Greg McElroy hates seeing Nebraska start 0-2 under Matt Rhule

Two games into the Matt Rhule era and Nebraska finds themselves in a similar and frustrating spot at 0-2.

Of course, there’s more promise this time around, since Rhule is in his very first year after coming over from the NFL and has proven at two other stops that he’s capable of turning around a program. At those other collegiate stops, Temple and Baylor, he needed time.

So, ESPN’s Greg McElroy is calling for Nebraska fans to be patient. That’s a tough ask considering the Huskers have the longest bowl drought in the country among power conference programs, not having won the required six regular season games to make a bowl since 2016. Even in 2020, when many schools were let into bowl games with sub-.500 records, the Huskers did not participate in one.

Nebraska just has to keep waiting until Rhule can turn the program around, which McElroy hates, because the fans are such a passionate group.

“I hate the Nebraska zone too, and I look at the fan base — they had wanted things to be different with Matt Rhule,” McElroy explained on his YouTube show this week, noting that the expectation was that Rhule’s rebuild would take a little time.

“We said it’s going to take some time, potentially. Just be patient. Hopefully, they’ll get things going,” he continued, referencing Rhule’s jobs at those other colleges. “Remember, too, Matt Rhule at both Baylor and at Temple, the first year was not great.”

Even if Nebraska has to go through another tough year to turn things around, McElroy again says he feels bad for the fans having to go through another multi-year rebuild.

“But either way, I hate this program continues to be in a position where they just can’t quite get over the hump. You all deserve better. They deserve better and I hate it for them.”

As for the immediate future, Greg McElroy, a former quarterback himself, notes that the Cornhuskers simply have to stop shooting themselves in the foot thanks to their QB.

“Now, they also have been a walking turnover at the quarterback spot. They got to figure that out.”

It’s especially tough to swallow another rebuilding year when Nebraska just lost to Colorado and Deion Sanders, who turned a one-win program into a top-20-ranked team in one offseason, where he also flipped the roster like a pancake. But Sanders is certainly an exception, not the standard.

For Nebraska to be successful under Rhule, they may just have to grind out an up-and-down first season.