When you give guys a tug-of-war challenge to test their muscles or a Madden Tournament to showcase their stick skills, everyone will naturally jump around in excitement.
But as Matt Rhule chuckled this week, “Not everybody in life likes to compete at things we hate.” “We try to avoid the things we hate.”
Pre-spring exercises, such as the mat drills we all know about but aren’t actually familiar with, are designed to present Huskers with situations they find uncomfortable.
According to Rhule, some of those mat drill tasks have been altered to make them significantly different from what they were previously. Who would prove to be the strongest candidate?
As it happened, others who turned up and persuaded others to follow along included Abraham Gifford, Marcus Buford, Malcolm Hartzog, Reinrich Haarberg, Ru’Quan Buckley, and Chief Borders, to mention a few.
“These guys started to really I think get the guys to understand that, ‘Hey, let’s enjoy this and let’s attack this,'” Rhule said. “And if you can enjoy doing the things you don’t like doing, or make yourselves enjoy it, as the SEALs say, ‘Embrace the suck,’ you have a chance. I saw a lot of that. The next thing you know you saw the Jacory Barneys, and the freshmen, the Keelan Smiths, and all them really starting to attack.”
Rhule stated multiple times how pleased he was with the leadership, which obviously the Huskers will want to transfer into their first spring practice. That begins Monday, with workouts scheduled for Monday, Tuesday and Thursday in this first week.
Let’s stop on the leadership component for a moment, and detail what Rhule in particular is speaking about.
Sometimes when you have a bunch of young guys come in as early enrollees, which Nebraska certainly did, you have seniors focused on getting all those young guys right. Rhule put the challenge to his veterans in a different way.
“We require Tommy Hill to take a leap. Ty Robinson needs to take a leap for us. And Luke Lindenmeyer, Nate Boerkircher, Thomas Fidone, Bryce Benhart, and Ben Scott. All these senior players need to step up. The younger athletes will come after,” stated Rhule. “And it appears that they have. And if we make spring ball really competitive, I think they will.”
Something significant exists that can facilitate that.
According to Rhule, Nebraska’s roster was more top-heavy in the spring. He believes that there is a lot more parity this year, which should increase the competition he desires.”We have a lot of really good, young talent and so we’ll have to just to do a lot more competition because what I want to see is a team in the fourth quarter when the game comes down with five minutes left that just makes one more play than we made last year. It’s not this huge overhaul. It’s, ‘make one more play on offense, one more play on defense.’ We beat Northwestern because we blocked their field goal and ran it back, not because we did something crazy that week.”
This generation likes to go out and play. Layup lines are useful, but Rhule notices even his daughters at their basketball games are way more fired up if they’re playing 3-on-3 or a game of knockout than just base drills. The drills have their place but … compete, compete, compete.
Rhule therefore wants to ensure that his team plays hard and puts the ball down this spring.In addition, make sure that Daniel Kaelin and Dylan Raiola, his two rookie quarterbacks, get a ton of reps.
“We will take more reps than we’ve ever taken before to get them ready, and to get Heinrich ready, and to have a strong quarterback room.”
Rhule is certain that this roster is loaded with talent.
He said that he doesn’t tell them about it too much, but he’s happy of what this team has accomplished before spring. “I’m not a fuzzy, feely type of coach so it’s important that they hear that I’m proud of them.”
If you want to go from good to great, you have to handle frustration, he added. The team has been answering that yes, yes, yes so far when things arise that could be frustrating.
Time to keep stamping that answer during the next important phase of this Husker offseason.
“We’re going to push them like crazy in spring ball and see where they end up.”
Oh, and Rhule said he has a gift for them this spring.
“We’re going to give our players the gift of high expectations.”
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