Matt Rhule breaks down how he’ll assess first season at Nebraska

Nebraska Cornhuskers’ first season under head coach Matt Rhule has come to an end as they finished the 2023 season 5-7. It is not the ending to the year that many would have liked, but it is a step in the right direction after the Cornhuskers finished 2022 4-8 and struggled to be competitive on the field.

For many, on the outside, it would be difficult to assess the type of season Rhule and Nebraska just wrapped up. That is why, on Wednesday, the Cornhuskers headman broke down how he will assess the job he did in his first year running the program.

“I try to look at it in a bunch of different lights. I try to get feedback from the players is one,” said Rhule. “Feedback from the seniors. Like talking to Luke Reimer [asking], ‘Would you do it over again?’

“Getting feedback from the staff. Not just the coaches but everybody in terms of the process and the way that we do things. I think when you come to a new place, you have to figure out that place and the rhythm of everything from the schedule to meetings.”

Nebraska was not far off from becoming bowl-eligible in Rhule’s first year. The court Huskers appear to be in prime position to earn a bolt invitation midway through the season as they exited October with a 5-3 record. Unfortunately, Nebraska would go winless in all four games they played in November, with all four losses coming in one-score game.

The other part of Rhule’s assessment comes by way of analyzing how his team fared on the field. For him, it is going back and looking at what things the cornhuskers excelled at and which ones need a little bit more work.

“I try to go back and look at the season, obviously, the football. Right now, a lot of it is the roster. There’s not a ton of time, really; you don’t get too much time right now if you want to do a great job with the roster with the current players. But when the emotions are gone, and all that’s done, I try to make sure I go back and look at everything and just sort of say, ‘Hey, what did we do well? What did we not do well? But more importantly, why?

“Why did we do these things well? Why did we not do these things well? When you have an ending the way we had, you have a tendency to dwell on the negative things. Keith handed me a document of all the positive things that we had done… just to see all the growth. And then, you can then begin to attack the other areas we have to grow in to make the jump that we wanna make.”

Although the year did not end the way Rhule and Cornhusker fans would have liked, with no bowl game appearance, the Nebraska headman appears to have laid down a solid foundation to build the program back up to where it once was.