Everything Matt Rhule said after Nebraska’s loss to No. 2 Michigan.
After his team fell 45-7 to No. 2 Michigan on Saturday, Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule said he wasn’t ready to just wash away the loss to the Wolverines.
With a Friday night game at Illinois looming for the Huskers, Rhule said there was plenty to take from Saturday’s loss to the Wolverines before turning the page and moving on to Illinois.
“I always just feel like you hate these moments, but you can’t waste these moments. You can’t sit there and feel sorry for yourself and I can’t say ‘hey, let’s just get ready for Illinois.’ You have to get ready for Illinois. But we have to identify what happened and why and fix it,” Rhule said. “I didn’t feel like our guys weren’t responding, I think they were a good team.
I think our guys – if the word is hesitant from the beginning – maybe a little hesitant to go out there. Some of the mistakes we made aren’t the typical mistakes we make and that part was disappointing to be out there, even that last drive. Those things are going to happen and you have to battle back. We’ll learn from it.”
Here’s everything Rhule said after the loss to Michigan that dropped the Huskers to 2-3 on the season and 0-2 in Big Ten play.
“Obviously a disappointing day. Lot of credit to Michigan; they’re a tremendous football team. Really couldn’t stop them today. Methodical converting third downs in the run game. Get some fourth downs early. Some big plays. The early turnovers didn’t help. Offensively, you know, we have the drive got down there, had the fourth and one early to make it 14-7 we thought. Didn’t have that work out for us. Went down in the first drive in the second half and did not get points there. If it wasn’t for the late touchdown. I thought they were an excellent football team that played really well. We obviously weren’t good enough today and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
“I hate to use the term pushed around. Just because that’s a big term for me as a coach to say. I have to see it. I will say I heard a lot of today. We haven’t had a lot of mistakes. We had a lot of like, ‘hey this guy is supposed to slant and spill and he runs and he’s up the field.’ So certainly they controlled the line of scrimmage. I wouldn’t want that in any way but I felt there were a lot plays that hit today that were guys supposed to spill the ball. He does, the ball rips inside for a six for eight. I did not see us not being able to control the line of scrimmage to that level. I thought it would be more of an even game in the run game.
I have to be careful about being emotional in this moment. I have to go back and watch the tape. My history with these games is you hate these kinds of losses. They all count the same, but they hurt when you have that type of loss to go back and watch the tape. Make sure I deal in truth and see what I see. I was disappointed. I thought their quarterback made some excellent throws. Man-coverage, we were all over the guys. They made plays, and we had enough pass rush at times.
There were a lot of things defensively that didn’t go our way, starting with DeShon (Singleton) injured on the first play and Tommi (Hill) going over having to play full-time. A lot of things happened that we have to get corrected. The good news is we got to see probably the best run game and what it looked like and people probably will copy that. (Coach) Tony (White) and his guys have a lot of work to do to correct those things.»