Matt Rhule shares impressions of Illinois' Johnny Newton

One of the best players in the Big Ten plays along the interior of the Illinois defensive line and Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule won’t be overlooking Jer’Zhan “Johnny” Newton come Friday evening. Rhule said Newton is the type of player that can destroy an opposing game plan.

As such, Rhule said Nebraska is planning to neutralize Newton. But the Illinois defensive scheme makes that easier said than done.

“He’s an excellent, excellent, excellent football player. High draft pick. Powerful, two gap. Makes plays down the line. Can torque you in the pass rush game. Their scheme, because they play with five down lineman basically 90% of the time, creates five one-on-ones. So you have to win five blocks and they have to just win one pass rush or one run block to have a successful play,” Rhule said.

As an interior lineman, Newton doesn’t have quite the counting stats of an edge rusher, but he’s still gotten after opposing quarterbacks and ball carriers plenty.

He’s got a pair of sacks and three tackles for loss in five games. His pace is slightly down from years prior as offenses devote more resources to slowing him. Even still, he’s a thorn in the side of even the best offenses with sound plans to slow him down.

And Newton isn’t the only good player on the Illinois defense. Too much attention devoted to him can leave an offense vulnerable elsewhere, Rhule said.

“So, it’s a real challenge but he’s an excellent football player and so he’s one of those guys you have to game plan around. You have to do things to account for him,” Rhule said. “At the same time, understanding that they have other guys who can hurt you. So, it’ll be a real challenge.”

Rhule also discussed the challenges of a road environment

Rhule stressed the importance of his program being able to generate their own energy away from home. 

“Yeah, you know coach Andy Reid, when I was at Temple, he was at Philadelphia; Coach Reid would always say to his team that all great teams do three things: eliminate distractions, create their own energy, (and) fear nothing and attack everything,” Rhule said. “And so creating our own energy is something we try to do in practice. We simulate that. Even going out to LA Tech in the rain delay, try to create your own energy. When you’re having a tough ball game like last week, you have to try to create your own energy. Some guys did, some guys didn’t. We created a lot of energy on Sunday night. No one was watching, and we created a lot of energy yesterday morning. We’ll have to do that Friday night.”