Nebraska coach Matt Rhule on loss to Michigan: 'I feel like someone hit me with a hammer'

Nebraska coach Matt Rhule blamed “scouting” on his last loss to Michigan, a 45-7 home beating in 2023, despite all evidence to the contrary. Saturday’s 30-27 setback to the Wolverines was closer on the scoreboard, but U-M dominated both lines of scrimmage and bullied his team much of the afternoon.

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Rhule had a tough time admitting that aspect in the postgame, though it was clear to most. He did acknowledge that losing to the Wolverines again was a tough pill to swallow.

“I don’t like where we’re at right now,” he said. “I feel like someone hit me with a hammer right now. I wanted to win the football game, and I thought we would win the football game. It’s like anything else. There are things that were exposed that have to be improved, or we won’t be the team that we want to be. There are other things that I thought were excellent …

“I thought the guys competed. The other team … Michigan competed, as well. I thought that was a good Big Ten football game. We just we came out on the wrong end of it.”

And again, it was the line play that did them in. Michigan defensive coordinator Wink Martindale put linebacker Jaishawn Barham on the edge as a rusher, and the Cornhuskers had no answer. The Wolverines notched 36 pressures on quarterback Dylan Raiola.

“At the end of the day, they overwhelmed us some at times,” Rhule continued. “I did feel, though, the field got tilted against us a little bit in the second half. I did feel like we progressed a little bit at the end of the first half. We moved the ball in the third quarter. I’ll have to go back and look at it. Again, I think number one for them [Barham] is — he was an inside linebacker. They moved him after the last game to outside ‘backer, and I thought he was dominant last week. I think he’s a dominant player. There will be a lot for us to learn from.

“But in pass pro, I thought there were times where we just gave them too much credit. We were backing up. We were catching them, like, what are they going to do, and just not really being super physical. We were not trying to be physical, but just not challenging it. Then all of a sudden, we went on long stretches where we did protect. In the second half, I think some of that went away. They pressured us. They brought blitzes. They challenged our running backs. That’s what they’re good at. We knew going into the game it would be about stopping the run and our ability to pass protect.”

He was pleased, though, with his defense against Bryce Underwood and the Michigan passing game. The Wolverines dropped too many passes, but there were other times they couldn’t get separation.

“We covered them all day. There were no big plays in the passing game, so we did that well,” Rhule said. “We had to make a couple more tackles in the run game. It’s a big time back [in Justice Haynes], and he hurt us. We can’t walk away from that.

“… But we’re having a hard time protecting the pocket. We’re having a hard time stopping the run in all areas. I was just going to get to halftime and say, ‘Hey, what do we do?’ Even at the end, we had three or four third downs. I don’t know what they finished on third down. I think three of them were on the last drive. Three of them were third and long. You make one of those plays, the game changes. We didn’t.”

At the end of the day, he didn’t agree Michigan’s physicality wore them down in the fourth quarter. He did, however, credit Haynes and Co. for dominating on the ground.

“Haynes is an excellent back,” Rhule said. “Utmost most respect for him. He made the plays that you have to make to win those games. You look at what he did. He had three catches … he had all the carries. They couldn’t throw the ball against us very well, but they certainly made the explosive run plays. That’s a factor of the entire defense.”