Matt Ruhle invites Dana Holgersen, Former DC for counsel on fixing Husker woes
LINCOLN- After three straight losses and as part of his upcoming week of "introspection," Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule said Monday he'd consider the counsel of outside consultants.
"I have a lot of friends in the business," Rhule said two days after NU's 27-20 loss to UCLA. "I had some outside people kind of come in and 'tell me what you see.' That's probably, at least in my history, one of the best things you can do is just have a fresh set of eyes look at it.
"I'm going to have some people that I trust look at us both on offense and on defense. They'll look at what we're doing and go from there."
A source confirmed to the Omaha World-Herald that two of those friends are former West Virginia and Houston head coach Dana Holgorsen and longtime Rhule confidant Phil Snow, who'd worked as defensive coordinator for Rhule at Temple, Baylor and the Carolina Panthers.
ESPN reported Tuesday morning that Holgorsen would be hired as an offensive consultant with a potentially evolving role. NU had considered hiring Holgorsen in January after a season in which the Huskers scored 17, 10, 17 and 10 points in their final four games of the year.
Born in Iowa, Holgorsen played receiver at Iowa Wesleyan — now closed, located in Mount Pleasant — for head coach Hal Mumme and offensive coordinator Mike Leach. That duo developed the Air Raid passing offense, and once Holgorsen completed his playing career, he followed them to Valdosta State. In 2000 — when Leach took over at Texas Tech — Holgorsen went, too. He worked for Leach eight seasons, coordinating the offense for the last three, developing Tech legend — and former Purdue offensive coordinator — Graham Harrell.
Holgorsen coached Case Keenum at Houston and Brandon Weeden at Oklahoma State before accepting a head-coach-in-waiting job at West Virginia. Holgorsen took over the team and quickly made Geno Smith — probably his best-known quarterback — into a star. Smith threw for 8,490 yards and 73 touchdowns over his final two years in Morgantown.
Snow worked for 10 years as defensive coordinator for Rhule. Snow also spent two years, 2001 and 2002, coordinating UCLA's defense, overlapping with Rhule's one year as an assistant for the Bruins.
In 2014 and 2016 at Temple, Snow produced defenses that allowed fewer than 20 points per game. He did so again at Baylor in 2019. He did not follow Rhule to Nebraska, choosing instead to go into semi-retirement.
Rhule said his friends would be inside NU's football complex looking at film and offering recommendations. Rhule has asked for his friends' opinions "all of the time" over the years. Rhule noted he called legendary Husker coach Tom Osborne after Nebraska's 56-7 loss at Indiana. Osborne attended one of NU's practices the following week.
In the early stages of Bo Pelini's tenure, Osborne, as Athletic Director, was watching film with coaches. A tip to then-offensive coordinator Shawn Watson, moved to near tears upon recollection, helped lead to NU's first touchdown in the 2009 Missouri game.
Rhule has cited Osborne and former coach Frank Solich as men he can lean on. An avid reader, Rhule also consumes plenty of coaching and leadership content.
"I'll always ask people — that's pretty consistent for me," Rhule said. "Actually bringing people here, maybe that's not something normally I would do. We have some people that we hire as consultants that do advance stuff for us each week. We talk (on) Zoom.
"But I think coming into the building is good. At the end of the day, everybody needs to feel this. Everybody needs to feel what I feel. Everybody needs to feel like 'hey, we need to get this thing going.'"
At Rhule's prior coaching stop, the NFL's Carolina Panthers, he made what was considered a stunning change coming out of a bye week, firing offensive coordinator Joe Brady. Rhule made the decision after the Panthers' bye week had already ended.
"It was purely football," Rhule said in December 2021 of firing Brady, now the Buffalo Bills' offensive coordinator. "This was in the best interest of us moving forward. I feel like we can play better on offense."
In 2024, Nebraska's offense is again struggling. Offensive coordinator Marcus Satterfield, who has worked at three previous stops with Rhule, has been a focus on social media criticism during Big Ten play, when NU averaged 18.3 points per game.
"I don't have tremendous issues at times with 'oh, why'd we call this, why'd we call that,' because those things are game-planned during the week," Rhule said. "Are we game-planning the right things during the week? That might be one of the questions that we have to talk about, look at it.
"If you score 18 points a game, you're going to be under fire. It just is what it is. Me as the head coach, Satt as the OC, everywhere. I think it's really, really important, though, that our players take accountability in it as well. We don't call any plays that they can't execute."
When a Husker makes a big play, Rhule said, it's to the players' credit, Rhule said. It can't simultaneously be only Satterfield's fault when something goes wrong.
"I just want all of us in the program to all take accountability together," he said.
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