With the news of Rob Dvoracek (linebackers) and Garrett McGuire (wide receivers) coming that we Rhule has finalized his staff, it left a lot of Twitter mentions for me asking what my thoughts where.
Let’s start with my original thoughts for Nebraska and assistant coaches in general. I have ALWAYS been a proponent that Nebraska should NEVER be a place where full-time on the field coaches cut their teeth and this is their first job in that capacity. With these two hires, they of course are getting their first taste of full-time coaching in Lincoln.
Let’s start with Dvoracek, who was a student assistant at Temple, defensive quality control at Baylor, assistant coach at Lehigh, and an assistant to the assistant for the Carolina Panthers (what Knighton did, not a full-time position coach but helped the full-time position coach). I have zero idea what to think of him. How can I?
Secondly, you have Garrett McGuire who is the son of Texas Tech head coach and played QB for Rhule at Baylor. At only 24 years old, he still needs someone to sign for him to get a rental car or pay the “underage fee”. He spent two seasons with Rhule at Carolina as an assistant like Dvoracek. Again, what can I say?
I’m just going to go back to a few things i’ve been stating pretty religiously. First, I’m all in on this staff (and any staff we hire) the first two years until/unless they say something to me that doesn’t make a ton of sense. Even then i’ll still be all in, I will just throw some caution to the masses about it. Not sure I should do that any more since it got me completely kicked off a message board doing that, but whatever. I still am not sure if we need to help get coaches careers started in Lincoln.
But going positive, I do agree a bit with one of Rhule’s statements where he said that coaching is somewhat of a young mans game. I’d agree there. I still remember being at a practice where Trent Bray got done with practice and immediately Todd McShane came to him with a piece of paper and his phone for him to call recruits. I can’t really see Whipple or some of the older guys doing that anymore. But what I do like is guys like Tony White and Marcus Satterfield knowing what they want and letting the young guys with the energy and social media experience get the players in to run it for you.
I also have wrote about how some of our best coaches the last decade are the ones with the least experience. Trent Bray, Keith Williams, Travis Fisher, etc. Heck, how mad were people when Bo hired Rich Fisher to coach the Wide Receivers from a golf pro shop? He ended up being great.
Am I going to have a little caution here, for sure. I think there’s going to be some growing pains and maybe why Rhule really struggles year 1 sometimes. But if we can keep the band together, none of these “kids” are “stuck in their ways” like Whipple was/is. That could be really good in the long run.
Satterfield
I do feel like I should mention again that when it was pretty much known Rhule was the guy, I went through all of his old assistants and Satterfield was the guy I looked at and said “boy I really hope he finds someone else.” I am going to be cautiously optimistic, if he can coach this QB room up that will go a long way.
Kenny Wilhite not retained
News broke that Wilhite was not going to be here in 2023 with Rhule:
Look, I don’t want to go extremely negative on this, and I don’t think he was completely to blame for the lack of local recruiting success. I just think if we are paying 6 figures to that job, you could get someone much better suited with more energy and organizational skills for that. He just didn’t seem energetic and passionate, and the punctuality was lacking.
I’m taking nothing away from the guy, he is a proud alum and i’m thankful he was here. It was just time to move on.
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I dont have a problem with the new WR coach age or experience at the WR position. But I have a problem that he has both. How can he take a 19 year old kid and develop him to a NFL WR when hes basically never coached OR played the position? We need these WRs to develop and to be recruited that they can be developed and quite frankly the kids coming here have more experience playing WR than our WR coach. And furthermore how can he sell himself to recruits. I like most of Rhules hires and you make a great point that the golf coach ended up doing fairly well. But theres no way to spin the WR hire, its a bad hire and Im just hoping Im proved wrong. As far as the other position coach hires, most position coaches are young. If they are older, they have moved on to coordinator or HC positions. Old, wise positions coaches while out there, are not abundant.
Rhules staff, while not phenomenal, is good and I especially think he did well on D
I think those are all very valid. Concerns me, but i’m giving the benefit of the doubt. He needs to hope he hits on a guy like Coleman, or that Lloyd or the other track guy take off here.
I still don’t get keeping Raiola. He’s now 1 for 4 in portal Oline recruiting so far in 2023. I realize you aren’t going to get everyone but the last minute switch by Rouse to OU is interesting.
I am having a hard time with that one as well. Just makes me wonder if Rhule is trying to assert his “greatness” over past staff improving our worst position with same coach?
Still no word on getting rid of Ron Brown?
I have no idea what’s going on there honestly. Kind of interesting.