Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule speaks to the media following the team’s fall practice on Friday.

Rhule spoke about the response and improvement from players and coaches during the final week of training camp.

“I said last week that’s where we need to be,” he said. “I don’t think we can say we’re a really good team until we prove it. I liked the way we worked this week. This was a challenging week. Week three is the highest volume week, this was week four, sometimes people can start to slack off. I didn’t see any slack off this week. We’ll see how the mock game goes tomorrow. Monday I didn’t have the veterans practice, I had them coach. I had the young guys practice, we’re really just trying to get some young guys together to prove that they’re ready to go when we need them. When an Amari Sanders comes through and makes the team so much better. We have Jacory (Barney) in that mix, obviously Dylan’s (Raiola) in that mix. I’m just trying to challenge some of those younger guys, the Amari Sanders, the Caleb Bennings, those guys, especially on defense. Where we have a veteran defense to break through and I think we’re seeing that progress. We need another great week of elite, elite preparation. It’s a challenge this week, even when you look at UTEP personnel. You might look at an Eastern Kentucky player, then you look at a UTEP player, then you look at an Austin Peay player, then you look at a Florida State player as you prepare, personnel-wise. And then as you watch Austin Peay’s film, you try to extrapolate it back to the players that they have, so there’s a lot of work to do. And that’s the maturity, but I mean, I walked up to MJ Sherman and said “what do you think?” And he knew everything. He said ‘hey, I know (Isaiah) Wright is going to play the left side and Austin Peay is going to play the right side there.’ He studied it and they have good players and you have to study them and that’s what they’re doing, so I think we’re on the right track.

Rhule discussed Heinrich Haarberg’s potential as a backup quarterback.

“Yeah. I think that remains to be seen,” he said. “I probably don’t want to give too much away to anybody. I think Heinrich, honestly, I just have a ton of respect for him as a competitor. He can do anything. You look at Coach (Scott) Frost. He was one of the best quarterbacks in college football history and then he played safety in the National Football League and Heinrich reminds me of that. Heinrich could be a great safety for me, he could probably be a great tailback, wideout, tight end, and so we have the ability to use him if we need to. At the same time, I don’t want to lose my No. 2 quarterback, so there’s a fine line there. We’re not going to play this year out of fear. We’re not going to play like, ‘What if this goes wrong?’ I know people think that sometimes, I think that sometimes too. But we made a decision that we’re going to attack, we’re going to go all out with this team and attack with everything we’ve got, and Heinrich is a part of that, so we’re going to use him.”

Rhule talked about the things he learned from fall camp.
“There was never a practice where I was disappointed. There was never a practice where I thought ‘man, we just don’t get it.’ It’s actually the opposite. We did a nine-on-seven on Tuesday and on Wednesday I came out and there was no nine-on-seven. When I walked out I looked at Donny (Donovan Raiola) and he said ‘have you seen the nine-on-seven’ and I said ‘yeah, I said I haven’t seen us play like that in a while.’ It’s just words if we don’t play like that next Saturday. Let me say that – I’m the first person to be like that. You know practice doesn’t mean you’re going to win a game, practice gives you the opportunity to compete to win the game. You’ve got to play well on game day. There’s never been a lull in that regard. We’ve had very few distractions and very few problems. You know, we’ve had a few that you’re going to have on a team. “Overall there were few distractions, apart from the injuries to Teddy (Prochazka) and Roger (Gradney), we came out of this in pretty good health.”

The Huskers will host a Fan Day on Saturday, August 24 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Hawks Championship Center. Fans will have the opportunity to get autographs, meet players and purchase merchandise at the Huskers Fan Shop.