to establish a standard of play in a much easier sport to turn around.

I see many parallels between Coach Rhule and Coach Hoiberg in how they have approached taking control of their programs. I think Rhule has made the right moves and will be successful, but it won't be overnight.
I partially agree. I think he's always has good basketball shit. I think he was asking dudes who weren't very good to execute that good basketball shit the first few seasons.
 
It doesn't matter what Rhule does a reasonable amount of you will argue that whatever he does is the wrong move.

TW leaves. He hires from within to maintain continuity of staff and scheme, something I heard on the radio last night was an issue with Rhule. It was stated that Rhule never has the same staff year over year. What college program does?

So Rhule hires Butler for the reasons mentioned above. Some on this board, including me, didn't like the hire, but I understood the basis for the decision. The reasoning made sense. Halfway through the year, Rhule realizes the defense can't stop the run. My opinion is that we were poorly coached in run fits from the second and third levels. More on that in a second...

Rhule 86s Butler and hires a DC that has a track record of very good defenses. This DC hires the guys he wants to implement said defense. I've heard on this board plenty of times that Rhule should let the coordinators have a say in their staff. Holgo got Shorts last season and Wade this season to better implement what he wants to run. So Aurich gets his DL coach, did the optics of this look questionable? Absolutely, but he has experience in the scheme and is someone Aurich wanted. Aurich got a safeties coach and and edge coach.

So from a coaching hire standpoint, I don't see the issues everyone else does. Did you want Rhule to stick with Butler or make the change? Did you want Rhule to ride with Donnie or make the change? You can't have it both ways and you can't always get exactly what you want both from a coach and player perspective.

We all wanted an established guy on the interior DL, but I'm not in the building. I don't get to see what they see everyday from the guys who didn't play this season. I'm also not going to put the regression of DL play entirely on the players. I don't know what they were being coached with regrad to technique or scheme. DL looked bad, Rhule fired the coach.

He's willing to make the decisions we have wanted previous HCs to make, then we crucify him for HAVING to make those decisions like we're all prophets and can predict the previous hire wouldn't work out.

That's what good leaders do. They make changes to course correct to stay on the right path. I've hired people that were fantastic in interviews and had remarkable resumes only to see that they weren't going to be a good fit a couple of months in. Not every decision is a homerun or even a hit. Sometimes you're going to strike out.

I see a prominsing path and still think Rhule is the guy for the job. I do not want to be a program with a revolving door at HC. We're FL, FSU, Auburn, PSU, etc. right now. Once great programs that are getting in their own way because they aren't willing to see it through.
 
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