Matt Rhule shares key to Nebraska's defensive success under Tony White

When Matt Rhule took the Nebraska job, he quickly began filling out his defensive staff. His coordinator hire was actually one of the last hires, with Tony White jumping aboard after some other assistants had already been hired.

Rhule praised White for helping lead a remarkable turnaround on the Nebraska defense in Year 1 of his tenure.

“Well Tony’s dynamic. He’s really smart,” Rhule said on the College GameDay podcast. “He cares about the players, he gets the players to play for him. He’s not one of those guys who’s like, ‘Hey, here’s my system.'”

White is flexible when it comes to what’s being run. If he thinks it’ll work, he’ll use it. So Rhule has passed along things from a previous coaching relationship.

“We would draw up a defense, like, ‘Hey, here’s a blitz we put in we ran with coach Snow over the last 10 years.’ I was with Phil Snow for the last 10 years, Tony’s like, ‘Let’s look at that,'” Rhule said. “There’s no ego there. He’s on the headset. I’m nervous, I’m anxious, got that hot Italian temper. He’s like, ‘All right here we go, here we go, OK,’ coolest dude in the room. So I think he was a great fit for me, like my high running style and him just being (calm) till he gets set off.”

Rhule specifically pointed to the fact that he had already hired some other coaches before getting Tony White on board as evidence that White is simply built differently.

“Think about how confident he is,” Rhule said. “He came in to be the D-coordinator and all three position coaches were already hired, all three had previously coached for me, and all three have played for me. And he was like, ‘I’m good. I’m great.’ And that’s why he’s going to be an amazing head coach, because he can just kind of deal with anything that comes his way.”

Matt Rhule breaks down his practice philosophy

One thing that makes Nebraska a bit unique is its practice philosophy defensively. Rhule said that’s something he thinks has to be the way it is for Nebraska to be sound defensively.

“I think one of the things that I don’t hear said enough is if you want to be a good defense in college football, you have to practice defense,” Rhule said. “I watch these poor guys, they go play for a guy who throws the ball 50 times a game. You’re the D-coordinator and they’re like, ‘Why can’t you stop them?’ Because they don’t touch anybody at practice. They don’t hit anybody.

“And I’m not saying that’s wrong, like if I’m one of those offensive coaches great. But if you want to be great at defense you have to tackle in practice, you have to thud in practice, you have to go ones on ones all the time. You’ve got to train people to do unnatural acts and become great at them, and then you have to train the backups.”

Rhule likes to get the backups nearly as much work as the starters. It helps build a deep unit, one capable of replacing people in the event of injury.

The backups have to be ready to go, and Tony White has helped ensure that they are.

“You can’t be like where you don’t give them reps,” Rhule said. “So we get 50, 60, 70 reps for the ones and then the twos and the threes. It’s a culture of physicality here that might detract sometimes from our passing game. But we’re going to play great defense. We believe in it.

“Tony came in, he hadn’t really been around that. He adapted right to it and we have really good players on defense, a lot of older guys that have played a lot. We went from last in the Big Ten in total run defense to I think first, second or in the top three. So I’m really proud of the guys, really proud of Tony and his staff.”