Nebraska Football: Jonathan Rutledge let go as special teams struggle

Nebraska football continues to make more moves

It’s been an absolutely crazy week for the Nebraska football program. They have been making moves left and right, and they made one on the football operations side of things on Thursday. The program let go of special teams analyst Jonathan Rutledge, after one season with the team.

His tenure with Nebraska was an interesting one. He had some recruiting success, specifically all-Big Ten kicker Connor Culp. It was great that Nebraska was able to finally get some stability at the kicking position. However, there were other things that just did not work in his favor. The punting game was ineffective, and the injury to Daniel Cerni did not help things.

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He certainly did some good things, but special-teams undoubtedly continue to struggle. There were still dropped punt returns , and kick coverage continue to be an Achilles’ heel for Nebraska. There were some good developments on special teams, but there were also some of the same problems that kept popping up throughout the course of the season. Hopefully, those old and habits can be rectified quickly by whoever else comes in.

I remember when he was hired, and I was really excited to have him come in. It seemed like Nebraska was really placing an emphasis on special teams. Although that was probably what was intended to happen, it just did not seem to work out.

Again, special teams will need to be a focus heading into next season. I feel like I have been saying that for years now, but it’s true. Special teams continues to be a problem spot for the Nebraska football program.

In my opinion, they are going to need to either go big or go home when hiring for this position. They need to fix things, and quickly. We saw a couple instances last season where special teams determined the outcome of the football game. Unfortunately, Nebraska was always on the wrong end of those.

Whoever Nebraska hires is going to have their work cut out for them. I believe they have the talent to be successful for an effective special teams unit. It’s just cleaning up the little things and mental mistakes that are going to take time to fix. If Nebraska can clean up their special teams unit, that would certainly be a major improvement over what we have seen over the past couple of years.

It always seems like something is off each season on special teams for Nebraska football. It will certainly be a relief when we don’t have to worry about this any longer.