Nebraska Football: Matt Rhule fills final two openings on coaching staff

Nebraska Football head coach Matt Rhule has reportedly filled the final two spots on his coaching staff. The wide receivers coach, as well as the linebackers coach, will join the team soon.

Both of the newest Nebraska football coaching staff members are currently with the Carolina Panthers and are expected to join the Huskers full-time after next weekend’s game against the New Orleans Saints. It appears the final two pieces to this puzzle were waiting to see if the Panthers could make the playoffs. However, the team was eliminated yesterday in a loss to the Tampa Bay Bucs.

Nebraska football signees knew who the wide receiver coach was for a while now, though it was made clear they weren’t supposed to tell anyone. I correctly posited that the receivers coach might be coming from the Panthers’ staff. However, I incorrectly guessed that it would be Joe Dailey. It turns out instead that Rhule has named Garrett McGuire to the position.

The linebackers coach was a bit more of a mystery though some recruits had spilled the beans earlier this month. Now the curtain has finally been pulled back, and Rob Dvoracek is the man who will take over that position.

Nebraska football coaching staff now complete

The two hires mean that Rhule has completed his staff about a full month after he took the head coaching job. Both new hires being members of the Panthers’ staff means that the vast majority of the men he’s brought to Lincoln also worked with him before at one of his previous stops.

Tony White is the most obvious exception to this rule. New tight ends coach and special teams assistant Bob Wager also apparently had no previous ties to Rhule before joining him on the Nebraska football staff. However, Wager and Rhule did know each other from when the Huskers headman was at Baylor, and Wager was coaching high school in Texas.

McGuire is easily the youngest member of the Huskers staff. The 23-year-old was an offensive assistant for Rhule at Carolina and played quarterback for him at Baylor. If there’s a hire to be legitimately nervous about on the staff, McGuire is that guy. He’s almost certainly going to be under enormous scrutiny from here on out. Interestingly, he’s also the son of current Texas Tech head coach Joey McGuire.

Linebackers coach Rob Dvoracek is also a youngun, but he does have a bit more assistant coaching on his resume. He was in his second year as a defensive assistant with the Panthers, preceded by two years as an assistant coach at Lehigh. He played for Rhule at Temple.

Both coaches seem to have been known to Nebraska football players and recruits, so the news of when they’ll join is more of a formality than anything once the NFL regular season ends.