Matt Rhule on what he's learned about Nebraska during winter strength and conditioning

The winter strength and conditioning period is well underway for most coaches and spring ball is not quite on the horizon just yet.

But college football coaches can still learn plenty about their teams through the grueling winter strength and conditioning period. Sometimes even more than spring ball itself. So what has new Nebraska coach Matt Rhule learned?

“That they like to work. They’ll do what you ask them to do,” Rhule said on The Hard Count with JD PicKell. “They’ve been great in terms of the weight-lifting, they’ve been great in terms of the workouts. They’re attacking our mat drill portion.”

The Cornhuskers are coming off a pretty dismal 4-8 campaign that saw coach Scott Frost fired, so there’s plenty of room for upward mobility at the moment.

A lot of that will likely come down to the buy-in that Rhule gets with his new players. It’s not always easy when a new coach takes over.

On top of the change to the normal routines and regimens, the winter strength and conditioning programs are often designed to push the limits to determine who really wants it.

So far so good for Rhule, he said.

There have been several new things put in, things as simple as team meals that the players are asked to share together to build more camaraderie and friendship.

“They’re at mandatory breakfast, they’re at dinner every night,” Rhule said. “They want to be good. They want to win. That’s all I care about.

“If someone really wants to do it and they’ll put the time and the effort in, then we have a real chance.”

Nebraska still has plenty of time to get ready this offseason, with six and a half months until the first tour of duty kicks off for Rhule with back-to-back road games to open the 2023 season.