Rhule, Holgorsen Speak On Huskers' Fall Camp

The Nebraska football team continued fall camp Thursday morning, and head coach Matt Rhule and offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen met with the media following practice.

Rhule opened the press conference with comments on Mac Markway’s injury status.

“After the first practice, he came in and had some swelling in his knee, not until the next day,” he said. “Unfortunately, the ACL repair failed for him. It’s heartbreaking news. He’s an unbelievable human. I felt terrible for him. It wasn’t any one play, nothing that he even knows necessarily happened. Just some swelling. Got through the walk through that night, then came in the next morning. We got through day one, talked about him, we were really excited for what we knew he was about to do. I know the human he is and I’m excited for what he does next. I just wanted to make sure you guys heard that from me.”

Holgorsen spoke on his focus for the offense in the early stages of camp.

“The easy answer is everything, obviously, but it’s installation,” he said. “My day one meeting with the guys was like, we’ve done a lot of football up to this point this year with our winter OTAs and summer and spring football OTAs and now going into camp. This is like the fourth time we’ve really installed it. Some guys were here in the spring, some guys didn’t get here until the summer. Individually, it might be their second time or it may be their fourth time. We should really have a pretty good understanding of what to do, but it’s still installation. It’s still installation. There’s a lot of technique stuff. I get irritated when guys don’t know how to line up or they don’t know their assignment. That really irritates me because we have installed it four times. At this point, it should be more about proper technique and making good decisions and starting to work on situations and then putting guys in the position to be able to make plays. It varies from player to player. The overall aspect of it is just trying to figure out what the best lineup is and what we do best.”

Holgorsen also discussed the importance of routine plays. 

“One of our goals as an offense is to become a little bit more explosive,” he said. “Explosive bodies, I think that’ll naturally happen. But that’s not what we’re going to obsess over. We’re not going to be reckless with our play calls just to try to get explosive plays. That will come. Situationally, that will come. Where that really shows up and where your yards per play go up is just routine play after routine play after routine play. If it’s a checkdown for five yards, that’s better than an incompletion. That’s better than a sack. We’re just focused on routine plays, taking what the defense gives you. If you do that consistently, those routine plays turn into big plays with good players. I think we have good players that can turn routine plays into big plays, and that will help your yards per play and that will help your explosive plays as well.”

He talked about the depth and talent of the offensive line. 

“I don’t care what I’ve done, where I’ve been, teams I’ve had,” he said. “It’s always been about this and what we have to do to make this the best team that we possibly can. I just look at it right now and I’m happy with the depth. We have 17 healthy bodies at o-line. We get a third group out there and rep those guys. It doesn’t look very good, but they’re getting a bunch of reps. That’s what young offensive line guys need is just reps and development. They need to eat and get in the weight room. We’ll worry about those guys here in a couple years. For the now and for the next practice, we’ve got 10 good bodies that are all practicing hard and that gives us an opportunity to coach them and gives them an opportunity to develop.”

Fans will have their first opportunity to see the 2025 Huskers this Saturday, as the Huskers will hold a pair of events. The annual Nebraska Football Fan Day will take place in the Hawks Center from 4:30 to 6 p.m. The Big Red Preview presented by 1890 will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Memorial Stadium.

Mobile tickets for the Big Red Preview are on sale now by visiting Huskers.com.  West Club tickets for the practice are $30. Adult tickets are $20 and youth tickets (high school and under) are $10 each. All seats are general admission, and all tickets have a $1 per ticket fee added.  Gates at Memorial Stadium will open at 5:30 p.m. for the Big Red Preview event.