Nebraska Football: Matt Rhule has a ‘better jumping off point’ in Lincoln, according to analyst

New Nebraska football head coach Matt Rhule is going to get off to a better start than he has elsewhere in his college coaching career.

From the moment Matt Rhule was first hired to run the Nebraska football program, people pointed to his rebuild jobs in college football as the reason Husker fans should be optimistic. Now one analyst is saying that while it’s true his rebuild record should be pointed to, it seems realistic to have higher expectations than ever before.

On3 podcast host J.D. Pickell recently talked about what he thinks the Nebraska football record could be in 2023. During that segment he made it clear that he thinks the Huskers are in better shape for a surprising season than others believe.

"“You look at Nebraska compared to those rebuilds they have a much better jumping off point than he did at Baylor, or than he did at Temple … those rosters, we’ll just talk about Baylor. They were at ground zero man. There were people in Waco talking about the death penalty for Baylor. And he took them and got them back to a Big 12 title game.”"

Pickell added that he doesn’t think the job the current Nebraska football coach did when he was the head man at Baylor should just be overlooked before transitioning to his main point.

"“You talk to people at Nebraska, they feel like they could have made a bowl game last year. They feel like they had the personnel last year to go 6-6.”"

Nebraska football and the woulda, coulda, shoulda

Pickell then admitted that since the Huskers didn’t go to a bowl, the talk about what could have been was mostly … just talk. But he agrees that the Cornhuskers are in a better spot than either of Rhule’s previous rebuilds were when he got there.

It’s not the first time that an analyst has said that Rhule finds himself in a better spot than previous programs. There’s also plenty of people who said he’s the perfect pick to turn Nebraska football around.

So far, nothing’s been proven. People thought Scott Frost was going to be the golden boy as well. They were very wrong about that. It’s still nice to see there is real optimism, even from outside Nebraska football’s home turf about what Rhule can do.