Matt Rhule closing Nebraska football practice has sparked a crazy case of nerves

It certainly isn’t a secret that Nebraska football hasn’t won as many games as it should over the last few years. “Close losses” has been part of the conversation especially since the first season of the Scott Frost era and it bled into the first campaign of the Matt Rhule regime.

There’s been a lot of digital ink spent and a lot of opinions offered on just why that is. However, in the latest edition of the Huskers’ video series, Chasing 3, the Huskers’ head coach crystallized why he believed NU has struggled in big moments.

Rhule’s opinion is that the Nebraska football team plays differently “when the lights come on.” In other words, they make more mistakes when people are watching them. And those comments, paired with closing a recent practice entirely has some worried about it still being a problem in 2024.

Nebraska football has some nervous after closed practice, comments

Mitch Sherman and Connor Happer of the Locked On Nebraska podcast voiced their concerns on the latest episode when they talked about seeing Rhule take his players aside during the practice that was open to the fans. In the Chasing 3 episode, what he said to his players was released.

“This is why we lose because there are people here. We don't do what we do anymore … Do your job the right way while we're out here. You can't change your shot with the game on the line.”

In other words, the team is freezing up with people in attendance. They’re “changing their shot” and failing because of it. As Sherman and Happer pointed out, there’s a reason that was pretty severe speech was made public.

Nerves are getting a bit frayed around Nebraska football

While Rhule didn’t say why he closed the practice, it was closed, closed. No one could watch (except for Tom Osborne) and it’s thought that he did that to get the team back to a baseline.

If Rhule thinks the team is still having issues because they’re in front of people, there’s a reason to get nervous. There’s a reason to wonder if the team is going to be as good as the analysts have claimed they will be. 

And what makes everyone the most nervous is that there are still several weeks until we get to see if this version of Nebraska football is the same old, same old; or whether Rhule has managed to install a new culture.