Why major improvement should be expected right away for Nebraska under Matt Rhule

Big things are expected for Matt Rhule at Nebraska. But when, exactly, the Cornhuskers might return to a prominent place in the sport isn’t clear.

On3’s J.D. PicKell thinks it should be sooner rather than later, as Rhule is already turning the screws on navigating Nebraska into a new era. And even if national contention might be a few seasons away, PicKell thinks the immediate returns will be good, too.

“I think they’ve upgraded personnel through the transfer portal. I like what I’ve seen so far and heard so far about Jeff Sims playing quarterback for them now. They’re going to be better, marginally. And so that’s encouraging for Nebraska fans,” PicKell said. “Like you have been eagerly waiting to get back to a bowl game and I think Matt Rhule is the guy to do it for you and I think the rebuild is a much different jumping off point than he had a Temple and Baylor at Nebraska. The roster is in a much better spot than where those spots were at.”

The real benefit, though, comes in a matter of years.

Nebraska has the institutional investment and local interest to propel the program to great heights, like winning a trio of national titles in the 1990s.

But in the last two decades and especially since joining the Big Ten, Nebraska has slipped from those heights. It’s been more than half a decade since the Cornhuskers played in a bowl game after a decades-long streak of playing a postseason game.

PicKell sees Rhule getting Nebraska back to a point where the Cornhuskers are a legit national player, contending for Big Ten titles and College Football Playoff berths.

It might not be in his first few seasons, but the pieces are there for Nebraska to be a force in college football once again.

“And it’s kind of boring to say, because again you’re not going to see the total return on investment just yet, at Nebraska. But it’s kind of like when you decide to start eating healthy and exercising. That change that actually happened, you start to really see that change in your body after maybe a few months or after maybe a year. But the change happened when you made the decision to start eating healthy and exercising. That change happened internally. That was the first change. That was the real change. And then everything else that came from it, with what you did exercising, with what you did eating healthy, that was just a byproduct,” PicKell said.

He continued: “So for Nebraska, the change that’s really happening is in that building. The change that’s really happening is how they did winter conditioning. How they did spring ball. The way they’re paying more attention to detail. That’s the real change happening internally at Nebraska.”