Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule met with the media to preview the game against Washington on Saturday. He spoke on an injury to Jamir Conn.
“He’ll definitely be back this season,” he said. “I think it’s just a matter of time, the injury report will come out this week but I have a feeling he’ll be questionable maybe even for this week so he’s just a unique, unique player.”
He also discussed the importance of players like Jamal Rule having more time to recover during the off week.
“I think we’ve all seen what Jamal can do when he’s rolling,” he said. “This bye week comes at a really good time for Jamal and a really good time for even Mekhi (Nelson). He doesn’t complain about it but I mean he hurt his ankle going into whatever game it was, I think maybe Maryland and he’s just fighting through it. With (Vincent) Genatone going down, Isaiah Mozee obviously went down last week, the bye week's great for him and just kind of that whole running back room. Seven weeks in the Big Ten, you're gonna have some bumps and bruises but hopefully those guys will all be flying around tonight. ”
Rhule talked about discussions about players coming back for a fifth year.
“That’s Pat’s (Stewart) deal, I don’t see us being the type of organization that’s putting out a lot of statements midseason about guys. I think we want to get our guys. Pat and I communicate all the time right but I mean at the end of the day I think one of the great sad parts about college football now is that it’s our own doing as coaches but like guys that are having to do that in season. In the NFL, you play the season the league year is over, and then you go to free agency and it’s just a much better system. I listened a lot at the Big Ten meetings to Ryan Day and Dan Lanning, who have obviously been in the college football playoffs and have talked about the challenges of having the portal open while they’re competing for a championship. It’s the only sport that does it like this, we do it like this I guess for the academic year, the financial year in the other sports. Pat does a great job. He’ll do a great job making sure we have the best possible roster in 2027 along with Keith (Williams) and Marques (Little) and Logan (Holgorsen) and the whole personnel staff, but our focus is on Washington.”
He spoke on the difficulty of preparing for two potential quarterbacks.
“They're certainly very similar and different if I may. I think first of all Coach (Jedd) Fisch runs a fantastic system for guys who’ve been in the NFL, guys who’ve studied NFL tape. You can see he runs a true west-coast offense and it’s really really really elitely well constructed. I’ve known coach a long time, he’s a great football coach and so whoever the quarterback is for the University of Washington is going to be asked to use their head, their arm and their feet. They're going to check plays, they're gonna get in the right plays, they're going to recognize coverage, they're going to have run checks. I don’t know their system but what it looks like, they have run checks, they have run to pass checks, pass to pass checks so whoever the playing quarterback is has to be really elite at doing those things. You can see both guys do that at a really high level. They’re a vertical passing offense, I think they’re third in the Big Ten in passing offense. I think it’s 18th in the country passing offense. They push the ball down the field. This is not like a dink and dunk only, this is a true play action, push the ball down the field offense. So they have the guys to do it, so they have to be elite with their arm and they both use their legs to get in and out of trouble. Everyone’s watched Demond Williams Jr., you know the things that he brings to the table in terms of the quarterback run game and extending plays and all those things but I think they both can do it. You look at their big play tape and there’s a lot of plays, they’re play actioning and running double-glances, they’re throwing all corners-beaters, man-beaters, but they also get outside the pocket and make a ton of plays and just extend plays. Maryland was the main one – Malik (Washington) is elite at this, so we have to do a great job at plastering, doing a great job at chasing the quarterback down, so that lent itself to this week, no matter who’s at quarterback. We won't know until the first snap of the game. I think they both run the same system, they just maybe bring a different flavor to it, they're both elite quarterbacks.”
The Huskers are set to take on Washington this Saturday, Oct. 31, at 7 p.m. (CT) at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Neb. The game will be televised on the Big Ten Network and can be heard across the Huskers Radio Network.