As the carousel spins

Can Nebraska keep its staff intact as new openings emerge?

Nebraska defensive coordinator Tony White | Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

For a few hours Saturday night, it looked as though Texas A&M had made its pick. It wasn’t a high-profile poaching, but a smart, resourceful, almost-Moneyball pick in Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops. Maybe it was too Moneyball for the oilmen of Aggieland because Stoops announced he was staying with the Wildcats before the night was out. A&M announced it had hired Mike Elko away from Duke, which is also a more-with-less pick but in the weird way this sport works because Elko has done less more-with-less (two seasons) than Stoops has (11 seasons) you can sort of argue Elko has a higher ceiling. I guess.

Also, Elko has been to College Station before, spending four seasons as the Aggies’ defensive coordinator under Jimbo Fisher. He is a dot you can connect to Texas A&M, and, as always, that carries too much weight in coaching searches but it is what it is. It seems like a good hire, but we never really know, do we?

Point is, if you were ever paying attention to Matt Rhule-to-A&M rumors, that’s off the table now and the Aggies’ pick might not have the knock-on impact of, say, the year Lincoln Riley and Brian Kelly left one blueblood for another. The game for the Huskers this cycle is keeping the current staff together, which clearly seems to be Rhule’s preference even if, in the wake of another bowl-less season, some fans would welcome a few specific changes.

“Has that worked out here,” Rhule asked two weeks ago. “Where has that worked out? Just firing assistant coaches and coordinators? So we want the whole offense to start over again with a whole new language next year? I’m not doing that. That’s ridiculous. We’re going to be exactly who I said we were going to be. We’re going to be a day by day organization that gets better and better.”

I believe Rhule was speaking literally there. I’m not doing that. Pretty clear that, in his ideal world, every coach is back for year two. That would be something of a rarity at Nebraska. Since joining the Big Ten in 2011, the Huskers have had one season (2021) when the entire on-field staff returned from the previous season.

Of course, Rhule isn’t the only one with a say in how intact his staff remains. As the carousel picks up speed, is there an impact on Nebraska? Here are a few thoughts on what’s out there.

Defensive coordinator Tony White figures to be the assistant with the most opportunities this offseason. He helped the Huskers improve the most important marker of defense—points—from 77th (27.6 per game) to 17th (18.3) in 2023. White also has a range of experience in varied places, from the football backwoods of New Mexico to California all the way across the country to Syracuse and back to the middle for one very strong year at Nebraska.

There’s a lot of appeal in that, and three of the head jobs at White’s previous stops are now open. It appears as though Syracuse is further along with other candidates—including Georgia DBs coach Fran Brown, an assistant with Rhule at Temple and Baylor—so I’d tentatively strike that one.

San Diego State reportedly reached out to White—which Rhule seemed to independently, if indirectly, confirm—and that seems like the biggest threat. White spent nine seasons as an Aztec assistant, and it’s a G5 program that presents some upside. San Diego State has won 10-plus games four times since 2016. It’s also a program that, of the openings theoretically available to a coach with White’s résumé, might echo the advice White is hearing from Rhule.

“Don’t take a job with no resources, don’t take a job with no support. Don’t take a job without a great recruiting base,” Rhule said last week, when asked about assistants getting other opportunities. "Don’t take a job—hear me when I say this, this is deep—where the expectations outweigh the commitment.”

From the outside, San Diego State seems like a program where expectations and commitment are closely aligned. New Mexico, the other school with a White tie, probably isn’t, and White only spent a season there. If he took that job, the Lobos would be getting a steal.

My gut feeling, and it’s only a feeling, is that White is coaching in Lincoln next season. If San Diego State offered him the head job, it would be one any first-time head coach had to seriously consider. But beyond that, Syracuse seems unlikely, New Mexico would be the ultimate labor of love and I don’t see White hopping from Lincoln for another DC gig.

Outside of White, one of the upsides of having a largely home-grown staff is there’s less danger of “mama calling.” Corey Raymond was a strong defensive backs coach for Nebraska in 2011, strong enough that when LSU offered the Tiger alum and Louisiana native the same position in 2012, nobody faulted him for taking it.

Nebraska doesn’t have a lot of those scenarios with the jobs already open because so many of these assistants are tied to Rhule. Defensive line coach Terrance Knight had the best 2023 alongside White, but this is his third coaching job and two have been with Rhule.

He’ll encourage any of his assistants to progress in their careers if the opportunity is available, but so far there don’t appear to be any Raymond-to-LSU no-brainers. That can change, however.

Two schools on NU’s schedule start over

Speaking of things changing, if you looked at Nebraska’s 2023 schedule at this point last year, you only would’ve seen two games against an opponent with a first-year head coach—the Huskers’ trip to Colorado and the home game with Purdue. Nebraska ended up facing a pair of interim head coaches as well with Northwestern and Michigan State.

The Huskers already have two games in 2024 that will be against new head coaches. UTEP parted ways with Dana Dimel Sunday. It’s not a job with a lot of curb appeal—lack of consistent success, remote recruiting opportunities—so the Miners will probably have two options, go young and hope to catch a guy on his way up or go with an experienced head coach who’s currently on the scratch-and-dent pile for whatever reasons. The latter has worked out well for New Mexico State with Jerry Kill, but is there a Kill out there?¹

Most of the UTEP candidate speculation out there skews the other way, and there are plenty of young coaches with Texas ties to choose from. Tony White showed up on this list from the El Paso Times, and he did play high school football in El Paso, but the job is about equal to the New Mexico gig . White will have better opportunities if he waits. Someone like Mack Leftwich, Texas State’s OC, or Zach Kittley, Texas Tech’s OC, seem much more likely.

Either of those candidates, up-and-comers with a history of high-scoring offenses, would make the Huskers’ opener against the Miners interesting. No matter who UTEP lands, if you want to be eight months ahead of everyone, start talking about how Nebraska won’t have tape on UTEP now.

The other new coach Nebraska is guaranteed to face is Indiana’s. The Hoosiers are paying more ($20 million) to move on from Tom Allen than Nebraska had to pay to de-Frost. Crazy times. This job will be a good test of the desirability of a) the Big Ten’s presumed status as part of the developing “Power 2” with the SEC, and b) all that Big Ten TV money. No Big Ten program should want for money or status, thus all Big Ten jobs should be desirable for 90% of candidates out there. That’s the theory.

But is it true for one of the toughest Big Ten jobs? We’ll find out. The early Indiana lists are kind of an overly optimistic open book at this point, ranging from “how will they pull that off?” (Sherrone Moore, Michigan OC/OL/guy that has coached half the games while Harbaugh sat) to up-and-comers-with-program-ties who always make these lists (South Alabama HC Kane Wommack, Lions WR coach Antwan Randle El, Ohio State OL coach Justin Frye).

The hire I think would be the most trouble for the Big Ten, and thus Nebraska in 2024 when it faces IU in October, is one of the top MAC candidates (Jason Candle, Toledo; Chris Creighton, EMU). Candle may have better opportunities, but Creighton could make the Hoosiers a pain in the butt pretty quickly, which might be the program’s ceiling in an 18-team Big Ten.

A few weeks ago it looked like there might be a third new coach on Nebraska’s 2024 schedule, but as of Monday night signs were pointing to UCLA retaining Chip Kelly. The Huskers host the Bruins Nov. 2.

Finally, Nebraska doesn’t face Michigan State in 2024, but for all of the pain of this past season the Spartans are going to come out ahead from the Mel Tucker scandal. MSU hired Jonathan Smith, fresh off three straight winning seasons at Oregon State. It looks like a very good hire and Smith has already announced a handful of assistants who are coming with him.

Not among them? Defensive coordinator Trent Bray. The one-time Nebraska assistant was expected to have the invite to East Lansing, but he may also be in the mix for the top job in Corvallis.

1. I just don’t see a Paul Chryst in El Paso. Now, if Scott Frost decided to go there and try to score 50 points a game? I could kind of see it, and I would be extremely intrigued.