Matt Rhule shares cause of Nebraska's explosive plays

Nebraska hosted a spring scrimmage last week, allowing first-year coach Matt Rhule to get a better handle on where his team’s at currently. One thing he came away thinking: Nebraska’s explosive plays aren’t all the way there yet.

Though the Cornhuskers had a few in the scrimmage, there still aren’t enough explosive plays regularly.

“Today they came out of the wideout position,” Rhule said. “Quarterbacks had some nice runs again, Jeff Sims had a really long zone read type play. Marcus Washington hit a big touchdown catch. So we had some plays like that. We had some explosive plays, not enough.”

Rhule regularly had some of the most explosive teams in the country at previous stops.

After building up the Temple program, Rhule had the Owls ranked 26th nationally in plays of 10 or more yards in his final season there in 2016. His success carried directly over to Baylor, where he finished in the top 25 in that category in both 2018 and 2019.

And though the team’s recent scrimmage failed to produce enough explosive plays for Rhule’s liking, he did not they’d been better at other points in the spring.

“Our running backs had previously been having a lot (of success); we’re really doing a much better job tackling and vicing the ball and keeping the ball in,” Rhule said. “So the defense you can really see them taking a step in terms of how fast they’re playing.”

In terms of explosive plays, Nebraska certainly has a lot of work to do still.

The offense finished ranked 103rd nationally in plays of 10 or more yards a year ago, and the last time the Cornhuskers ranked above 70th nationally was all the way back in 2018.

That’s simply not going to cut it in today’s modern-era football, where explosive offense is a virtual requirement to sniff the College Football Playoff.

Of course, Nebraska’s rebuild likely has several steps up first before the playoff really becomes a discussion.

For now, Rhule is pleased that players seem to be buying in and focusing on making the kind of improvements he’s been seeking, particularly when it comes to explosive plays at Nebraska.

“I thought they had great energy. There was a lot of people there today,” Rhule said after the scrimmage. “The governor walked out and talked to the team before practice. You don’t get that many places, but you get that at Nebraska. I think they had good energy today, I think they were excited to go, I think they were excited for the scrimmage. I was pleased.”