Matt Rhule describes how preparation changes for a Friday game

Nebraska struggled last weekend in a 45-7 loss to Michigan and now has a short week this week as the Cornhuskers will play Friday night at Illinois.

The good news for Nebraska is that it doesn’t have to wait as long as normal to get back on the field and put last week’s loss behind it. However, with a short week also comes challenges.

Cornhuskers head coach Matt Rhule spoke about some of those earlier this week and detailed how preparation changes for a Friday game.

“Yea, I think you have to condense what you’re doing, you know what I mean? In the NFL when you’re going Sunday to Thursday, that’s really hard,” said Rhule, who is a former NFL coach. “I remember when I was with coach [Tom] Coughlin, we just walked through that whole week. We went out and we played somebody and we just ran kind of like our training camp offense. And we had more success, because the guys were really familiar with it. So I learned something there.”

Rhule added that Illinois is a tough team to prepare for on a short week because the Illini are so multiple. It’s hard to be ready for everything they might throw at you when you have one less day of preparation.

“I think on a week like this, now you’re playing a different defense. You’re playing kind of a bear defense that plays some man, plays some zone. You’re facing an offense that can be big, can spread it out. They can get big on you. They can be little on you,” Rhule said. “So you have to face so many different things with Illinois. They’re so well coached that you do have to prepare a lot. So we try to do a good job with walk throughs.”

Nebraska coach Matt Rhule addresses how he handles criticism

Nebraska coach Matt Rhule received some criticism following Saturday’s blowout loss to Michigan, and he is sure to receive even more if the Cornhuskers lose to Illinois on Friday.

Rhule spoke earlier this week about how he deals with outside noise and criticism during difficult times. He also shared what advice he gives to Nebraska players.

“I don’t tell them what to think, because they’re not going to listen to me anyway, right? I mean I try to tell my son, ‘Hey, don’t look at Twitter.’ And he’s like, ‘Okay’ as he’s looking at Twitter. So I think this is the modern world. You have to decide where you put your attention to,” Rhule said.

“I’ll just say this – if being 2-3 is the end of the world for us… I mean there’s a lot of 2-3 teams in the Big Ten right now. I think Nebraska has been 2-3, or some version thereof, the last couple years. When you look back at last year, when they got to this point last year, I thought that they accelerated. The team got better and they had some chances to win games down the stretch. Why don’t we just do that? That was the message last night – do that.”