Matt Rhule Wants To Develop Players ‘The Hard Way’
Matt Rhule just finished his first season at Nebraska with a 5-7 record. The Cornhuskers struggled at the quarterback position this year and Rhule addressed the media Wednesday on how they planned to fix this issue.
“Make no mistake that a good quarterback in the portal costs, you know, a million to $1.5 million to $2 million right now, just so we’re all on the same page,” Rhule said. “Let’s make sure we all understand what’s happening. There are some teams that have $6 million or $7 million players playing for them.“
Nebraska got quarterback Jeff Sims out of the transfer portal last December after he spent three years at Georgia Tech. This didn’t work out well, as he only started two games with just one touchdown pass and six interceptions. The Cornhuskers currently have two other quarterbacks, sophomore Heinrich Haarberg and sophomore Chubba Purdy, who is the brother of Brock Purdy. These two ended up getting more playing time than Sims and will likely go into a position battle this offseason.
Haarberg led the Cornhuskers to a 5-3 record during his starts and Purdy was able to appear in six games while starting the final two. Matt Rhule seems like he would prefer to stay in-house and develop his guys who have multiple years of eligibility left.
“We just kind of believe in doing things the old-school way, the hard way — building,” Rhule said.
Although the transfer portal and NIL deals have changed the landscape of college football, I think Rhule should give his guys a shot. There needs to be some serious monetary incentives to pull some of these big-name transfers, and in some cases, you may only get them for one year. If Rhule believes in his guys, then he should stick to what he feels is best.
“Obviously, everyone can look at the negatives and the turnovers and all those things,” Rhule said. “I also see a lot of positives. I say to myself, if Chubba had played more throughout the course of the year, would he be farther along? I think Chubba has a high ceiling. Heinrich wasn’t even in quarterback meetings last year [during coach Scott Frost‘s tenure]. He wasn’t even allowed to go to meetings. So I’m really proud of him.“
It seems like there was some disconnect with the development of the quarterbacks this past season and they are ready to fix it. Nebraska lost three of their last four games by three points and made plenty of mistakes this season.
If they can find ways to clean up their game and find stability at the quarterback position, this team could see massive improvement next season.
