Nebraska coach Matt Rhule was peppered with questions about coach Curt Cignetti and IU football at his regular Monday media availability.
Here’s what Rhule had to say about the Hoosiers.
No. 5/7 Indiana (5-0) and Nebraska (5-0) kick at Noon ET in Lincoln.
Opening Statement
“And now we turn our attention to Indiana, a great football team. Coach Cignetti and his staff do a great job. Coach Shanahan and Bryant Haines, the defensive coordinator, have been together a long time and have a great system, scheme, and process. They have a great defense, a fantastic defensive line and pass rush, great linebackers, and they are excellent on the back end. Offensively, I think they are the most efficient offense in the country right now. Becker and Marsh continue to make plays at an unbelievably high level, and the run game is excellent. Hoover is an excellent quarterback; (Offensive coordinator) Dana (Hologorsen) was at TCU before he got here helping out, so he obviously knows the quarterback well. This is an excellent football team, a great opportunity for us to play, and we are very excited for it.”
On IU’s Staff Continuity
“They have a system and they have great players. I got to know Bryant Haines a little bit a couple of years ago when I spoke at the high school award event. They had several Broyles Award finalists there, and Al Golden was one of them. I worked for Al; I think he won it that year when he was the defensive coordinator at Notre Dame. I got there the day I was speaking at Oaklawn, which was a really cool event where you could watch the horse races.
“The guys who were finalists were there the night before. Bryant was still there when they went to speak that night. There were about 40 or 50 high school coaches being honored, including coaches from Nebraska. Bryant stayed, and I remember texting him and Coach Cignetti at some point saying, ‘Those are guys who do it right.’ Coach Haines was still there, while most of the other guys had left, with no discredit to them. They came up a certain way. My family on my mom’s side is from about 30 to 45 minutes from where Indiana, Pennsylvania is. I have great reverence for the coach’s father. His brother Frank and I go back to when I was an assistant at Temple and he was at Pitt. They are just a great family.
“They have a system, and they can tweak it every year to their players. They have made a real commitment to football at Indiana. They have the resources to have great players and keep great players. You have a Charlie Becker, and then they go out and get a Turbo Richard, a Nick Marsh, and a Josh Hoover. I don’t know if people talk enough about the job that the Indiana athletic director, Scott Dolson, and those guys have done to really commit and double down on what they’re doing. Because of that, they’ve been able to keep those coaches. I love Coach Haines, and I keep hoping he gets a head coaching job. Someone should hire him because he does a great job defensively.”
On the Model of Hiring a Coach and Bringing His Players With Him
“Yeah, I think you could throw Bob Chesney in that mix too. I think the new world of college sports is coaches, when they look for a job, are going to ask, ‘What’s the roster number?’ officially and unofficially, however that works in the new world. They are talking about all these different things, but if things don’t change, everyone’s going to ask about that number. It used to be, ‘What’s the salary pool? What’s this or what’s that?’ Now it’s going to be, ‘What’s the number?’ Just so everybody knows, some of the numbers you read are not very accurate; they are a lot more.
“I think we saw that last year with some of the moves. Guys were leaving really good jobs for other jobs simply because of the number. Then on the flip side, when people want to hire somebody, they are going to look at who has good players that will come with them because people do that now. When coaches are leaving now, kids have more agents and there is more of a market out there. Not as many guys are necessarily going to that specific place, but you look at Oklahoma State. Coach Morris did a great job, and he brought Mestemaker and those guys with him to Oklahoma State, and all of a sudden you can flip a roster overnight. It is just different.
“I remember when I went from Temple to Baylor. Not only was I not allowed to take a player, I wasn’t even allowed to talk to a kid if we were recruiting him. I had it in my contract that I couldn’t even talk to him. Luckily it was in Texas, so there wasn’t a lot of crossover, but I couldn’t even talk to a kid that we were recruiting at Temple. That was kind of the old way, and the new way is very different.”
Indiana’s Effectiveness With Back Shoulder Throws
“They’re just really good at it. They do a great job of holding space on the releases. Sometimes it’s a back-shoulder throw, but I would almost say sometimes it’s like a timed-out route. They’re going back and they do it legally. They’re not necessarily throwing you by. They’re just really, really good at it. It is just part of what they do, and they can run right by you too. Becker’s explosive rate is through the roof. They are just really talented players in a great system, and the quarterback is elite at throwing it. All three of them have been really good at that.
Defending Indiana Generally
“I think it’s a little bit of everything. I look at their offense like it’s a triple-option offense. They’re going to run certain runs versus certain looks. If you try to take it away in man and one-high coverage, they’re going to throw the ball. It’s like defending Navy and Army every year when I was at Temple; it’s very similar.
“It is a pro-style run game, though. They’re running one-back duo, inside zone, outside zone, and counter—very similar to some of the stuff Michigan State is doing right now. I really appreciate that question, to be quite honest with you. It’s just really well put together. They always have an answer.
“At the end of the day, you have to get off a block and tackle. The backs run through contact and they never run out of bounds. The receivers never run out of bounds either, and they block their tails off on the perimeter. Then they can win the 50-50 ball. They’re just really talented players in a really good system that play with great technique.
“I think Coach Bostad, the offensive line coach, has been around a long time and is one of the best of the best. He was retained there. They do a really good job of figuring out what coverage you’re in. If you’re in quarters, they’re going to give you these looks; if you’re in man, they’re going to give you those looks. It is just really well put together.”
On How Nebraska Has Grown Since the 2024 Loss at IU
“I hope it’s grown. I think we were ranked in one of the polls at that point, so maybe we haven’t grown that far in the rankings, but I think we’re just a better football team. I went back and watched it this week. I always look back because I like to feel and relive the pain myself.
“It was poorly done by us as coaches in terms of not giving our guys the best chance. We panicked a little bit when they went tempo and kept throwing fade routes versus man coverage. They were winning, and they’re going to catch some of those. Instead of sticking to what we do, we started running different pressures without really understanding exactly what they were doing. Obviously, we had five turnovers in that game.
‘Right now, offensively, we are number four in the nation in not turning the ball over. Since the start of last year, we’re fourth in the fewest turnovers with 13, but Indiana is first. They don’t turn the ball over; they are methodical.
“Once it was clear that it wasn’t our day, I could have just run the football. To be honest with you, that killed me a little bit in the NFL in a couple of games where I did that, too. It is kind of like Coach Locksley last game—he went for it on fourth down on the 38-yard line, and they went on to score again. I just think it sends a bad message to your players if you stop trying to win the game. We continued to throw it, and we threw a couple of picks that weren’t the quarterback’s fault.”
On How Cignetti was Able to Capitalize on the Changes in College Football
“He came in and brought a culture and a program that he established over time. He bet on himself. He took the IUP job, then the Elon job, then the James Madison job, developing his style and keeping his coaches with him. When a lot of guys take a Big Ten job, they go hire a bunch of household names who have been in the league. Instead, he retained one coach from Indiana and brought the players who knew his culture, process, and system. I think that probably eased the transition.
“Then they continued to go out and attack the portal to get really good players. They got the quarterback from Ohio, then got the quarterback from Cal, and now have the quarterback from TCU. They do a great job evaluating. One of the things I really respect about him is that there were some really good players in Indiana who, as I listened to it, hadn’t bought into that process, and he moved on. It was like, “Hey, you’re going to do it our way.”
“When you see Coach Cignetti, you see a lot of Nick Saban principles, Coach Cignetti Sr. principles, and old-school principles like toughness, all done in a new way.”
On Whether He Has Adopted Any Aspect of the Cignetti Model
“I think they’ve done a really good job of finding guys who produce and taking them in the portal. When I got here, it was still only one transfer, so we had a certain thought process that has since changed. Taking some of the things that they have done portal-wise, I think they’ve done really, really well.
“They took Nick Marsh last year, and we took Kwazi Gilmer last year, just trying to balance it. They have some really good high school players they’ve recruited, and I think we have some good high school players, but probably that as much as anything.”
Here’s Rhule’s full Monday press conference, via Hail Varsity:
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