But history has shown that new Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule is no slouch at selecting collegiate assistants
Yesterday I summarized the job that new Nebraska football coach Matt Rhule has done so far and did an overview of his coaching beliefs. If reading it gave you a Kool-Aid mustache, that's understandable. Like I admitted yesterday, I love the hire for Nebraska.
So everything must be sunshine and roses, right? Rhule has a reputation for remaking programs with his approach - and his success speaks for itself. He's afforded the benefit of the doubt, at least initially. It's my stance to give any new coaching staff two years. I might tilt an eyebrow or shake my head here and there, but I'll typically let a coach have two years on the job before I take aim with criticism. Heading into Year 3, the gloves are off.
With that said, let's take a deeper look at some of Rhule's assistant coaches. I'll get my concerns out of the way first.
Okay, let's address the elephant in the room. Keeping Dominic Raiola on staff went over like a lead balloon with the majority of fans. Of the 10 assistant coaching hires Rhule made, this was one of the two or three I really questioned.
Raiola's offensive line was by far the team's worst-performing unit last year. On top of that, he brought nothing to the table as a recruiter. Last season's portal additions were the result of Erik Chinander (Hunter Anthony) and Mickey Joseph (Kevin Williams Jr.). Raiola made zero headway with any O-line recruits in the 2023 cycle, outside of about a month of hype in June surrounding Jr Sia, who ended up signing with - gulp - Utah State. Every big-name national recruit Nebraska flirted with last spring and summer were because of other staff members: Cayden Green (Bill Busch), Zalance Heard (Bryan Applewhite, Mickey Joseph), Bo Hughley (Sean Beckton).
Let's be honest; Gunnar Gottula, Sam Sledge, Brock Knutson, Mason Goldman and Jason Maciejczak are signing with Nebraska regardless. None of them are here explicitly because of Raiola and that's a major concern I have moving forward with him on staff. He's in charge of a room that, on average, wants to bring in three or four guys every class at a minimum. I think Rhule will put together a heck of a recruiting operation, but I've never been a fan of having coaches on staff that don't carry their weight on the trail.
Recruiting is new to him. Can he gain his footing, get into a groove and change the narrative? We'll see. To his credit, he did secure a commitment a couple weeks ago from Ben Scott, a 28-game starter at Arizona State who will be the starting center for the Huskers next fall. But he still has a long ways to go to ease my mind on that front.
If Nebraska is able to close the deal on his nephew, five-star QB Dylan Raiola, the nation's top-ranked player for 2024, him being on staff will certainly be pointed to as a factor. If the Huskers ultimately beat out teams like Georgia, USC, Miami and Oregon, Donovan's presence will be a big reason.
Beyond that though, let's try and see what Rhule saw when he decided to keep him. Rhule told us Raiola teaches the same technique he believes in. Raiola is a disciple of Harry Hiestand, who is one of the most respected teachers of the "flat back" style Rhule prefers. Hiestand has a connection with Pat Flaherty, whom Rhule worked under with the New York Giants as the assistant O-line coach in 2012.
Raiola is still quite green and Rhule will have the chance to mold and groom him. He's been successful doing that with several assistant coaches in the past.
Including Rhule himself, there are three other coaches on staff with backgrounds coaching the O-line, with Marcus Satterfield and Ed Foley being the others. I think Rhule will spend time during spring and fall camp working with Raiola and the O-line. I also anticipate Foley spending a lot of time coaching the O-line alongside Raiola as well. I expect him to be a relative fixture there at practices when he isn't handling special teams responsibilities.
I think it also helped having Satterfield go to bat for him. Nebraska's offensive coordinator, like Rhule, was impressed with Raiola after his initial 30-minute interview and encouraged Rhule to keep him on staff.
With that being said, I was underwhelmed by the hiring of Marcus Satterfield to be the offensive coordinator. His two years at South Carolina were mostly disappointing, and there had even been rumblings head coach Shane Beamer was considering making a change after the season. If you take away the last two games of the regular season for the Gamecocks, where they torched Tennessee and beat Clemson, there would be a very different narrative.
I'll give Satterfield a pass for 2021 because the quarterback position was ravaged by injuries and poor play. When you're needing your offensive graduate assistant to use his sixth season of eligibility midway through fall camp because the position is so thin, you deserve a mulligan.
Even so, Satterfield had an NFL talent running his system this past season and still sputtered badly for stretches. He ran a much different system than the one Spencer Rattler was coming from; did it just take time to click? Including the Gator Bowl played without Satterfield, the Gamecocks finished the season 39th in scoring (32.2 ppg), 41st in passing (260 ypg), 106th in rushing (118.8 ypg) and 72nd in total offense (378.8 ypg). Not exactly gaudy numbers for an offense in Year 2 of a system.
This is a situation where I'll rely on Rhule and Satterfield's history together. It's worked before, albeit in a lesser conference, so you have to at least give it a chance to work here. I trust Rhule to build an offense with Satterfield that will be recruited to and geared toward winning in the Big Ten.
What will that offense look like? Satterfield has talked of a pro-style offense with a physical running game. This team will huddle between plays, and they'll implement tight ends and a fullback in various packages.
With Jeff Sims (likely) at quarterback and a backfield that returns Ajay Allen and Anthony Grant, if it were me, I would run a ton of RPO and zone-read concepts. Looking at the receivers currently on the roster, even with the recent addition of Virginia transfer Billy Kemp, I think a 60-40 run/pass ratio is a good strategy.
Another hire that took me back a bit was Garret McGuire coaching the receivers. I don't know if that was a lingering hangover from the disappointment of Mickey Joseph ruining his chances of being retained. It didn't help knowing Rhule had a history with guys like Frisman Jackson, Jeff Nixon and Joe Dailey, and anticipating him reuniting with one of them at Nebraska.
The 23-year-old McGuire's résumé is basically nonexistent; two years as an offensive assistant with Carolina. Frankly, that's the sort of experience you hope is good enough to get your foot in the door as a graduate assistant or analyst at the Power Five level.
I mean, look at senior defensive analyst Kevin McGarry, who is following Tony White from Syracuse. The two have worked together for over a decade dating back to their time at San Diego State. McGarry was a position coach for the Aztecs and was the head coach at the University of San Diego for eight seasons. He's an analyst at a program like Nebraska.
But again, Rhule deserves the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. History has shown us that his collegiate hires have largely worked out well. Rhule has grown an impressive coaching tree making moves like this. From everything I've heard, McGuire is considered a bright up-and-coming coach by his peers. I must admit, though, I really tilted my head at this hire.
In a perfect world, you would like to see more assistants on staff who have recruiting backgrounds and connections in areas like St. Louis, Kansas City, Chicago and Denver. But I think Rhule has proven he can make quick inroads in vital recruiting areas.
This is a coach who arrived at Baylor with zero Texas roots. Rhule was a lifelong Northeast coach, and so were all the assistants he brought with him from Temple. Within a couple years, he ingratiated himself to the point where he was arguably the most respected college coach in the state. That's a huge accomplishment. While it isn't exactly trying to serve an off-brand salsa instead of Pace Picante sauce to a bunch of cowboys circa the late 1980s, it's still not easy to get inside that circle.
Rewind the clock back to when some national pundits were questioning Rhule's hire at Baylor, despite back-to-back 10-win seasons and coming off an AAC championship at Temple. Everyone thought he was an outstanding coach, sure, but cultural fit is also important. Some felt he would be in over his head in the Lone Star State. Most fans and local media wanted Mike Gundy or Sonny Dykes - coaches with a background in the region.
Rhule's hire was especially unpopular among the state's high school coaches. Here was an outsider replacing a Texas high school legend. They were critical and hesitant, and he won them over in a short amount of time.
If Rhule ends up coaching the Huskers for the foreseeable future, I don't think he'll have an issue making inroads in important areas. Like I said, ideally you'd like a better starting point, but he'll get there. He'll recruit the state of Nebraska harder than any coach since Frank Solich. I guarantee that.
He'll rebuild a pipeline into Texas, which is a more sustainable recruiting hotbed for Nebraska than places like Georgia, Florida, California and Louisiana, where previous staffs have tried to plant a flag. The Huskers will certainly continue to recruit those areas, particularly Florida, but Texas will be the primary focus for out-of-area talent.
Nebraska will have a presence in New Jersey and parts of Pennsylvania, namely Philadelphia and Harrisburg.
I also anticipate that, in time, Rhule will further prioritize states like Missouri, Illinois, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota and the Dakotas. Mike Riley and Scott Frost leaned on familiar recruiting areas early in their tenures, but they soon realized how beneficial those places were. Both eventually shifted more attention toward those areas. I think Rhule will do the same, eventually.
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