A defense with something to prove...and a coordinator

On John Butler, how much Nebraska has to replace defensively, and how the Huskers might be embracing their under-the-radar status.

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

It was pretty easy last year around this time to identify some stock-up Huskers based on the names coaches were continually mentioning in their post-practice availabilities. Not so easy this year, and that feels intentional.

It tracks with Matt Rhule’s cited reason for not holding a spring game—why let anyone else know what we have?—but I’ve still found the spring omertà somewhat surprising in its totality.

For example, this answer from defensive coordinator John Butler this week to a question about Idaho transfer defensive back Andrew Marshall: “I’m trying my best not to single anybody out, not because I don’t want to give you guys information, [but] because at the end of the day it’s all about building a team.”

Fair enough. That this has seemed to be the party line for NU’s staff this season, however, stands in contrast to, say, the effusive and almost instant praise we heard for Wake Forest transfer wide receiver Jahmal Banks last year.

Maybe that change is a reflection of where Nebraska would rather be in 2025, a team quietly going about its business rather than a trendy one. That would track with where Rhule’s programs have been before. His breakthrough 2015 Temple team was the consensus second-place pick in its division, but wasn’t in the top-50 nationally (though three other AAC teams were). Entering 2019, Baylor was the consensus sixth-place pick in the Big 12 and also outside the top-50.

Those teams got to be good when they were ready to be good, a harder feat to pull off at a place with the attention of Nebraska. The Huskers of the Big Ten era have had a handful of disappointing seasons relative to offseason buzz and, by my count, no surprising ones. If NU’s staff actually is doing what it can—or not doing, in this case—to maintain an under-the-radar status, it actually makes me feel more optimistic about the Blackshirts in 2025, the side of the ball where some regression is fair to expect.

It's somewhat complicated. Let me explain.