Matt Rhule reveals how he balances high school recruiting, transfer portal at Nebraska

Nebraska head coach Matt Rhule is old school when it comes to recruiting in college football, but knows there are times to use the transfer portal.

Heck, the Huskers are doing that as we speak. They’re in on potentially flipping Georgia five-star quarterback commit Dylan Raiola and also landing former Ohio State quarterback-wide receiver combo Kyle McCord and Julian Fleming in the transfer portal.

Rhule was certainly honest about his approach when he joined Tuesday’s edition of The Pat McAfee Show.

“For us it will be like 90% high school and high school recruiting and high school development,” Rhule said on The Pat McAfee Show. “It’s kind of who we are. I mean when you win at a place like Temple, when you win at Baylor you like getting guys in and practicing them and developing them and you know, and you want them to want to stay. We’ll augment it with a player here, a player there, someone who we maybe have a connection to, a relationship with.” 

Rhule kept that same recruiting mindset and philosophy while he was in the NFL. it just unfortunately didn’t work out for him at that time.

“But even even in my time in the NFL, both as an assistant at the Giants and then our time in Carolina, it was really important to me like in Carolina, like I wanted to re-sign Christian McCaffrey,” Rhule said. “I wanted to resign DJ Moore. I wanted to be the guy that was taking care of his own guys in the locker room, not always going outside the locker room. And I think at this level, it’s important to me that our locker room knows that you know what, the coach cares about them. 

“You’re not going to bust your tail for three years and all of a sudden, coach is gonna bring someone in to replace you. So that’s really important to us. Try to do as much high school as possible. But when the time comes and you can get a difference maker like, you better go get them and there’s some out there.”

As it stands, Nebraska ranks No. 24 overall in the 2024 team recruiting rankings, per the on3 Industry Ranking. The team also ranks No. 25 overall in the transfer portal rankings, but that could soon change on both fronts.

Going 5-7 in his debut season is a little disappointing, considering the Huskers were 5-3 at one point. But 2024 could be a different story for Rhule and company after some recruiting wins.