Matt Rhule is tweaking Nebraska's tackling regimen with new drills and classic philosophy
LINCOLN — Matt Rhule called it a great question, in part because he didn’t have a complete answer yet.
How are Nebraska football players tackling so far in camp?
“We haven’t had a ton of live interactions,” Rhule said Tuesday. “I feel like it’s getting better. We didn’t tackle (Tuesday); it’s all thud. I think we’re thudding better.”
And thudding — the initial strike and stop created by the “thud” of the shoulder pads — is important on a Rhule team. He and new defensive coordinator Tony White teach defenders to strike higher than a rugby tackle, driving ballcarriers backward as they wrap and run through the ballcarrier. Rhule’s approach is closer to a classic football tackle than a sweeping-the-legs movement preferred under some previous Husker coaches.
“I was always taught to tackle with your chest and have your neck bowed,” Rhule said. As the NCAA has created rules to eliminate helmet-to-helmet contact, the head now moves a bit to the side and the shoulder pad is often used as the striking element.
Because shoulder pads have shrunk in size since Rhule played in the 1990s, the coach said more players sustain more shoulder injuries.
“Everyone has a Labia tear now,” Rhule said.
Nebraska will tackle to the ground in Saturday’s scrimmage, Rhule said. NU’s April 22 spring game should be live, too. For now, the Huskers use drills to build muscle memory.
In one practice drill, NU players work on both the initial strike and then, on the third part of the drill, wrapping up and driving back. White and linebackers coach Rob Dvoracek oversee many of the drills, which mix-and-match defenders at all three levels — linemen, linebackers and defensive backs.
In another, those same defenders work pursuit angles. Rhule wants and plans to recruit faster defenders than he may currently have, so he likes aggressive pursuit angles tied to reaching a ballcarrier’s nearest hip and pushing him laterally, toward a sideline.
“We’re always tracking their hip — we don’t have guys running over the top,” Rhule said. “That’s a departure from the way they’ve played. We still somewhat struggle with our angles. I think we’re very willing to tackle. We’re not a soft team.”
Tackling has been an ongoing subject of discussion — and debate — within Nebraska football for years, from the Huskers’ slip-and-slide Rose Bowl evening against UCLA in 2012 to last season, when then-interim head coach Mickey Joseph told reporters the Huskers hadn’t really tackled much in practice before he took over.
The midpoint of the hullabaloo came in 2016, when Nebraska paid $100,000 for the equipment and instruction modules to the Atavus “Hawk” system of tackling, and 2017, when NU ditched the program, with then-defensive coordinator Bob Diaco suggesting his players didn’t know how to tackle.
“I’m not sure what it even was supposed to look like,” Diaco said, suggesting former athletic director Shawn Eichorst had mandated use of Atavus in 2016. “I’m not sure they were pulling off what they were — I just don’t know. I just know when I went to that drill — to say ‘alarming’ would be an understatement.”
That started a war of words with Diaco’s predecessor, Mark Banker, who called Diaco “full of it.”
“The general consensus of this thing is all the players liked it, all the coaches who are still there on his staff — Trent Bray and John Parrella — liked it, and a lot of players felt more comfortable because the whole genesis of the thing is you take the head out of tackling,” Banker said. “The only person who doesn’t believe in it — and thinks it’s a mess — is the new guy.”
Nebraska’s defense didn’t do anything well after Diaco’s comments, allowing 54, 56 and 56 points in its last three games.
When Scott Frost took over in 2018, he and then-defensive coordinator Erik Chinander championed a tackling method promoted by the Steelers’ Mike Tomlin.
'Long stride, short stride, shuffle and shoot,’” Chinander and Frost would say. The goal, they said at the time, was to get defenders moving “100 miles an hour” through tackles and living with mistakes as they happened. That first year under their leadership, according to Pro Football Focus, NU missed 9.75 tackles per game. By 2022, the figure was 11.7.
Rhule said he’s incorporated some of the Atavus philosophies into his teachings while steering away from a full, lower-leg, “Hawk” approach. NU’s strike zone will be higher.
“Any outside tool we use, it’s always a piece,” Rhule said. “We have our own philosophy of what we do. I think guys are buying into it. We try to be very consistent.”
